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Archived News
4th January 2002
Pro-Mugabe militias kill four rival activists
Muluzi calls for SADC summit on Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe asks banks to raise R4bn for food
We'll ignore the death threats to fight this despot
Zimbabwean Supreme Court judge dies
Zim war veteran killed by opposition report
Court victory for Zimbabwe farmer
Millions face statelessness
New Zim recruits accused of torturing MDC men
Zimbabwe to name thousands of blacks to get farms of whites
Digging up Congo's dirty gems
Youths rampage in Harare
Ministers urged to halt deportations
Mugabe regime tortures activist deported by UK
Mugabe's 'cronies' occupy seized farmland
Opposition looks to SADC
Delaying the crunch that must come
Mugabe to scrap poll
Zimbabwe law fears grow as another leading judge resigns
WFP emergency operation delayed
Rand, regional shortages threatens SA food security
Political violence flares again in Zimbabwe
SA's only way out of trouble is to get tough with Mugabe
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From The Guardian (UK), 28 December
Pro-Mugabe militias kill four rival activists
Harare - Militias which back Robert Mugabe are blamed for killing four members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) during the past week, raising fears of a wave of state-sponsored murders before the presidential elections due in March. One MDC supporter, Milton Chambati, 45, was beheaded by 50 followers of Mr Mugabe's Zanu PF party in the small north-western hamlet of Magunge, according to local reports. Many witnessed the gruesome murder. In Karoi north-west of Harare, Titus Nheya, 56, was stabbed to death allegedly by Zanu PF militiamen on December 21. As the MDC's parliamentary candidate for the area, Mr Nheya lost to Mr Mugabe's sister, Sabina, in the June 2000 elections. Trymore Midzi, 24, an MDC official in the northern town of Bindura, died on Boxing Day after being stabbed and assaulted by men in the para-military uniforms of the militia, according to the MDC. Laban Chiweta, 24, also died on Wednesday, from head wounds and burns he received from Zanu PF militiamen in the town of Trojan Mine. The MDC alleges that the men who killed Chiweta were trained by Zanu PF's political commissar, Elliot Manyika.
The holiday killings bring to 87 the number of MDC supporters who have been killed in state-sponsored violence, according to the opposition party. The recent murders come amid reports that followers of Mr Mugabe, 77, who has been in power for 21 years, have established bases across the country and are stepping up a campaign of intimidation. "This government is using millions of dollars of public money to set up terror training camps to train a private army that is given state sanction to kill, abduct, torture and maim," an MDC statement claimed. War veterans and other Mugabe supporters have said that the rural areas of the Mashonaland provinces, where all four of the Christmas killings took place, are "no go" areas for the MDC. The state-owned news media, meanwhile, repeatedly charge that "the MDC and its British sponsors" are spreading violence. But they have very little evidence to back up the claim.
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From The Daily Times (Malawi), 28 December
Muluzi calls for SADC summit on Zimbabwe
Blantyre - Southern African Development Community (SADC) chair President Bakili Muluzi has called for an extraordinary two day summit for heads of states in Blantyre next month in a last ditch effort to stop the violence in Zimbabwe. The 14 member organisation, which has been blamed for failing to stop Mugabe's seizure of white-owned farms and victimisation of his political foes, according to Sanjika Palace press office will meet from January 13 to 15. "The President just mentioned it and there are no details yet," the Sanjika Palace spokesperson Chinduti Chirwa said yesterday. But Daily Times found out yesterday that government has gone ahead and booked Le Meridein Mount Soche hotel from 13th January to 15th 2002. "All the other reservations from 1 January have been dismissed following the SADC summit," said the reservations desk yesterday.
Muluzi's move comes after numerous calls from South African President Thabo Mbeki who is under increasing pressure from Western leaders to tame Mugabe. South African newspapers reported last week that Mbeki has been asking his Malawian counterpart to call for a meeting. His efforts resulted in a meeting of SADC ministers in Harare early this month where ministers voiced out their opposition to sanctions and backed the Zimbabwean leader. The Blantyre summit, which Malawi hosts for the second time this year, comes fast on the heels of a high powered delegation of the African National Congress who met Mugabe to persuade him halt the violence. SADC leaders in August discussed Zimbabwe in camera and mandated Muluzi to oversee are peaceful transition in Zimbabwe as the country goes to the polls in March next year.
