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Archived News
30th July 2002
MDC Urges Mugabe To Honour His Pledge To The African Union
MDC Statement Regarding Gwanda Food Distribution
MDC Welcomes EU Decision To Extend Targeted Sanctions
Danger of arrest of Sekai Holland, deportation of Jim Holland
Mugabe repays his foes with starvation
Class of 72
Constitution gets in way of Zim media trial
MDC chief charged with wife's murder
Zambia-Zimbabwe: Contrasting impact of food crisis
Chefs wipe out forex
Tsvangirai released
Geldof warns of devastating famine
EU a group of rabble-rousers
Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi get food aid
Harare comes under fire for food policies
Evil under the sun
Mugabe colleague is seized at airport
Mugabe henchman held over sanctions breach
Tsvangirai faces new Mugabe charge
MDC plans another bid for voters roll
200 farm workers stranded as Mugabe’s brother-in-law allegedly torches their homes
Jailed tycoon faces seizure of farms in Zimbabwe
Mbeki 'doesn't know' why region is starving
Voodoo economics
Violence mars Kadoma poll
Nice guy. Shame on his party.
Grace Mugabe joins Osama bin Laden on sanctions list
Stricken by hunger among the lush fields
Over the top
Mugabe supporters 'block food aid'
Tsvangirai rallies banned
Death of a nation
Last white family takes stand against farm grab
MDC supporters in Muzarabani accuse Zanu PF of excluding them in food aid
Eyewitness: search for food
Guide to food crisis in Zimbabwe
Four more Zimbabwe ministers denied EU visas
Britain stealing Harare nurses, claims Mugabe
Zimbabwe cops use bullets on rowdy soccer supporters
Mugabe party declared winner of urban election
Peace pact between DRC, Rwanda to be signed today
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From The Guardian (UK), 25 July
Mugabe repays his foes with starvation
How Zimbabwe's leader is using the state grain monopoly and UN food aid for political ends
Sitting dejectedly on a wooden stool, Anderson Mupinda, 79 and blind, leans his head against a walking stick. "The hunger makes me weak. From six in the morning to six at night we don't have anything to eat. I haven't eaten a proper meal for more than a week." He lifts his ragged T-shirt to show the folds of skin across his stomach. "There is nothing there. We only have leaves to eat. We dry them and then boil them with salt, but there is no salt. We eat them anyway." In April the Mupinda family were given food by the UN World Food Programme. "The food lasted for a month. We were supposed to get more, but when the trucks came the war veterans chased them away," Mr Mupinda said. "They said the food came from whites overseas who support the MDC [the opposition Movement for Democratic Change]." He makes a clicking sound with his mouth to show disgust. "What rubbish. They are keeping food away from us because we support the MDC. They are starving us. The only way we can survive is to get this man out and get a new government."
The government does not even deny that it is discriminating. Last weekend the deputy foreign minister, Abednico Ncube, told a crowd in Matabeleland that anyone who voted for the MDC could not expect to get food aid from the government. "Maize is in abundance but very soon it will be available only to those who dump the opposition and work with Zanu PF," the Zimbabwe Standard quoted him saying. "The party will start feeding its children before turning to those of MDC." Living in the arid Hwange district in western Zimbabwe, Mr Mupinda is one of the thousands of Zimbabweans already hungry because of the food shortage. His plight is made worse by the fact that the area voted for the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. By September the famine will affect nearly six million Zimbabweans, by the government's own estimates. Many may be denied food because they are suspected of supporting the opposition.
In Binga, on the shore of Lake Kariba, Mr Mugabe's self-styled war veterans have stopped distributing food to school children. "We have 115 tonnes of fortified porridge which should be delivered to 28,000 students in all the schools in this district," an official of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace said. "But since May 25 the war veterans have prevented us from distributing that food because they say it comes from the UK and it is being used to support the opposition. How can five-year-old children know anything about politics? Our food is just sitting in the warehouse and it is beginning to rot. That food was the main meal for most schoolchildren in Binga district and now they are not getting it. It is a crime." Binga district hospital has recorded 27 deaths this year in which malnutrition was a factor. "Most of those deaths were from malaria, but if the children had enough food, many of them would have survived," a hospital official said. "The situation is getting worse, not better."
It has taken only 30 war veterans with stones and wooden clubs to stop the food being distributed, but the police refuse to take action against them. "A small group of fanatics is holding this entire district hostage because the police will not arrest them," Joel Gabbuza, the local MDC MP said. The state grain marketing board (GMB) has a monopoly on imports and wholesale trade in maize and wheat. Its depot in Binga sells maize at a relatively affordable controlled price, but only to residents with membership cards for Mr Mugabe's party, Zanu PF. "The war veterans buy most of the maize meal from the GMB and then they sell it at much higher prices," Mr Gabbuza said. Many believe that Binga has been singled out for starvation because its people voted overwhelmingly for Mr Tsvangirai in the presidential election in March, giving him 27,000 votes: the most he won in any constituency. Mr Mugabe got 5,000. "The government wants to punish us for that vote," Mr Gabbuza said. Political violence has continued, he added. "My shop in Senga was destroyed two weeks ago. Another shop was looted and burned last week. One of our party officials was beaten and police do nothing to protect us. We do not feel safe."
Binga is not unique. In Mberengwa, central Zimbabwe, the MDC says government officials are preventing its members getting food from the WFP. Much of the food comes from the British government, and British officials in Harare say they are investigating the complaints. The high commission in Harare said: "It is a fundamental principle for the British government, as it is for the World Food Programme and the non-governmental organisations with whom we work, that humanitarian assistance is apolitical, targeted at those most in need. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that this principle is adhered to on the ground and we are all working to fulfil that responsibility. We believe that this approach is working. If there are any allegations of politicisation related to our assistance, both we and WFP want to know about them. They will be investigated promptly."
Judith Lewis, WFP's regional director, says there is "an army of food monitors" to ensure that all the needy get food, not those with a ruling party card. "We have conveyed to the government our zero-tolerance policy for food aid abuse." But Britain and the UN cannot assure fair sales of maize by the GMB. First-hand reports have come from Harare, Bulawayo, Murehwa, Mutoko and Chiredzi that people must produce Zanu PF cards to buy maize. Others say that people pointed out as MDC may be beaten in the queue or have their maize seized. And despite numerous reports in the independent press the government has not said it intends to change the policy. In Hwange Anderson Mupinda rises from his stool and adroitly uses his walking stick to locate a basket of dried leaves. "I am sorry for you to see me like this. I only have these leaves to offer you. The life that we are living here is like being in handcuffs and in jail. It is hard to look at the future because we are so hungry."
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From ZWNEWS, 25 July
Class of 72
The full list of 72 individuals on the EU banned list:
Cabinet Ministers
Muzenda, Simon Vengesai: Vice President, born 28.10.1922; Msika, Joseph: Vice President, born 6.12.1923; Makoni, Simbarashe: Minister of Finance, born 22.3.1950; Murerwa, Herbert: Minister for Industry and International Trade, born 31.7.1941; Mujuru, Joyce: Minister for Rural Resources and Water, born 15.4.1955; Moyo, July: Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister, born 7.5.1950; Chigwedere, Aeneas: Education, Sports and Culture Minister, born 25.11.1939; Stamps, Timothy: Health and Child Welfare Minister, born 15.10.1936; Mombeshora, Swithun: Transport and Communications Minister, born 20.8.1945; Chindori-Chininga, Edward: Mines and Energy Minister, born 14.3.1955; Nhema, Francis: Environment and Tourism Minister, born 17.4.1959; Mumbengegwi, Samuel: Higher Education and Technology Minister, born 23.10.1942; Nyoni, Sithembiso: Minister of State, Informal Sector, born 20.9.1949; Muchena, Olivia: Minister of State in Vice-President Msika’s Office, born 18.8.1946; Buka, Flora: Minister of State in Vice-President Muzenda’s office, born 25.2.1968
Politburo Senior Committee members and Secretaries
Senior Committee Members
Dabengwa, Dumiso: born 1939; Mujuru, Solomon: born 1949; Nkomo, Stephen: born 1925; Mugabe, Sabina; Muzenda, Tsitsi
Secretaries
Karimanzira, David: Secretary for Finance, born 25.5.1947; Mutasa, Didymus: Secretary for External relations, born 27.7.1935; Shamuyarira, Nathan: Secretary for Information and Publicity, born 29.9.1928; Tungamirai, Joseph: Secretary for Employment and Indigenisation, born 8.10.1948; Ndlovu, Naison: Secretary for Production and Labour; Hove, Richard: Secretary for Economic Affairs, born 1935; Muchinguri, Oppah: Secretary for Gender and Culture, born 14.2.1958; Masuku, Angeline: Secretary for Disabled and Disadvantaged Persons Welfare; Sikhosana, Absolom: Secretary for Youth Affairs; Lesabe, Thejiwe: Secretary for Women’s Affairs, born 1933; Chikowore, Enos: Secretary for Land and Resettlement, born 1936
Cabinet Deputy Ministers
Kuruneri, Christopher: Deputy Minister, Finance and Economic Development, born 4.4.1949; Ncube, Abednico: Deputy Minister, Foreign Affairs, born 13.10.1954; Mohadi, Kembo: Deputy Minister, Local Government, Public Works and National Housing; Shumba, Isaiah: Deputy Minister, Education, Sports and Culture, born 3.1.1949; Parirenyatwa, David: Deputy Minister, Health and Child Welfare, born 2.8.1950; Mangwana, Paul: Deputy Minister, Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, born 10.8.1961; Mushohwe, Christopher: Deputy Minister, Transport and Communications, born 6.2.1954; Mahofa, Shuvai: Deputy Minister, Youth Development, Gender and Employment Creation, born 4.4.1941; Gumbo, Rugare: Deputy Minister, Home Affairs, born 8.3.1940
Politburo Deputy Secretaries
Mangwende, Witness: Deputy-Secretary for Administration, born 1946; Tawengwa, Solomon: Deputy-Secretary for Finance; Ndlovu, Sikhanyiso: Deputy-Secretary for Commissariat, born 20.9.1949; Mpofu, Obert: Deputy-Secretary for National Security, born 12.10.1951; Moyo, Simon Khaya: Deputy-Secretary for Legal Affairs, born 1945; Malinga, Joshua: Deputy-Secretary for Disabled and Disadvantaged; Madzongwe, Edna: Deputy-Secretary for Production and Labour, born 11.7.1943; Sakupwanya, Stanley: Deputy-Secretary for Health and Child Welfare; Pote, S M: Deputy-Secretary for Gender and Culture; Kasukuwere, Saviour: Deputy-Secretary for Youth Affairs, born 23.10.1970; Mathuthu, T: Deputy-Secretary for Transport and Social Welfare
Other
Mugabe, Grace: Spouse of Robert Mugabe, born 1965
The EU list of sanctioned officials already applied to twenty individuals effective 18 February 2002:
Mugabe, Robert: President; Utete, Charles: Cabinet Secretary; Mnangagwa, Emmerson: Speaker of Parliament; Nkomo, John: Minister of Home Affairs; Goche, Nicholas: Minister of State Security; Manyika, Elliot: Minister for Youth, Gender and Employment Creation; Moyo, Jonathan: Minister of Information; Charamba, George: Information Minister’s permanent secretary and spokesman; Chinamasa, Patrick: Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs; Made, Joseph: Minister of Agriculture; Chombo, Ignatius: Minister of Local Government; Mudenge, Stan: Minister of Foreign Affairs; Chiwewe, Willard: Senior Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Zvinavashe, Vitalis: General (Chief of the Defence Staff); Chiwenga, Constantine: Lieutenant-General (Army); Shiri, Perence: Air Marshal (Air Force); Chihuri, Augustine: Commissioner (Police); Muzonzini, Elisha: Brigadier (Intelligence); Zimondi, Paradzai: Prisons chief; Sekeramayi, Sidney: Minister of Defence.
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From The Star (SA), 24 July
Constitution gets in way of Zim media trial
Harare - A Zimbabwean magistrate on Wednesday referred the trial of an editor and reporter to the country's Supreme Court, agreeing with defence lawyers that the case raised serious constitutional matters. "This is a constitutional issue of which I have no mandate to deal with, therefore the court finds it logical to refer it to a higher court," Magistrate Sandra Nhau said. Daily News reporter Lloyd Mudiwa and his editor Geoff Nyarota face charges of publishing a false story under Zimbabwe's harsh new media laws that critics say are aimed at muzzling opposition to President Robert Mugabe's government. The government says the laws aim to introduce "ethical behaviour". Defence lawyers argued on Monday that the trial should be heard in the Supreme Court as it dealt with constitutional issues such as freedom of expression and protection of the law. Last week, a magistrate acquitted Andrew Meldrum, a US citizen reporting on Zimbabwe for Britain's Guardian newspaper, of the same charges. The government issued a deportation order against Meldrum immediately after the judgment, but the country's High Court then suspended his expulsion.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 25 July
MDC chief charged with wife's murder
Harare - Surrounded by armed riot police, the official spokesman of Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change appeared in court yesterday in leg irons to face a charge of murdering his wife. Learnmore Jongwe, 28, told Harare magistrates' court that he stabbed his wife, Rutendo, 23, in a frenzy of jealousy after finding her having sex on a desk in a lawyer's office last week. Jongwe said the stabbing took place at their home in Harare later that day but he denied intending to kill his wife of 11 months. He went on the run for two days before giving himself up to police. According to well placed sources in the party, if Jongwe does not resign from the executive, his job as spokesman and his parliamentary seat, he will be told to leave. Scores of young supporters gathered at the court for a glimpse of their former hero. "We are so shocked," said a law student who did not want to be identified. "He was so brilliant and now he has brought shame to himself and this has damaged the party." Jongwe, from a rural peasant family, was a student activist at the University of Zimbabwe, where he took a law degree. He resigned his job with a legal firm to start working for the party shortly before parliamentary elections two years ago. Zimbabwe's official media have seized on the killing to claim repeatedly that it proves the opposition party is a violent organisation.
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From IRIN (UN), 24 July
Zambia-Zimbabwe: Contrasting impact of food crisis
Johannesburg - Zambia's current food security crisis, though serious, is localised and "ultimately more manageable" than neighbouring Zimbabwe, the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) said in a new report. "Zambia's food security problems this year are serious in the southern part of the country and are mostly the result of multiple years of drought, rather than policy and governance issues. Still, these issues are compounded by the already high poverty levels making it increasingly difficult for affected households to respond to the current food problems without external assistance," the report said. Zambia has a projected maize deficit of around 626,000 mt until April next year. According to the World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organisation figures, commercial imports are projected at 351,000 mt, with the remaining shortfall of 275,000 mt to be covered by the government and donor aid. Over 2.3 million people are in need of food aid.
The level of this year's food production was around 24 percent lower than last year's below-average production - and well below average production - primarily as a result of prolonged dry spells in some parts of the country. Heavy crop losses in the west, south, east and parts of central Zambia have left around 20 percent of the population in need of assistance, said the USAID-funded FEWS NET. "Food access is a potentially more serious problem than food availability. As in all countries bordering Zimbabwe, prices are abnormally high and successive poor harvests in parts of the country have reduced poor households' ability to purchase food," the report said. Food availability problems this year are serious, but well within the ability of the government and donors to manage. Zambia, has informal trade links with Mozambique and Tanzania, which should reduce the amount of maize that needs to be formally imported into the country, either by the government's Food Reserve Agency or commercial traders, FEWS NET noted. "One aspect to monitor is whether or not the government provides a clear signal to commercial traders about its import intentions and potential support for commercial imports (last year the government subsidised commercial imports). If this signal is made early and clear it would encourage the commercial sector to import. If not, then commercial traders could delay importing maize, resulting in a serious food shortfall as was the case in the middle of the 2001/02 marketing season," added the report.
Meanwhile, the situation in Zimbabwe, where six million are at risk - half of the population - is far worse. FEWS NET warned in a separate report that the crisis could degenerate into famine unless the government reversed its policies on farm acquisitions, lifted restrictions on the role of the private sector, and shelved a ban on importing genetically modified grain (mainly provided by the United States). "In Zimbabwe, the combination of poor policies and governance failure has set the stage for this year's drought to have a much larger effect than it normally would have. The continuing economic decline due to a combination of factors - including a coercive and ill-advised land distribution programme - has put a large portion of the population at risk of food shortages, and hence food access," the organisation said. It was difficult to see how conditions could improve over the coming year, FEWS NET predicted. "Unless numerous policy changes are made, it is unlikely that the next harvest will be any better than this year, even if normal rains return," the report forecasted. "Not only does the poor production constrain food access, but Zimbabwe's current financial and food crises are certain to deepen, and will further erode the purchasing power of households in both the rural and urban areas. Large numbers of unemployed commercial farm workers purchased most of their food in past years, but now have limited resources to do so. In addition, poorer segments of the communal small-holder population normally buy a significant portion o f their food, even in good years," the report added.
The decrease in productivity in rural areas and the increasing cost of living in urban areas (worsened by high rates of unemployment) are contributing to the rapidly declining purchasing power of households and mounting food access problems. "There are early indications that the emergency response will be complicated by several factors, including the large number of households, reduced stocks partially because of cereal shortages in the previous marketing year, Zimbabwe's refusal to accept genetically modified cereals, the politicisation of food aid and major distribution and logistical challenges. All of these issues could severely hamper the emergency response and increase the probability that the situation in Zimbabwe could deteriorate into a famine," FEWS NET said.
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From The Financial Gazette, 25 July
Chefs wipe out forex
Several Cabinet ministers and top officials of the ruling Zanu PF are being squeezed by sanctions slapped by the European Union (EU) and are scrambling for meagre foreign currency in Zimbabwe to pay fees for their children studying abroad, it was established yesterday. Banking and government sources confirmed that most Cabinet ministers and members of Zanu PF's supreme Politburo were jostling for the limited hard cash that is available, wiping it out from indigenous commercial banks most of the times. The leaders were raiding banks in which the government has a shareholding or where the individual politicians had a stake. "We have been assisting a lot of politicians with foreign currency for school fees for their children abroad, using the little foreign currency that we manage to lay our hands on," one senior banking source told the Financial Gazette. "A majority of them have been experiencing severe difficulties in fulfilling this obligation in time because of the current economic and political problems. In some instances, we have had to make exclusive arrangements for them to take the hard cash that comes through."
Children of most Cabinet ministers and Zanu PF officials study in the West, especially in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Canada - countries which have taken a tough line against Zimbabwean leaders over the country's bloated human rights record. Official sources say most Zanu PF politicians hit by the sanctions are making frantic efforts to transfer their children from overseas to complete their studies at colleges and universities in South Africa, where the leaders have transferred their foreign bank accounts. Others want to bring their children back home. The politicians have been sourcing scarce foreign currency at the official exchange rate from Zimbabwean banks, a privilege not enjoyed by members of the public.
"By a directive, we recently gave one senior Cabinet minister and Politburo member US$10 000 cash at the official exchange for school fees for his children who are in the US," one bank manager said. "We had to call up all our resources which we had at our various branches to ensure that the minister got the foreign currency," the manager said. "We handle many similar cases of this nature." The Financial Gazette cannot however disclose the names of the individual politicians involved because of the standard bank-client confidentiality. It is understood that most commercial banks, if and whenever they have the hard cash, usually trade it on the thriving parallel market rate. The sources said some Zanu PF leaders had resorted to employing touts to purchase foreign currency on the parallel market to augment their resources while others were using fronts to run foreign currency bureaux at major Zimbabwean tourist resorts. The government has itself been accused of mobilising hard cash from the parallel mark to finance its many official trips.
President Robert Mugabe, fresh from a four-day visit to Cuba, this week attacked the country's banks which he accused of fuelling the foreign currency crisis by allegedly engaging in illegal transactions. He ruled out a devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar, which Reserve Bank governor Leonard Tsumba, Finance Minister Simba Makoni and most economists agree is highly over-valued. The local dollar is pegged at $55 against one American dollar, although it trades at more than $600 on the parallel market. The dollar is also fixed against the currencies of Britain, South Africa and Botswana - among Zimbabwe's major trading partners. The EU this week slapped the entire Zanu PF Politburo, Cabinet ministers, deputy ministers and deputy Politburo members, Grace Mugabe and many other government functionaries with a travel ban and asset freeze, including their bank accounts. Alex Kremer, first secretary of the EU delegation in Harare, said yesterday the EU policy on ZANU PF politicians was not yet to target their spouses and children. The US, New Zealand, Switzerland and Canada have similar measures in place. Western diplomats said they could not rule out the possibility of sanctions being slapped on the leaders' spouses and children, as well as on foreign companies which are being used by Zanu PF to try to evade the overseas asset freeze.
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From News24 (SA), 25 July
Tsvangirai released
Harare - Zimbabwe police questioned opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Thursday over allegations that he tried to organise an unconstitutional overthrow of President Robert Mugabe's government, his lawyer said. Lawyer Innocent Chagonda said police allege Tsvangirai told a rally of his Movement for Democratic Change in May - in the local Shona language - that the opposition would plot against Mugabe. He said Tsvangirai had not been formally charged. "They are saying that in terms of section 5(2) of that Act (the Public Order and Security Act) he's guilty of organising or setting up a group so that the group in question would overthrow the government. Of course, my client denies ever having said that statement," Chagonda told journalists outside Harare Central police station. "As far as we are concerned, the charge is totally baseless and in my client's view it is actually an attempt to frustrate him politically. It's a clear case of political victimisation," Chagonda added. Tsvangirai, who was in the police station for more than an hour, declined to comment. Police were not immediately available for comment.