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From The Cape Times (SA), 27 December
Zimbabwe asks banks to raise R4bn for food
Harare - President Robert Mugabe's government has hurriedly appointed four banks this week to help raise about R4-billion to finance the importation of 500 000 tons of maize and 140 000 tons of wheat to avert famine in Zimbabwe before the crunch presidential election in March. About 3,5 million Zimbabweans have reportedly registered for urgent food handouts from the government because of serious food shortages, caused mainly by the wholesale seizures of commercial farms by Mugabe's militant supporters. Ministry of finance officials said the four banks had been provided with a government guarantee due to expire in 2006. They are to raise the money through the issuance of five-year bonds. The four banks are the Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe, which is partly owned by South Africa's Absa Bank, Trust Merchant Bank, Interfin Merchant Bank and First Banking Corporation. If the bonds fail to attract investor interest, as some analysts predict, and the banks fail to raise the R4bn, this would create more headaches for Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party, which is battling to mollify a largely disenchanted electorate ahead of the election. The decision to appoint the four banks came barely a week after Mugabe's government made a sudden policy U-turn and allowed the World Food Programme to mobilise and distribute R720m in urgent food aid worth to more than 500 000 starving Zimbabweans in the southern provinces.
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From The Independent (UK), 28 December
We'll ignore the death threats to fight this despot
Basildon Peta
President Robert Mugabe has never had much of an ear for views divergent from his own. In 2001, the Zimbabwean leader's intolerance of the media reached its most extreme level since he took the helm of this impoverished country at the end of white rule in 1980. The year opened with a resounding warning to the media: the bombing of a printing press owned by Zimbabwe's only independent daily newspaper, The Daily News, on 28 January. The year closed with the introduction of a despicable media law, intended to lead to the closure of all independent publications in Zimbabwe.
The new Access to Information Bill, due to be passed by Parliament on 8 January, bans foreign journalists from working in Zimbabwe and obliges local journalists to apply for licences every year. The Bill vests sweeping powers in Mr Mugabe's chief propagandist, the information minister Jonathan Moyo, who will personally select who works in the Zimbabwean media. Mr Moyo's hatred of every basic tenet of democracy is now on public record and his vituperative outbursts against proponents of freedom have become depressingly predictable. Last week, he described Tony Blair as a "boyish leader" and an "ignoramus" who should at "best be in charge of a kindergarten school".
Anyone who thought the destruction of The Daily News’s printing press was as bad as it was going to get, was naive. Five days before the bombing, the 77-year-old president's Government had vowed to implement all measures necessary to silence the media, saying it had become "a threat to the security of the nation". It soon passed a Bill that banned private radio and television stations and entrenched the state's monopoly control over the audio visual media. The Civic Society activist Mike Auret Jr, who had dared to set up a private radio station, immediately went into hiding and has not been heard from since. His broadcasting equipment was seized by the police and the army, and the makeshift studios of Capital Radio completely destroyed.
During the year, at least 24 journalists working for the private media were brutally assaulted by Mr Mugabe's supporters when they tried to report on farm occupations by the ruling party's militants. Commercial farms have now effectively become no-go areas for independent journalists as word has spread that we are enemies of the regime. In one of the assaults, Collin Chiwanza of The Daily News only escaped death by hiding in the bush for two days. Prominent professionals, such The Daily News's editor, Geoffrey Nyarota, virtually ran their newspapers from prison cells as the Zimbabwe police regularly arrested newsroom chiefs from the non-Government media. At least Mr Nyarota was recognised abroad; he won four international journalism awards in 2001.
There were other arrests. Mark Chavunduka, editor of The Standard, was detained over an accurate report carried in his paper that Mr Mugabe had been sued in a New York court by families of 36 opposition supporters murdered by the Government in the run-up to the June 2000 parliamentary elections. A New York District Judge later ruled against Mr Mugabe, saying he was liable for the deaths. Three foreign correspondents, including David Blair of The Daily Telegraph and Joseph Winter of the BBC, were, with varying degrees of force, shown the door, never to return. An expose by The Daily News that the police had aided the looting of white farms caused the arrests of six of its journalists in June. In virtually all of the 30-plus arrests of reporters and newspaper managers, the police could not produce formal evidence to pursue the charges in court. It all confirmed that the detentions and intimidation were purely intended to break our morale.