Formed in 1999, the MDC emerged as the strongest challenger to Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party when it won nearly half the contested seats in parliamentary elections held in June 2000. The opposition says it would have won had it not been for a violent campaign it blamed on ruling party supporters. Tsvangirai, who is legally challenging Mugabe's victory in a presidential poll in March, also faces charges of plotting to kill the president. Mugabe has denied allegations by the opposition and many Western countries that he fraudulently won in March. The opposition accuses Mugabe of mismanaging the country since assuming power at independence from Britain in 1980, leading to a political and economic crisis currently showing itself in acute food shortages. The government blames the food shortages solely on a drought, which slashed output of the staple maize grain from small-scale farmers who produce about 70% of the crop. Critics, however, point also to Mugabe's controversial drive to seize white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to landless blacks and his sanctioning of white farm invasions since February 2000 by militants loyal to the government. Mugabe blames Zimbabwe's crisis on sabotage by local and international opponents whom he says want to oust him in retaliation for his land redistribution programme.
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From BBC News, 25 July
Geldof warns of devastating famine
The famine that is threatening to devastate southern Africa has frightening similarities to the one in Ethiopia and the Sudan that prompted the LiveAid concert, Bob Geldof has said. The former frontman of the Boomtown Rats told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that domestic politics had much to do with the plight of people in southern Africa but that developed countries still had to rally round to try to help when a crisis occurred. He was particularly critical of Zimbabwe's leader Robert Mugabe whom Mr Geldof described as a "murderous thug". But he insisted that ultimately the problems faced in southern Africa were supranational and should be sorted out with the help of the West. "It's not an insurmountable problem in the scale of things and given that 17 years have passed since LiveAid... one would have thought that people would've understood that it's a supranational problem. One country cannot deal with it." He said that the problem of famine would not cost very much to solve and that although he said people got "bored stupid" with seeing images of starving people he saw no other alternative. Asked about particular problems in Zimbabwe Mr Geldof said: "Mugabe is a murderous thug but we can't predict that this man is going to go completely mad and devastate his own homeland and cling to power at any cost albeit that it may cost the lives of millions of his countrymen. We can't predict these emergencies - by definition they are emergencies."
From ZWNEWS: More thoughts (from Mr Morgan Handidi?) published in the state-owned Bulawayo Chronicle...
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Comment from The Chronicle, 24 July
EU a group of rabble-rousers
The European Union appears to have run out of things to do. It has become a grouping of rabble-rousers out to frustrate innovative developing nations at every turn. Each time its members hold their usual talk shops at some glamorous venue, the major pre-occupation is discussing Zimbabwe’s land reforms, president Mugabe and the ruling party, Zanu PF. Like kids at a nursery school, delegates to the union’s summit spend their time toying around with lists of names of Zimbabwean luminaries submitted by local sellouts for the so-called smart sanctions. These sanctions have really proved to be "smart" because they have not worked, much to the chagrin of officials in the British-sponsored Movement for Democratic Change. Instead of the union strategising on what to do to counteract the US steel tariffs imposed in March by President George W Bush, it is busy compiling a list of who is who in Zimbabwe. This is what idle minds do; they are indeed the devil’s workshop. According to reports the EU foreign ministers on Monday added 52 more names of Zimbabweans on its sanctions list. The affected individuals include the First Lady, Cde Grace Mugabe, cabinet ministers who had not been included in the list, Zanu PF politburo secretaries, their deputies and deputy ministers.
What is however puzzling is the EU’s obsession with Harare. We demand that the EU declares its interests in Zimbabwe for all to hear. It cannot fool us into believing that its manoeuvres are motivated by a desire to see the country prosper. We know very well that the union, comprising former colonial powers, is bitter that the Government of Zimbabwe is taking land from white farmers and returning it to its rightful owners, the black majority. As we have said in the past, Zimbabwe is not a punchbag of the EU’ s smart sanctions. And the country, as the President said yesterday, will not betray its people by "taking refuge in acquiescence" in the face of bullying by Western countries as some states are doing.We are capable of retaliating, and when we do, we know the Tony Blairs of this world will be hurt most. To those local sellouts that are submitting the names of their brothers to foreigners; they should stop it forthwith. The people of Zimbabwe will not continue tolerating their double standards.
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From SABC News, 25 July
Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi get food aid
The European Union (EU) said it had handed Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi emergency food supplies worth 88,5 million euros to stem severe starvation in the three southern African countries. It said the assistance comprised 215 000 tonnes of emergency food supplies to the three countries - most affected of several countries in the region facing biting food shortages. "The European Commission has provided 88,5 million euros in food aid to help address the immediate needs resulting from the current food crisis affecting most countries in southern Africa," the EU's Zambia office said in a statement. Political instability and three years of drought in the region, combined with localised flooding, has led to massive food shortages in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho and Angola. Aids has also devastated communities in the region, in many cases effectively removing a generation of men and women who could otherwise be working in the fields.
The EU said it expected its emergency food aid to southern Africa to top 300 000 tonnes this year alone. The EU would also assist countries facing hunger to develop food security measures focusing on rehabilitation of agriculture. It would speak to governments on tackling the causes of food insecurity, the statement said. Zimbabwe, which was a net producer of food in the early 1990s, is the worst affected country in the region, with just over six million people classed as "at risk", followed by 3,2 million in Malawi, and 2,4 million in Zambia. The United Nations warned earlier this month that food shortages could be worse in 2002/2003 than that caused by the 1991/92 El Nino weather effect, because economic liberalisation in countries such as Malawi have eroded social support networks.
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From Business Day (SA), 26 July
Harare comes under fire for food policies
USAid says decisions turning shortage into famine
A senior US official has lashed out at Zimbabwe's policies, saying "every single decision that the Zimbabwe government has made in the last six months" was turning a food shortage into a famine. Speaking to journalists in Africa through a video link from Washington yesterday, Andrew Natsios, the head of the US Agency for International Development (USAid), urged Harare to reverse polices creating "one disaster after another", and allow the commercial farmers to "at least" plant crops later this year. He said there was clear evidence that the ruling Zanu PF party was denying its opponents food aid in Matabeleland. Natsios said controls on food prices gave no incentive for private traders to import food, which contributed to worsening shortages in Lesotho, Malawi and Zimbabwe. These remarks follow a statement earlier this week by European Union (EU) foreign ministers, which criticised policies of southern African governments towards Zimbabwe. Now that most countries in the region could not feed themselves, there was a strong likelihood of mounting diplomatic pressure by donors on governments in the region to drop their "quiet diplomacy" toward Harare.
Natsios said that had the white commercial farm sector been operating normally in Zimbabwe there would have been no food shortage in the country, despite the drought. As this sector relied largely on irrigation for crop production, it could have substantially reduced the food shortage throughout the region, he said. However, even though Harare was accused of using food as a political weapon, this assistance would not be cut. Natsios vowed that his country would continue to provide food to the needy despite sharp differences with Harare and other governments. So far the US had donated more than 75% of the $128m that the United Nations World Food Programme had raised for its southern African crisis response. It was trying urgently to raise a further $380m to avert famine next year, but there were competing demands on donors for aid to Afghanistan and North Korea. The shutting down of the commercial farms, the refusal to devalue the currency and the decision to impose price controls were "making the small food shortage into a famine", he said. In response to a concern about the use of genetically modified organisms in maize being sent to the region, Natsios said the US government would not donate food that its citizens would not eat themselves. He said it would be impossible to separate material as the two were mixed together.
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From The Spectator (UK), 26 July
Evil under the sun
It’s nearly too late to save Zimbabwe, says Michael Ancram. The world must intervene to stop Mugabe
Blantyre, Malawi - It is not often that you see a human face devoid of hope. Last Wednesday morning in a dusty wood outside Harare in Zimbabwe I looked into many such faces. These were the forgotten victims of Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe, just a few of the 85,000 ‘displaced’ black workers thrown violently off their farms. Their few possessions have been taken from them, and most will never find work again. Among them are frail and elderly men and women, retired after a lifetime’s work, and children whose worlds have been turned upside-down, hanging around in the sun with no prospect of an education. I saw about 100 such people. A 45-year-old foreman had been forced to leave behind the beef herd he had worked with for 15 years. He was a skilled stockman of the sort highly valued in any agricultural economy. He is unlikely ever to tend cattle again. A 54-year-old farmhand, whose father and grandfather had worked on the farm before him, had lost the only home and working environment he had ever known - and Zimbabwe had lost another skilled hand. An 80-year-old wizened and lame retired worker, expecting to live out his declining years in relative tranquillity, was stumbling around the tents and the open fires, lost. A mother pointed to her ten-year-old child and said, "No school now. No more school ever."
From what I heard she is probably right. The numbers are rocketing. If the land grabs continue and the 2,900 white farmers are required to leave their farms on 9 August, the number of ‘displaced’ black farm workers could rise to 300,000. Robert Mugabe couldn’t care less. His government sneeringly describes the victims as Malawian or Mozambican, ignoring the reality that they have been in Zimbabwe for generations. My colleague Richard Spring, MP, and I arrived at an almost empty Harare airport at about 9 a.m. Because the Zimbabwean authorities did not know we were there, we were able to see troubling sights. A whistle-stop tour of the farmlands north-west of Harare showed us that hectare after hectare of highly productive farmland is lying unprepared, unplanted and vandalised. The sheer evil of this deliberate waste, at a time when six million Zimbabweans are malnourished and the threat of famine is just around the corner, was made starker by the evident success of the few farms still in production.
We returned to Harare to meet politicians from the opposition MDC party, including the leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. The meeting was held on neutral ground to avoid inviting undue attention. Tsvangirai is a big man in every sense. He has a large physique, a big presence and a broad smile. In conversation he was frank and to the point. There was a sense of leadership in the room, and his very able colleagues were evidently proud of him. In fact, all these politicians are remarkable. Their refusal to be cowed by constant threats and harassment, their determination to fight the corruption which is the Mugabe regime, their faith that in the end the democratic system and the rule of law will come good, deserve the fullest admiration. Amid the gloom of despair they remain a guiding light.
So do the representatives of Civil Society whom we met next. These are the uncoverers and publishers of the disgraceful human-rights abuses, of political ‘cleansing’, of the rule of law ignored. We met them behind barred and barbed protection. They, too, are brave - many of them are young black Zimbabweans, desperate about their country, prepared to speak out. They believe that Mugabe’s government is without legitimacy and they are setting out to prove it. We were given chapter and verse on the violations, the violence, the contempt for the law and the abuse of authority, including the chilling fact that many of the political assaults are carried out by the police on people in their custody. We visited the British High Commissioner, both to report and to be briefed, and then returned to Harare airport and left. While the day had passed without any specific cause for alarm, I have to admit that as the plane took off the relief was palpable. It was, however, mixed with a great sadness at what I had seen and heard, and a renewed determination to help.
A crisis is already engulfing Zimbabwe. I believe that it is about to implode into full-blown disaster. In a world where there are too many natural disasters it is almost a blasphemy to witness one that is deliberately politically engineered. Each of the elements - the displaced, the crop failures, the impending famine, the undermining of democracy and the rule of law - is the direct product of Mugabe’s despotism. While I welcome the fact that, late in the day, the British government and European colleagues have extended the travel ban on the Mugabe regime, which I have long called for, the ban does not include business associates and all spouses and families of those on the expanded list. The targeted sanctions still do not go far enough if they are to be genuinely effective. The lesson of the last six months is that it is not just the announcement that matters but a rigorous implementation of the ban, with loopholes closed, in order to show that Europe matches words with actions. This is because we have now seen the official press release, which upon closer scrutiny is quite weak. Only Grace Mugabe is included as the single spouse on the list.
The tragedy of Zimbabwe is that disaster has been coming a long time, yet so little has been done internationally to avert it at an early stage when pressure could have had a much greater effect. Foot-dragging and ‘mental imperialism’ prevented it. They must not be allowed to prevent it any more. The international community must come together in an effective coalition and ensure that whatever it takes to secure fresh elections in Zimbabwe is brought to bear now. Soon it will be too late. Speeches about healing the scars of Africa are not only worthless if they are not accompanied by action, but are also positively damaging because they raise expectations only cruelly to dash them. If Tony Blair meant it when he talked about a moral duty to act, he must show that he meant it.
(Michael Ancram is the UK Conservative Party’s shadow foreign secretary)
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From The Scotsman (UK), 27 July
Mugabe colleague is seized at airport
A member of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s regime faced deportation after being seized as he tried to board a flight for New York at Gatwick Airport last night. Joshua Malinga, the ruling Zanu PF Party’s deputy secretary for disability, is one of 52 people subject to a European Union travel ban which was only passed on Tuesday. Wheelchair-bound Mr Malinga and his disabled wife were taken to a hotel for the night to await deportation after being stopped as they tried to board the flight to New York where they were due to attend a disability conference. He insisted he believed the EU travel ban, imposed in protest at Mugabe’s policies which are driving a once-prosperous country towards famine, applied only to senior party members - a claim dismissed by a Foreign Office minister. "I did not think that would include me," he told BBC Radio 4 from his hotel room. "I am travelling to New York because I am a leader of Disabled People’s International. That is a worldwide movement of disabled people. I don’t know what that has to do with the Zimbabwean government." There has been mounting world concern at the suppression of Mugabe’s opponents but Mr Malinga denied this. "I don’t know that the party I belong to has that monopoly of violence. I don’t think so," he said.
The EU imposed "targeted sanctions" against Zimbabwe after Mugabe refused to let European observers monitor the presidential elections in February. Initially 20 people were subject to a range of measures, including the travel ban. However, 52 new names, including first lady Grace Mugabe, were added at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. Foreign Office Minister Baroness Amos was scathing about Zanu PF’s record and Mr Malinga’s claims not to be a leading member of the party. "Mr Malinga is a member of the Zanu PF Politburo. They are the party which claim to be in government and it is their policies which are ruining the country," she said. "As a member of the Politburo he has been appointed personally by Robert Mugabe. We are talking about collective responsibility. The travel ban was expanded on Monday to include 72 people. These were the people who have to take responsibility for the fact that they are ruining a country, a country which a few years ago was the bread basket for southern Africa and now can’t feed its own people."
The Foreign Office said: "The UK and our partners in Europe have introduced a travel ban on the ruling elite in Zimbabwe because they have imposed on the people of Zimbabwe a manmade disaster. We have no intention of making an exception in this case. The way to end the travel ban is to end the policies that prompted it." Baroness Amos also rejected Mugabe’s claims that concern about his regime was a British preoccupation. "You have the European Union, you have the United States, you have partner countries in Africa, we have others who are outside the European Union, who are saying exactly the same thing," she said. "Robert Mugabe, at the opening of parliament this week in Zimbabwe, talked about the action of donors in giving money to help the humanitarian situation as being sinister. What we are trying to do is to deal with a situation that that regime itself is not dealing with. Yes they will try to make this into a problem between Britain and Zimbabwe. It absolutely is not."
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 27 July
Mugabe henchman held over sanctions breach
A member of Zimbabwe's ruling party was detained at Gatwick airport last night after he tried to breach European Union sanctions by crossing London to catch a flight to New York. Joshua Malinga, one of President Robert Mugabe's "politburo" arrived at Gatwick on a flight from Zimbabwe and was trying to leave the airport to travel to Heathrow. Under the terms of the sanctions members of Mr Mugabe's ruling elite are not allowed to enter EU territory. Mr Malinga was expected to be put on the first available flight back to Zimbabwe. Last night, Mr Malinga told Radio 4's The World Tonight that he had been on his way to a disability conference in New York and had not expected to be detained. "I did not know this would happen but I read that some senior party officials would be affected," he said. "I was travelling to New York because I'm a leader of Disabled People International. That is a worldwide movement for disabled people and I don't see what that has to do with the Zimbabwe government." Earlier this week, the EU imposed a travel ban on Mr Mugabe's wife and extended "smart sanctions" to all key figures in Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu PF elite. A Foreign Office spokesman said Mr Malinga was quite clearly in breach of sanctions".
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From The Guardian (UK), 27 July
Tsvangirai faces new Mugabe charge
Johannesburg - The Zimbabwean police say they plan to charge Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader widely believed to have been robbed of victory in April's rigged presidential election, with threatening President Robert Mugabe. They contend that Mr Tsvangirai committed an offence under the new security laws when he told a rally of his Movement for Democratic Change in May that Mr Mugabe would have to leave office. He can be jailed for up to 20 years if he is convicted of "undermining the office of the president". Mr Tsvangirai is already facing treason charges for calling for the violent overthrow of Mr Mugabe before the election and, separately, for allegedly plotting to assassinate the president. The primary evidenced for the second charge is a highly suspect video that emerged just before the presidential ballot. The police questioned him for several hours on Thursday but his lawyer, Innocent Chagonda, said the MDC leader refused to concede that he had said anything that could be construed as criminal. His client had not been formally notified of charges. An MDC MP is also under arrest for allegedly threatening government supporters during campaigning for municipal elections in Kadoma, about 75 miles west of Harare. The political crisis has further deepened Zimbabwe's economic woes. The government has announced a 500% increase on import duty on "luxury goods" after admitting that the economy is expected to shrink by about 11% this year.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 26 July
MDC plans another bid for voters roll
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) will make another court bid to get a copy of the national voters roll used in the March 9/11 presidential election in compact disc format. MDC secretary-general Welsh-man Ncube yesterday said his party is battling to overcome hurdles in its court challenge against President Robert Mugabe's disputed re-election. "Our lawyers are still finalising papers on how we can make another attempt to get the electronic version of the voters roll," Ncube said. "We have two options, either to make another application to the High Court under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act or appeal to the Supreme Court." High Court judge Anne-Marie Gowora, in a judgement delivered by Justice Susan Mavangira on her behalf on July 10, ruled the MDC was not entitled to the voters roll in electronic form.
Ncube said the MDC - whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai rejected Mugabe's victory as "daylight robbery" - would make another effort to get the compact disc version because the print form was cumbersome and difficult to audit. "The High Court said we are entitled to the voters roll but not in an electronic version," he said. "It said we are entitled to a print version upon payment of a prescribed fee, which is about $1,2 million. We can only get a printed version which is useless because it could take us 10 years to go through and audit it." Ncube said if not removed, the voters roll obstacle would undermine Tsvangirai's challenge against Mugabe. "It is part of our case that Mugabe created fictitious voters numbering up to about half a million and, for us to prove this, we need a copy of the voters roll in electronic version to analyse and show the irregularities," he said. The MDC has said Zanu PF used a supplementary voters roll which contained about 400 000 illegally registered voters to rig the poll. Mugabe beat Tsvangirai by the same margin.
Observers said the failure of the registrar-general's office to release the discs amounted to a calculated bureaucratic impediment to the opposition's democratic rights. The MDC said there were systematic hindrances in its way. On March 8 - a day before the poll - Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku reserved judgement on Tsvangirai's application on a range of electoral issues which could have changed the outcome if a ruling had been made on the key matters before the court. Chidyausiku ruled after the poll that Tsvangirai had no locus standi but experienced judge of appeal Wilson Sandura, in a dissenting judgement, said the opposition leader actually had a court standing. The MDC has since the June 2000 parliamentary poll instigated nine court challenges relating to the voters roll.
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From The Daily News, 26 July
200 farm workers stranded as Mugabe’s brother-in-law allegedly torches their homes
Nearly 200 workers at Leopardvlei Farm near Glendale were left stranded yesterday after Reward Simbarashe Marufu, President Mugabe’s brother-in-law, allegedly burnt down over 80 of their huts and belongings before evicting them. Marufu, a former Zimbabwean envoy to Canada, grabbed the farm, including the farm equipment worth over $200 million before the March presidential election, from Bob Duncan who has left the farm. Yesterday, the displaced farm workers stood by the roadside near the farm, with their meagre belongings around them, contemplating their future. Some of the huts were still smouldering. Marufu was seen turning into a field on the farm, driving from Bindura in a white Mazda B1600. Ruka Salimu, 65, one of the evicted farm workers, said Marufu should have allowed them to remain on the farm even if he declined their services because he was a leader who should be sympathetic to destitute people. "It has been hell since Marufu came," Salimu said. "We have lived under constant harassment, abuse and threats."
Caleb Chikwamba, 36, who has worked on the farm for six years, said around 4pm on Tuesday, Marufu came to their compound and ordered them out immediately because he had no work for them. "Marufu first told us that everyone was fired," Chikwamba said. "We thought it was a joke. He came back later with several of his guards and known Zanu PF youths and set ablaze our huts." Chikwamba said Marufu made it clear he was the new farm owner and no longer needed their services. He said property worth thousands of dollars was destroyed during the inferno that engulfed the compound, razing most of the huts to the ground. Chikwamba said elderly women and children were indiscriminately assaulted and tortured. He said after their huts were burnt down, the youths and guards ordered everyone on the farm to immediately seek alternative accommodation or risk intensive beatings and torture. "Most of us, including our wives and children, slept in the bushes nearby for two days, afraid we would be attacked as threatened," Chikwamba said. The workers alleged that Marufu was armed and had on several occasions threatened them with his gun if they remained on his farm. In 1998, Marufu was hauled before the Godfrey Chidyausiku Commission to answer charges he had defrauded the War Victims’ Compensation Fund of over $800 000, the largest individual claim. A police inspector, who identified himself only as Sande, confirmed the incident but would not comment, citing orders.
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From The Independent (UK), 27 July
Jailed tycoon faces seizure of farms in Zimbabwe
The government in Zimbabwe is thought to be ready to seize farms and 28,000 cattle owned by Nicholas van Hoogstraten, the jailed British property tycoon. Van Hoogstraten, who was found guilty at the Old Bailey this week of hiring two men to kill a business rival, has been a close friend of President Robert Mugabe and has financed his governing Zanu PF party. Among his extensive property interests in Britain and abroad, van Hoogstraten has boasted of having investments in Zimbabwe totalling £30m. He owned nine farms in the former British colony, totalling more than 400,000 acres, and also enjoyed a lucrative contract from the government to supply beef from his cattle ranches to the 10,000 Zimbabwean troops fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Two years ago, two of Van Hoogstraten's farms - Eastdale Estate in Masvingo Province and Essexvale Ranch in Matabeleland North Province - were designated for compulsory acquisition under the government's policy of confiscating white farms for redistribution to blacks.
However, van Hoogstraten negotiated a deal in which he surrendered 4,800 acres of land at his Hayhill Farm in Matabeleland in exchange for keeping the rest of his land. The deal angered many junior government officials, who felt that van Hoogstraten's donation was too small in comparison to his holdings. Other white property owners, such as Anglo-American's Nicky Oppenheimer, were offering to give up much more - 60,000 acres. Van Hoogstraten was the only white farmer to reverse the squatting of his land with the support of the government. Before the court case, Van Hoogstraten was able to rely on his high political connections to retain much of his holdings and his lucrative beef contracts, which included a deal with the government-owned Cold Storage Commission. However, following the conviction on Monday, farming industry sources said van Hoogstraten faced the prospect of losing all his land holdings in Zimbabwe. "He travelled here often to keep the politicians on his side ... but some chiefs are already making inquiries about his properties because they have heard he will spend a long period in jail," said an official in the ministry responsible for Mr Mugabe's resettlement policies.
The Independent was given the names of senior ruling party officials seeking Van Hoogstraten's properties. "He had certainly managed to make deals with politicians, but you can never make permanent deals with Mugabe," said a farmer close to van Hoogstraten's dealings. The farmer said one official had toured a van Hoogstraten farm at the weekend. Reports say Mr Mugabe's relatives, senior officials and cronies have taken large prime farms seized from whites, ostensibly for black resettlement. Van Hoogstraten outraged many by strongly supporting Mr Mugabe and repeatedly branding his fellow white farmers "white trash". He has said he considers Mr Mugabe to be an "honourable leader" and that he supports him "100 per cent".
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From The Cape Argus, 26 July
Mbeki 'doesn't know' why region is starving
President Thabo Mbeki has again avoided criticising the policies of President Robert Mugabe's government over the growing food crisis in Zimbabwe. Speaking at a media briefing in Pretoria on Thursday, Mbeki said South Africa was considering increasing its donations of food to the United Nations World Food Programme to relieve the regional drought. The drought is threatening up to 13 million people in southern Africa - five million of them in Zimbabwe where the government's land seizure policies have been blamed for exacerbating shortages. Asked about the cause of food shortages in the region, Mbeki said: "I don't know. I haven't looked at them specifically from country to country. But certainly, to the extent that there would have been disruptions in production in any country - in Zimbabwe any disruption in production would effect production. But the extent of that I don't know." In a wide-ranging briefing, Mbeki also announced that new measures were needed to further expand the president's office, brushed aside the controversy surrounding his non-appearance at the congress of the SA Communist Party in Rustenburg and said he disapproved of the decision by Cosatu to hold a protest strike against privatisation on October 1 and 2.
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From The Economist Intelligence Unit, 24 July
Voodoo economics
Robert Mugabe used his July 23rd speech at the opening of parliament to reject donor demands for economic and human-rights reforms, commenting that IMF-style policies had merely exacerbated the country's "vulnerability". Unfortunately, Harare's alternative appears to consist largely of voodoo economics. In the latest instance of this, the government is considering measures to restrict the parallel market for foreign exchange while loosening monetary policy. Two policy papers prepared by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) suggest cutting bank lending rates to exporters and the "productive sector" while extending price controls and clamping down on the foreign exchange market. The RBZ wants to cut lending rates for its Z$15bn (US$270m) concessional revolving fund from 15% to 5% for exporters, and from 30% to 15% for the productive sector. There are also plans to cut the Bank Rate from 57% to 27%, despite inflation averaging 116% in the first half of the year, and hold Treasury-bill rates at around 26%. One of the policy papers calls for the re-imposition of "full exchange controls", including the indefinite suspension of foreign exchange bureaux and the centralisation of all foreign-currency transactions in the central bank. This would mean that all exporters would have to sell their foreign-currency earnings to the RBZ at the official rate of Z$55:US$1 rather than exploiting the parallel market, where the rate was running at Z$680:US$1 in mid-July. Indeed, some in government want to extend price controls to "all sectors of the economy" and to impose more stringent controls over wage and salary increases, which are currently running close to 100%. In July, the country's bank workers agreed to an immediate 70% pay increase with a further 20% in January, giving an annualised increase of 104%.
There is strong opposition to most of the measures, but if they are implemented inflation is likely to accelerate still further. Indeed, government officials privately predict that consumer price inflation will reach 200% by the end of the year. This will be accompanied by increased shortages and a growing black market. Should the parallel market be closed down altogether, many perhaps most - exporters would quickly go out of business. For these reasons, many in the banking sector doubt whether the measures will be adopted in their present form, but the markets are expecting some government action to curb the run-away depreciation of the Zimbabwe dollar. The extreme nature of some of the proposed solutions reflects growing desperation within the government's ranks over the worsening economic crisis as well as fierce arguments within the administration over the direction of economic policy. In his speech Mr Mugabe described advocates of devaluation - proponents of which have included the finance minister and RBZ governor - as "saboteurs and enemies." In such a febrile political atmosphere donor demands, including the raising of interest rates and lifting of price controls, are highly unlikely to be implemented, suggesting that the country's economic crisis will continue for some time yet.
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 28 July
Violence mars Kadoma poll
Violence characterised the first day of polling in the Kadoma mayoral election as suspected members of the Zanu PF militia went around the small town beating up supporters of the opposition MDC, The Standard has learnt. Early yesterday morning, the MDC command centre in Eastville came under heavy attack from marauding Zanu PF youths who beat up personnel in charge of the party's affairs in the two-day poll. Gunshots were heard as the Zanu PF youths fought running battles with supporters of the opposition party. A number of MDC district officials were picked up by the police for reasons that remained unclear at the time of going to press. Callisto Tsvangirai, the youth provincial chairman for the Midlands North province said the police had arrested them after some stones had been located near the command centre. "They (police) told us that the stones had been used in attacks on Zanu PF supporters. Surprisingly, the police failed to arrest the green bombers who came here to beat us up," said Tsvangirai.
Nelson Chamisa, the MDC national youth chairman, told The Standard that he sensed a well-orchestrated campaign by the ruling party to stop MDC supporters from taking part in the election. "The truth is that Zanu PF now believe that the only way to win an election is to beat people up so that they cannot exercise their democratic rights," said Chamisa. Kadoma acting mayor Phanuel Phiri is representing the ruling Zanu PF party while former school headmistress Edita Matamisa is the candidate for the MDC. The post fell vacant in February this year, following the death of Ernest Shamuyarira of Zanu PF. Meanwhile, thousands of people have so far turned up for the election which residents say will see yet another crushing defeat for Zanu PF in an urban election. A total of 38 000 people are registered as voters. The MDC have won all the recent mayoral elections held in the country.
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Comment from ZWNEWS, 28 July
Nice guy. Shame on his party.
Joshua Malinga is, by all accounts, a nice guy. The Zanu PF politburo member and party deputy-secretary for the disabled and disadvantaged himself disabled is certainly no thug, unlike so many others in the party of which he is a middle-ranking official. He and his wife also disabled - were stopped at London’s Gatwick airport as they tried to travel across the city to make a connecting flight at Heathrow, and were returned to Zimbabwe on the first available flight. Mr Malinga thus gained the dubious honour of becoming the first Zimbabwean official on the expanded EU list of sanctioned persons to be caught since the new, longer list was issued this week. The list covers a wide range of individuals, from the criminal to the merely incompetent, from the bad guys to the nice guys. Even president Mugabe has said so - indirectly. Mugabe would certainly not include himself in the same category as his finance minister, Simba Makoni, who he regards as little short of treasonous. Both Mugabe and Makoni are on the list. And there are many, such as provincial governor Peter Chanetsa incomparable with Joshua Malinga - who are not covered by the EU measures. Unfortunately, it seems that in this case, nice guys come first.
Jonathan Moyo was his predictable sanctimonious (and inaccurate) self yesterday morning: "This is the clearest example that the Brits have gone bananas and are harassing disabled people who should be assisted. To detain someone you don’t want in your country, especially who is on a wheelchair, when all you can do is deny them entry or facilitate their exit is the height of madness." (Malinga and his wife were not detained, unless being booked into an airport hotel pending their return flight qualifies as detention.) As usual, Moyo’s outrage is a sham. Zanu PF is not noted for its assistance of the disabled if they happen not to be truly loyal to the party. As a matter of unarguable fact, Zanu PF has swelled the ranks of the disabled and disadvantaged over the last two-and-a-half years, as party thugs have run amok across the country, beating and permanently maiming with impunity. It is a little perplexing for Mr Malinga to say that he did not know he was on the EU’s expanded list. The list has been widely publicised in Zimbabwe, and it is beyond doubt that Zanu PF itself knew precisely who is and who is not on the list. It is also a little puzzling for Mr Malinga to express surprise at the accusations of violence levelled against his party.
But be that all as it may, there is another issue more important than Mr Malinga’s interrupted travel plans. Mr Malinga like all other Zimbabweans, able or disabled, advantaged or disadvantaged - can choose. He can choose whether to support Zanu PF or not, choose to lend credibility to the current Zimbabwe regime through his patent personal decency - or not. Coming from Matabeleland, and as a former mayor of Bulawayo, Mr Malinga is well aware of what happened in the mid-1980s, and since February 2000, in his home provinces at the hands of Zanu PF. Joshua Malinga should know better. Many of his compatriots, in more disadvantaged circumstances than he, have made the choice. Take Mr Anderson Mupinda of Binga. 79 years old and blind, he has been denied food aid by Joshua Malinga's party because the Binga district voted overwhelmingly for the opposition in the presidential election. Mr Mapinda's views on the government and the president have not changed, despite his having to survive on leaves.
Nice guy, Joshua Malinga. Shame on his party.
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 28 July
Grace Mugabe joins Osama bin Laden on sanctions list
The Bank of England has warned all British banking institutions to freeze the assets of more senior Zanu PF leaders, including President Robert Mugabe's wife, Grace. The new list warns banking institutions in Britain to freeze all assets immediately and warns banks that "No funds, other financial assets and economic resources are to be made available directly or indirectly to or for the benefit of them. Financial institutions must check whether they maintain any account for the individuals named below and, if so, they should freeze the accounts and report the accounts and amounts frozen to the Bank of England." The move follows increased demands for the isolation of Zimbabwe's repressive regime by the European Union. The Bank of England said last week that the list now includes all ministers, deputy ministers, politburo secretaries, politburo assistant secretaries and Grace Mugabe, the 37-year-old wife spouse of Zimbabwe's 78-year-old president. Also on the bank's smart sanctions list are known terrorists from Osama bin Laden's Al Qa'ida and Taliban organisations, officials of the brutal regime ruling Myamyar and people wanted for crimes against humanity in Yugoslavia and Serbia, as well as drug barons and terrorists from elsewhere. Meanwhile, British authorities on Friday detained Zanu PF deputy secretary for the disabled and disadvantaged, Joshua Malinga, at Gatwick Airport as sanctions against Zanu PF chefs begin to bite. Malinga, who was bound for New York, was detained and sent back home as he appears on the list of 52 Zimbabweans targeted for travel restrictions by the European Union.
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From The Sunday Telegraph (UK), 28 July
Stricken by hunger among the lush fields
Shorter than the dead wheat all around her, 18-month-old Alice sits in a field toying with the corpse of a tiny mouse. Tears spill silently from her large eyes. For this is not a game. Alice is hungry and her mother Brenda and aunt Winnie, who has an even younger baby strapped on her back, are hunting field mice. Scrabbling in the red earth, they pull out the tiny creatures which they will roast on a fire with salt, their only meal of the day. There are similar scenes all over southern Africa, where the worst drought for a decade has left millions facing starvation and prompted Britain's leading aid agencies to launch an emergency appeal last week. Yet there is something not quite right about this picture. For the field in Zimbabwe's Mazowe valley in which the starving women and their babies are mouse-hunting overlooks Mwenje dam, which is overflowing with water. There are two more small dams on the farm itself. On the properties all around, extensive sprinkler systems are watering lush green fields full of mangetout that will end up on the shelves of Sainsbury's. There are plantations of roses, too, and acres of ripening wheat.
Of the 14 million people on the brink of starvation in southern Africa, more than six million are in Zimbabwe, half the country's population. Yet travelling thousands of miles across the country from Matabeleland in the north and west to Mutare in the east, posing as tourists - the regime refuses to allow in British journalists - The Telegraph found the vegetation green, dams full and rivers flowing. There is no doubt, however, about the lack of food. Villager after villager took me into huts in which there was absolutely nothing left to eat and showed empty granaries. Four weeks without rain at the critical germination phase has led to the failure of their small crops. There will be no harvest again until next June. The inescapable truth of the famine in Zimbabwe is that it is man-made: and the man who is making it is President Robert Mugabe. The lush fields belong to those white farmers who are now cultivating their crops illegally, and the stricken farms are those that have been handed over to so-called war veterans or officials of the ruling Zanu PF party.
Already, the country has run out of maize, the staple food for most of the population. According to a director of Lobels, the country's biggest bakery, soon there will be no wheat left to produce the bread which people are buying instead. Cooking oil is in such short supply that it now sells at Z$900 (£10) a litre, a quarter of the average monthly wage. In Bulawayo, I saw queues for sugar, in which women with babies had waited from 4am until mid-afternoon in the baking sun - only for a government official to come and take away the lot. "Average rainfall for the last farming year was only down from 24in to 22in and we only had four weeks without rain," said David Coltart, the legal affairs spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.For Zimbabwe's commercial farmers, who grow 90 per cent of the country's food, those four weeks made no difference as there was plenty of earlier rainwater available for irrigation.
Unfortunately for most of the farmers, Mr Mugabe has used his mobs and laws to make it either impossible or illegal for them to work their land. As a result the amount of staple maize under cultivation has been slashed. This year's cereal harvest is estimated by the United Nations at 687,000 tonnes, less than a third of the annual needs of 2.3-2.5 million tonnes. Two years ago, output was 2.48 million tonnes - enough to feed the whole country and still have enough left over to export to its neighbours. "This is Mugabe's famine," said Marcus Hale, whose family farm used to produce more than one per cent of the country's wheat needs, but who was forced to leave last month after two years of violence, which culminated in the "war vets" digging a grave for him outside his front door. "This year we would have produced 3,000 tonnes of wheat, but we produced nothing because we weren't allowed to," he said. "It's total insanity that one would close down the very producers of food at the same time as begging for food aid," said Jenni Williams, from Justice for Agriculture, a breakaway group of farmers who intend to contest the seizures of their farms in court.
Yet in his opening-of-parliament address last week, Mr Mugabe said: "No one can fairly blame us for the situation of want, naturally caused." He accused Britain of "using the drought to try to undermine the country's sovereignty" and proclaimed the land-reform programme "an unparalleled success story". With 90 per cent of arable land in the hands of 4,500 white farmers, almost all agreed that land reform was necessary. But as the August 9 deadline for farmers to abandon their land draws near, many of the war veterans who occupied the farms are also being thrown off to make away for Mugabe supporters and cronies. More than 110 government ministers, senior military officers and their wives, mayors and police chiefs have now taken over farms. "This is not land reform - it's theft," said Liz Coulson, whose tomato farm in Matabeleland has been taken over by a police superintendent.
Among the many new farm owners around Harare is Mr Mugabe's brother-in-law, Reward Marufu, who took over Leopardville Farm, and Jocelyn Chiwenga, wife of the army chief, who seized Shepherd Hall Farm. When Hortico, the local wholesale company, refused to export her roses, she seized that too, although this has subsequently been returned. On most of the "liberated" farms, previously planted crops have gone untended and no new ones put in. Some of the occupiers have even asked the white owners to manage the farms for them for a share of the harvest. At Glenwood, the farm on which Brenda and Winnie were hunting mice, the owner had fled to Ireland. Field after field of paprika for export is dying. The original war veterans who occupied the farm were recently replaced by Elijah Gumbo, the owner of a dishwasher factory, and some police officers. Mr Gumbo's brother Paul, who was manning the gate, admitted that they had no idea how to run the farm. "This is not our environment," he said. "I used to work on a white-owned rose farm and get a monthly salary and that was better. Now I have no money." It is not only the farmers who are losing their homes. The law requires all farmworkers to leave, too. More than 76,000 have lost their homes and livelihoods since February and more than 500,000 will be homeless by August 9.
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Comment from The Zimbabwe Standard, 28 July
Over the top
When truth is disreputable
The disinformation minister in a troubled central African country has threatened a US-based news broadcaster, accusing it of using 'colonial tactics,' Over The Top has learnt. It is understood that the American news organisation was left somewhat confused after it was explained that requesting an interview was a colonial tactic. "This comes as news to us," said a spokesman for the TV broadcaster, "No one has ever told us what 'colonial tactics' are before," he said adding that if asking for an interview was considered an underhand colonial tactic, the whole future of disseminating news would be brought into question. "It will be very difficult to produce balanced news if we're not allowed to interview anyone," he pointed out. Still, sources within the troubled central African country's disinformation department shrugged off the American broadcaster's concerns. "It's a simple matter," said a clearly deranged spokesman from the department, "you just make the news up like we do in our own newspapers and TV stations." The disinformation spokesman explained that he used the same principle when writing presidential speeches. "That's why we describe mass starvation and emergency food aid for six million people as an unqualified success in the field of agrarian reform," he explained.
Still, the point needed explaining just a day before citizens of the troubled central African nation were left scratching their heads and muttering obscenities under their breath when they heard the most equal of all comrades blame food shortages on a group of bewildered grey people inhabiting a small patch of mud between the coasts of Ireland and France. The most equal of all comrades had also promised an end to all drought due to the unqualified success of shutting down the farms in the troubled central African country. "That should solve the problem," said a man who'd been queuing for three days in the hope of getting whatever it was he was queuing for. He told OTT that he had no idea what was at the other end of the queue, explaining that the queue was so long he expected it to take at least another day for word to filter back with news of the commodity at the other end. "Still," he said, "In a way, the most equal of all comrades is right. If half of us die of starvation, there should be enough food left for the survivors."
Meanwhile, both the most equal of all comrades and the department of disinformation intensified their efforts to persuade the world that food shortages were another 'colonial tactic' designed to steal the souls of the troubled central African nation's sovereignty. Not that the claim held much sway in food queues around the country. "They can have the soul of our sovereignty, whatever that is," said one miserable woman, "I'll willingly settle for a plate of hot food." Still, the most equal of all comrades' comment about the soul of the troubled central African country's sovereignty had millions of hungry citizens perplexed. Many wanted to know what sovereignty was, what it was worth and how it could have a soul? "It sounds like a lot of nonsense to me," said a man 300 metres from the front of a queue, "it sounds to me like he's been smoking something. Did you know that cigarettes are also in short supply?" At this point a wildly gesticulating man in the queue turned around and pointed out that the only commodity not in short supply in the troubled central African nation was comrades. "We have lots of comrades," he screamed. "If we could export comrades we'd be the wealthiest country in Africa, but the problem is, no one wants comrades because they're worthless."
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From BBC News, 29 July
Mugabe supporters 'block food aid'
BBC correspondent, recently in Zimbabwe
As aid agencies warn of the growing threat of starvation to millions of people in Zimbabwe, the BBC has uncovered evidence of widespread political interference in the distribution of food by President Robert Mugabe's supporters. Food aid has been blocked in some areas which voted against Mr Mugabe during elections in March. Opposition supporters have also been prevented from buying commercial stocks of grain. The signs of food shortages and hunger are everywhere in Zimbabwe. Groups of villagers wait for days at a time by the roadside for deliveries of scarce supplies of the staple food, maize. In town and cities, long queues form outside supermarkets when stocks arrive. The shelves are bare of basics such as sugar and salt.
Many people in urban areas are reduced to eating a single meal a day, but the hardship is most severe in villages. I met families surviving on leaves and wild fruit. They should be receiving food aid, but say it has been blocked by government supporters who accuse them of voting for the opposition. Numerous interviewees said they had been refused permission to buy food from government grain depots unless they produced a ruling party membership card. Hospital officials in the north-western town of Binga, where the aid effort is being held up by Mr Mugabe's followers, say nearly 30 children have died in recent weeks from malnutrition-related illness. Others have died after eating poisonous roots. Aid agencies complain that the government is trying to control the relief effort at every level. Zimbabwe has suffered two poor rainy seasons in a row, but the crisis unfolding now is as much man-made as natural.
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 28 July
Tsvangirai rallies banned
MDC president, Morgan Tsvangirai, has been barred from campaigning for his party for the forthcoming local government elections, The Standard has heard. In a twist of events seen as a ploy to enhance the ruling party's chances of winning the impending local government elections, police have barred Tsvangirai from holding over 20 scheduled rallies to drum up support for his party's candidates. In denying Tsvangirai permission to hold the rallies, the police accused the MDC leader of advocating violence and mass stayaways, saying they could not guarantee his safety. But MDC officials contend that the police are being used by the ruling party to thwart the party's campaign and ensure a Zanu PF victory. Government has announced its intention to hold local government elections countrywide in September. Although the ruling party won in most rural constituencies during the 2000 parliamentary polls and March's presidential election, the current mass starvation being experienced in rural areas and a reluctance by war veterans to campaign for Zanu PF is likely to tilt the vote in MDC's favour.
Tsvangirai confirmed to The Standard yesterday that the police had barred him from campaigning for his candidates. "I can confirm that a number of rallies I was supposed to address were cancelled at the last minute. What is happening is almost a pattern to deliberately use Posa (the Public Order and Security Act) against us. Zanu PF does not need to apply to hold meetings. So many meetings are taking place in the rural areas and they are not applying for permission. If we hold any meetings we are brutalised, so literally no meeting of any substance by the MDC will be allowed to take place. It is a deliberate move to choke off the MDC from campaigning. The police have become partisan and this is because of war veterans who have been promoted and are manning most of the sensitive areas. It just shows you we can't have a fair election in this country. You have elections whose outcome are predetermined. Apart from us being banned from campaigning, we have witnessed the discriminatory distribution of food and general violence against the people. Surprisingly, the people remain steadfast in their desire for change," said Tsvangirai.
Apart from the ban, the police has been accused of sponsoring terror against MDC supporters in rural areas. Last week, the MDC chairman for Buhera district, Justin Mugashu, and four other officials were seriously brutalised by police details, said Tsvangirai. While the police has barred the MDC from campaigning for the elections, ruling party MPs and officials have been enticing voters by dishing out maize handouts to impoverished rural families. MDC shadow minister for agriculture, Renson Gasela, and shadow minister for local government, Paul Themba Nyathi, accused the ruling party of using food aid to buy votes. "In September this year, there will be local government elections throughout the country. Their (Zanu PF) only campaign tool is food. This is a shameless violation of the human rights of a starving population. Numerous cases of depriving people of food because they belong to the MDC have been documented. Zanu PF has a history in this area as it will be remembered that during Gukurahundi, there was a total food blackout in Matabeleland South for three months. This regime is motivated by its unlimited craving for power," they said in a joint statement.
MDC MPs and officials on the forefront of the campaign are now up in arms with the police and are now threatening to take legal action. MDC Manicaland provincial spokesman, Pishai Muchauraya, said Tsvangirai was supposed to address five rallies in the province but was stopped by the police. "Tsvangirai was supposed to address rallies in Mutasa, Chipinge, Nyanga and two in Chimanimani, but we were stopped by the police. We also had meetings lined up in five venues in Chipinge North and South for every Saturday and Sunday up to September 30 in preparation for the rural council elections, but we have since been told these have been banned. We are now not sure how we are supposed to campaign."
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From The Wall Street Journal, 25 July
Death of a nation
Creating famine is hard work, but Robert Mugabe is indefatigable
New York - Zimbabwe's mission to the United Nations occupies a low, gold-panelled building in midtown Manhattan. On a recent hot morning, I pressed the doorbell and was admitted to a cool, neat waiting room--in which no one else was waiting. Posters on the walls advertised Zimbabwe's natural wonders, including wild elephants and the splendid Victoria Falls, with the caption "Africa's Paradise." Yet in today's Zimbabwe what looms large is not paradise but famine. "The situation is deteriorating fairly rapidly," says Kevin Farrell, country director for the U.N.'s World Food Program, reached by phone in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare. He says that in any village right now, "you will see people clearly hungry." The U.N. is appealing for $611 million worth of emergency aid for sub-Saharan Africa. Almost half of that is for Zimbabwe, the workers now predict that without massive help, hundreds of thousands may soon starve to death. One seasoned relief expert who recently visited Zimbabwe, the Rev. Jack Finucane of American based Concern Worldwide, doubts that even drastic international action will be enough. "I don't think you can avoid large numbers of people dying of starvation this year in Zimbabwe, Father Finucane told me in a phone interview. "There's a problem about getting food into the country."
There is nothing natural about this. True, Zimbabwe has had a drought. But it's a nation that inherited from colonial days some of the best infrastructure in Africa. There's nothing wrong with the roads, on which Father Finucane travelled hundreds of miles to gather the evidence on which he based his grim findings. In our modern world, with its swift transport, global markets and cheap technology - supplemented in a crisis by a vast network of eager aid agencies - there is no way that famine can be chalked up simply to natural disaster. Given any reasonable degree of freedom, people faced with dwindling supplies of food will make mighty use of their basic human ingenuity to find ways to survive. It takes a lot of work, by determined tyrants, to starve human beings to death. Stalin engineered a terrible famine in the 1930s to subdue rebellious farmers in Ukraine. Mao in the 1950s and '60s starved some 30 million Chinese to death in the process of consolidating his grip on power. Ethiopians suffered famine in the 1980s under the Marxist rule of Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, who was finally ousted in 1991 (and retired to luxury digs in Zimbabwe, where he still resides). North Korea's totalitarian Kim Jong Il has forced the starvation of more than one million North Koreans since the mid-1990s, rather than let them grow their own crops, trade in free markets and quite probably save their own lives.
At Zimbabwe's U.N. mission, above the reception desk, near the promos for paradise, hangs a portrait of the ruler who has chosen to enrol this once-fruitful country in the axis of famine: "His Excellency the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe" - Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Mr. Mugabe peers out from behind big dark-rimmed spectacles, looking younger in this official portrait than his 78 years. He has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, tightening his grip over time. As some countries in Africa have begun to liberalize, Zimbabweans have been looking more urgently for change, turning to such opposition figures as Morgan Tsvangirai, a popular trade union leader. Mr. Mugabe has responded with increasingly destructive tactics for keeping power - imposing price controls, nationalizing enterprises and turning loose gangs known as "war veterans" to brutalize opponents. In March, Mr. Mugabe "won" re-election, defeating Mr. Tsvangirai in a rigged vote. The U.S. State Department described the election as "marred by disenfranchisement of urban voters, violent intimidation against opposition supporters, intimidation of the independent press and the judiciary and other irregularities." Despite all that, Mr. Tsvangirai still won about 40% of the vote.
Over the past two years, Mr. Mugabe's bid to boost his waning support has included a "land reform" in which his government ordered white commercial farmers to quit farming and surrender their land to be parcelled out to blacks. This was done in the name of redressing racial injustice left over from colonial times. In an independence day speech on April 18, Mr. Mugabe announced triumphantly that the land "has finally come to its rightful owners." But these huge farms, run with large economies of scale, were the most productive source of the country's food. Their confiscation, carried out in many cases by violent mobs, has brought farming to a near halt. With famine imminent, Mr. Mugabe's regime has ordered almost 3,000 white farmers still on their land to halt all production and leave their property within the next three weeks. According to sources such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, the parcelling out to date has been neither equitable nor productive. London's Daily Telegraph reported in May that vast tracts of land had been "handed out to President Mugabe's closest allies, including 10 cabinet ministers, seven MP's [members of Parliament] and his brother-in-law." Concern Worldwide estimates that yields have plunged 90% from what was once normal. And though the drought ended months ago and many of the reservoirs are now full, Mr. Mugabe's ruinous land "reform" means there is now almost no effective irrigation or new planting.
Whatever hardship all this means for the white farmers, by far the worst hit by these ruinous tactics are millions of blacks. Nor can people simply buy supplies on the open market. The government runs a Grain Marketing Board that has monopoly rights to import and deal in commodities such as corn - the staple food in Zimbabwe. Roadblocks restrict unauthorized shipments into the country. Farmers are forced to sell exclusively to the state marketing board, at well below world price, which further reduces incentives for large-scale planting. The marketing board rations its stocks, funnelling food toward Mr. Mugabe's supporters and stinting the opposition, according to USAID head Andrew Natsios. Mr. Natsios describes Mr. Mugabe as "predatory and tyrannical" and says the Mugabe government "has politicized the distribution of food." Making matters worse, government policy has also brought soaring inflation, now in the triple digits, which has been fast eroding the buying power of ordinary Zimbabweans. The official exchange rate is now about 1/16th the black-market rate for hard currency, meaning that even if Zimbabweans resort to the black market, the price of imported food is increasingly out of reach. In a country that was once among the most prosperous and promising in Africa, Mr. Mugabe's government is "causing the mass destruction of the middle class," says USAID's Mr. Natsios.
This is causing deep alarm in neighboring South Africa. In a June 19 cover letter to an extensive report compiled by dissident civic groups in Zimbabwe, documenting abuses committed by the Mugabe government, South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote that "Zimbabweans are now suffering the brunt of policies that could soon spill over into the entire region." Describing the March presidential election as "not fair," Archbishop Tutu added: "It is now clear that the resolution to the Zimbabwe crisis can only be found in recapturing the legitimacy of government and returning the country to a fair and just rule of law." Aid donors are now trying to maneuver emergency rations through Mr. Mugabe's horrific political maze - which has included objections by Harare officials to the importation of genetically modified grain. This precludes some kinds of corn that Americans routinely eat. This week the U.N. issued a frantic call for swifter relief to avert catastrophic starvation. Assorted nongovernmental organizations have been urgently petitioning finicky officials in Harare for permission to ship in enough food to feed Zimbabweans deprived of the freedom to feed themselves. Mr. Mugabe, however, hasn't been bothering himself much with all the fuss about famine. He was off in Cuba last week, lauding what he calls his "fast track" land policy and hobnobbing with his old pal Fidel Castro - another septuagenarian believer in the power of rationing.
Back in New York, my visit to Zimbabwe's mission to the U.N. led to an interview the next day with the ambassador to the U.N., Tichaona Jokonya. An elderly, well-spoken man, Mr. Jokonya offered an intriguing window on the history of Zimbabwe, including an account of his own role in fighting colonial rule along with Mr. Mugabe some three decades back, a part for which Mr. Jokonya says he was trained in China during the late 1960s by the forces of Mao Tse-tung, one of his heroes. Mr. Jokonya agreed that not all is well is Zimbabwe today, saying that "half the population will be affected" by hunger, and noting that the grain marketing board has its shortcomings. He added that Zimbabwe is a "young" nation and needs time and understanding. But time is running out. And what most needs understanding is the kind of information I learned from a relief worker in Zimbabwe who has just put in a long stint going village to village. This relief worker described people in the countryside who still look healthy but are now running through their last resources - selling off the cow or the goats, boiling roots for food, and waiting in mile-long queues at local offices of the state's Grain Marketing Board - when anything is actually available there. The relief worker described an old Zimbabwean woman who came with hundreds of others to a foreign aid center set up near a village school. She said that almost everyone she knows is getting desperate: "We beg, we borrow, we look for food." In hunger, if nothing else, she added, "we are all equal now."
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From The Sunday Telegraph (UK), 28 July
Last white family takes stand against farm grab
Marondera East - The morning rollcall over the radio of farmers in Marondera, started more than two years ago after the murder of the first white landowner, gradually got shorter and shorter. Last month it stopped altogether. For Nigel and Clare Hough are now the only white farmers left in what was once the richest tobacco growing area in Zimbabwe. Their 23 neighbours have all left. Next month, the Houghs will be breaking the law if they remain on their farm. Amid the dancing shadows of an African winter afternoon it is at first understandable why the Hough family is staying. Their four children aged between one and seven run round the swimming pool, playing with two black friends, while the couple watch from the terrace. The bougainvillea is flowering in a blaze of crimson and a deep red sun is setting over the Hwedza mountains. The only sign of anything amiss is the absence of ostriches in a farm proclaiming itself "Kendor Ostrich Station".
Then the Houghs explain that the huts from which wood-smoke is rising less than 300 yards away are not workers' homes but those of so-called war veterans who have occupied the place since the government-sponsored land invasions began in February 2000. A truck is taking away 10 of their 20 cows for slaughter. "People are stealing the cows, one every week now," explained Mr Hough. "We find the skeletons in the morning, all the meat pulled off. It's what happens when there is no rule of law." The cows are not all that is disappearing. The pumps have gone and last week the electrical cable was stolen, plunging the farm into darkness. While local police do nothing about such thefts, Mr Hough is expecting to be arrested within two weeks. Kendor is among 2,900 white-owned farms listed under Section 8 of the Land Acquisition Act, which set a deadline of 45 days for farming to stop and a further 45 days for the owners and their families to leave. For the Houghs, that means they have to leave by August 9. But, unlike most, they are determined to stay. "We built this up from nothing and we think this is worth fighting for," explained Mrs Hough. "But we have no illusions that it will be easy."
The inclusion of the Hough farm is a vivid illustration of the lunacy of Robert Mugabe's land reform programme. "I did everything possible to be a model farmer," said Mr Hough. The couple bought the farm in 1996 with money made raising ostriches in China and Indonesia. Within months they had given half of it to a local black mechanic, a Mr Chirashi. He had repaired their tractor and had nowhere to keep his dairy cattle. The Houghs brought in 1,500 ostriches and set up a factory producing ostrich skin bags and shoes for export and another making safari clothes. Then they began training local people. With one in three of their workers dying of Aids, they decided to build an orphanage for the children of deceased farm labourers. Mr Hough became chairman of four employment creation committees, helping 3,000 students to start up projects such as small-scale ostrich farms. "I pass on all the government's criteria for what they say they want," he says. "Ours is a small farm with only 30 hectares [74 acres] of arable land. It's the only farm I own. We train people in skills and what we produce goes for export. I've done all I could for the local community. On every single thing I pass except for one thing - I'm white."
Mr Hough, 39, was born in Marondera and comes from a farming background. Of the 36 farming families he is related to, only three are staying. Marondera has experienced some of the worst violence in the country. David Stephens, the first of 12 white farmers to be murdered, was shot in the head in April 2000 at his tobacco farm just down the road. At one point there was an incident every day. It was only last month that the Houghs also began considering leaving. Mrs Hough explained: "On the radio was yet more propaganda saying that the whites are trying to sabotage this country, and I just thought 'I can't take any more'. "Within a day her husband was on a fact-finding mission to Australia. Although the family will remain on the farm after the deadline, Mr Hough has resigned himself to leaving, probably by the end of the year. "Even if I go to court and win the farm, we'll never be secure," he said. "The moment some big guy takes a fancy to the place we'll be thrown off." They are not the only ones worried. Akre, their nanny, wonders what will happen to her and her two children. Their tenant, Mrs Chirashi, said: "Nigel has treated us like a brother. He charges us only Z$1 [about 1p] per beast per month for land and nothing when we have no money. He arranged us a loan to buy a truck. Whoever takes over will evict us."
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From The Daily News, 29 July
MDC supporters in Muzarabani accuse Zanu PF of excluding them in food aid
MDC supporters in Kapembere ward in Muzarabani have accused Zanu PF leaders in the area of sidelining them in the food distribution programme for allegedly "belonging to the opposition which denigrates the government". Takawira Mubayiwa, the security chief for the MDC in the ward, said Zanu PF had hijacked the feeding programme initiated by Christian Care, a non-governmental organisation. He said the charitable organisation distributed food to all deserving cases without discrimination until the ruling party hijacked the programme. "Robert Mugabe claims all people, including MDC members, are receiving food without being discriminated against," Mubayiwa said, "but in our area, several MDC supporters have been left out and their names deleted from lists of food aid recipients." Mubayiwa said Zanu PF supporters in the constituency had listed names of known and suspected MDC supporters. The lists were now being used in the food aid exercise to starve hundreds of villagers.
He accused Jefta Musariri, a war veteran leader in the area, of leading the crackdown on all suspected MDC supporters. The security chief said Christian Care head office was aware of the situation but they could not do anything about it. An official at Christian Care in Harare denied the allegations by the MDC supporters, saying their programme was transparent and non-political. The official, who refused to be identified, said they had a beneficiary selection criteria where church representatives in the area, the traditional leadership, the district administrator and councillors were involved in identifying the needy. He said: "We give out food, starting with the most vulnerable people. Officials from our donors, the World Food Programme, come and verify all lists of beneficiaries." In Muzarabani, the official said, about 3 500 people received 13,8kg of maize-meal per household every month.
The feeding programme in Muzarabani started in April but the identification of needy villagers began in March. The Christian Care official said the villagers, in the presence of representatives of all major stakeholders, identified people who desperately needed food assistance and without any source of income. MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai has repeatedly accused the government and Zanu PF of politicising the food aid programme, starving thousands of his party’s supporters. Nathan Shamuyarira, the Zanu PF secretary for information and publicity, yesterday denied the allegations by the MDC. Shamuyarira said: "There is no truth in those allegations. There are no villagers or villages that are being sidelined in food distribution. "You know very well that we are distributing food to all Zimbabweans, irrespective of their political affiliation."
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From BBC News, 29 July
Eyewitness: search for food
By Grant Ferrett BBC correspondent, recently in Zimbabwe
A few hours after I arrived in Zimbabwe, I went through my first police roadblock. As I was there without official permission, I felt rather anxious. I need not have worried. The police were not looking for foreign journalists - they were looking for food. Anyone found carrying more than a single bag of maize - the staple diet in Zimbabwe - has their cargo confiscated. When I left Zimbabwe in February last year, a week before my colleague Joseph Winter was thrown out, the queues were for fuel. Now they are for food. The whole country is affected, including the capital, Harare. I went to what used to be my local supermarket to see if the reports of severe shortages were true. They were. There was no maize meal, no cooking oil, no sugar and no salt. Instead, in an effort to give an impression of normality, the shelves were stacked with toilet rolls and expensive breakfast cereals. When food does arrive, the shops no longer bother putting it on display because of the chaos it causes. The supplies are distributed from the back of the supermarket. The police are on hand to keep order and take their cut of the food ahead of the shoppers. With the shops largely empty of basics, many people turn either to the black market or state-run grain depots. Each have their problems. Prices on the black market are prohibitively expensive, while at the grain depots, you are asked to produce your ruling party membership card before be allowed to buy maize. I spoke to several people who said they bought a party card purely to get grain. This ploy does not work, though, if you are a known opposition supporter. These are routinely refused food and risk being beaten up.
In spite of all this, several of those I spoke to in Harare said that although they were reduced to eating a single meal a day, they were lucky compared with those in rural areas. So I went to a rural area to see for myself. It was not difficult to find people suffering from hunger on the road to Binga, in the remote north-west, on the banks of Lake Kariba. In fact, the very first family I spoke to said they had been without maize for months. How were they surviving? On a diet of leaves. "And what else?" I asked. "Leaves," they replied. "Just leaves." I am ashamed to admit I did not believe them. But sure enough, there on the fire was a pot of thick, bubbling leaves. here are food aid programmes designed to help such families. The problem is that they are being manipulated for political ends by President Mugabe's supporters. In Binga and neighbouring Hwange West, I heard complaint after complaint that ruling party militants who call themselves war veterans were interrupting relief supplies or blocking them altogether. The aim is to prevent opposition supporters from receiving food, starving the people into submission. With the next harvest six months away, many more Zimbabweans are likely to be turning to leaves, if they still have the energy to look.
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From BBC News, 29 July
Guide to food crisis in Zimbabwe
Matabeleland - 978,000 people are affected by the food crisis in this region, according to the World Food Programme. This is the region worst affected by the drought. It is also the only rural area which voted for the opposition MDC. The BBC's Thabo Kunene in Bulawayo says that maize meal is now readily available in the city - but only on the black market. The government has attempted to reduce inflation by controlling the prices of basic goods. But this has had the effect of creating shortages in the shops, where 10kg bag of maize meal costs Z$380. Meanwhile, in markets and in the houses of black market traders, it is easily available for Z$1,000 a bag. Our correspondent says that some millers are encouraging the black market trade in order to increase their revenue. Following protests by the United States, the distribution of food aid in rural areas was briefly opened up to opposition supporters. But Thabo Kunene says that with local elections coming up in September, it is feared that food aid will again be used as a campaign tool.
Masvingo - 972,000 people are affected. Local journalist Energy Bara told BBC News Online that people are abandoning their homes and moving to larger villages in search of food. One such rural centre, Rutenga, "looks like a squatter camp" he said. People wait for days until a truck arrives with food but even then, only maybe one person in five gets the food. In some remote parts of Masvingo province, such as Chiredzi, the roads have not been repaired since the devastating floods of 2000 and even government trucks cannot get through. He says that some aid agencies are distributing food but they are only allowed to travel to rural areas if they are accompanied by representatives of the ruling Zanu PF party. And this is also the case in Masvingo town. Energy Bara works for the Daily News, which the government sees as pro-opposition, and he says that Zanu PF officials turn him away from shops which have food. "I cannot go and buy maize," he said. Friends and relatives must go on his behalf.
Mashonaland - One million people need food aid. Mashonaland generally receives more rain than other parts of the country. But this year, some parts of the region have also been badly hit.
Midlands - 620,000 people affected. The distribution of food aid is being done along party political lines. Local journalist Zerubabel Mudzingwa told BBC News Online that he recently saw opposition supporters being kicked out of a queue for food aid in Mberengwa. He says that the government is tying to control the distribution of food and has prevented most aid agencies from working independently. Most food is being distributed in rural areas but people in the big towns such as Gweru are also hungry. A food for work programme has been introduced, where people get food in exchange for doing casual work, such as filling in pot-holes for the city council. The next harvest is next April and there are fears that the need for food will only increase before then.
Harare - Most of the 850,000 urban people affected by the food crisis are in the capital. Most shops have run out of the staple food, maize-meal, as well as other basic commodities such as cooking oil and salt. The BBC's Lewis Machipisa says that if people hear that deliveries are expected, they queue up from early in the morning. Alternatively, foodstuffs are available on the black market from stalls on the streets. Unless, of course, the police get to the black marketeers first. Our correspondent says that food aid is not being distributed in Harare and no food for work programmes have been set up.
Manicaland - 843,000 people are affected by the food crisis. Northern parts of Manicaland have the highest rainfall in Zimbabwe but southern areas are more drought-prone.
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From SABC News, 29 July
Four more Zimbabwe ministers denied EU visas
Four women ministers of Zimbabwe President Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party have been barred from travelling to Sweden in accordance with the European Union sanctions against senior officials of Mugabe's government, Swedish embassy officials confirmed today. The four ministers were involved in the second case of travel sanctions invoked against Zimbabwean politicians since last Friday. Wheelchair-bound Joshua Malinga, secretary for the disabled on Zanu PF's executive committee, became the first victim of the enlarged list when he was stopped at London's Gatwick airport on the way to a conference in New York for the disabled, and sent back home on the next aircraft. The latest to be banned are Edna Madzongwe, deputy speaker of parliament, Shuvai Mahofa, deputy minister of youth, gender and employment creation, Olivia Muchena, minister of state in the office of one of the country's two vice-presidents, and Flora Bhuka, minister of state for the second vice-president. The four women had applied for visas to attend |