In August, The Standard revealed the existence of a hit list of journalists to be harmed or killed by the Government. Topping that hit list was myself, The Independent's correspondent in Zimbabwe, and the only black journalist writing for the British media. Prior to its publication, I had received numerous death threats. Packets of bullets were left on my doorstep on three occasions, with notes stating that I would be dead before the 2002 presidential election in March. In November, Mr Mugabe's Government formally labelled me and five other journalists working for the foreign media as "terrorists". It went on to approve the Public Order and Security Bill (POSB), which imposes death and life sentences on anyone accused of assisting terrorism.
Both the POSB and Access to Information Bill forced a December Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group meeting to put Zimbabwe on its agenda - the first step towards suspending the country from the 54-nation grouping. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's economy virtually collapsed with foreign currency reserves drying up and multilateral donor agencies withdrawing from the country. Inflation, which was below 50 per cent at the start of the year, soared to 103 per cent in December. The unemployment rate rose to 60 per cent; key manufacturing firms folded. The Chief Justice, Anthony Gubbay, was fired and Mr Mugabe appointed a loyalist to take charge of the Supreme Court. About 110 opposition supporters were killed in 2001 and many more casualties are expected as Zimbabwe approaches the March presidential election.
But for many of us in the media, despite all the enormous risks we now face, it's "Aluta Continua'' against Mr Mugabe's tyrannical and despotic rule. How could it not be? He is wrong.
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From The Natal Mercury (SA), 27 December
Zimbabwean Supreme Court judge dies
Harare - One of Zimbabwe's most respected supreme court judges died this week from a malaria-related illness, relatives and friends said yesterday. Judge Simbarashe Muchechetere, 60, died on Wednesday in Bulawayo, where he had spent Christmas with his family. Another veteran of the nation's highest court, Judge Nick McNally, 70, will retire on December 31. They were among independent-minded judges who had been under mounting pressure from the government over the past two years.
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From The Star (SA), 29 December
Zim war veteran killed by opposition report
Harare - Suspected opposition supporters in Zimbabwe have killed a war veteran and ruling party loyalist in a politically-motivated murder, the state-controlled Herald alleged on Friday. But police said they were not ruling out other suspects. The Herald said veteran Willis Dhliwayo from Chipinge, about 300 kilometres southeast of Harare, was found lying dead on a road near Chipinge with stab wounds and cuts, on Christmas day. Most war veterans like Dhliwayo, who fought in the country's war from white minority rule, support the ruling Zanu PF. Police spokesperson Tarwireyi Tirivavi was quoted by the paper as saying Dhliwayo had quarrelled with opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters the night before he was murdered. The quarrel took place at Chako, a rural business centre, but the war veteran had left without a fight, the paper said. He was discovered murdered the next day. Tarwireyi told the paper he thought the murder was "politically motivated", but said no arrests had been made and police were still investigating. But Tariwireyi said on Friday: "We're not closing the door on any possibilities", adding that there could be other suspects in the alleged murder.
In a highly-publicised case in November, a war veteran leader was found murdered outside the country's second city of Bulawayo, in southwestern Zimbabwe. The government accused the MDC of being behind the killing and also accused them of "terrorism". Several MDC members, including a member of parliament, were arrested and charged with murder and public violence. The MDC has dismissed the murder and terrorism charges, saying they are being used by the government as a pretext for cracking down on its members. This week the MDC has said four of its members have been killed in northern Zimbabwe by suspected Zanu PF supporters, amid increased political violence in the country. The party said the four killed brings to 87 the total number of MDC members, sympathisers and supporters killed in politically-motivated violence since February last year.
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From BBC News, 28 December
Court victory for Zimbabwe farmer
The first farmer to sue individual Zimbabwean Government ministers over land reform has won a victory in the first stage of his battle to get his farm back. Guy Watson-Smith launched proceedings against two government ministers and the former head of the national army after he was ordered to leave his farm in early December. Last week he also appealed for a relief order allowing him to reclaim machinery, animals and game from his farm, which is on prime land 100km from the capital, Harare. On Friday the High Court ruled that Mr Watson-Smith should be allowed protection to collect his property from the farm. In a statement, the farmer welcomed the judge's ruling and said he looked forward to the sheriff going to the farm with police to remove property worth $2.9m. But the BBC's Alistair Leithead says the decision does not necessarily mean Mr Watson-Smith will be able to return safely. Mr Watson-Smith will continue his case against the Zimbabwean agriculture minister, a local housing minister, a former commander of the armed forces and a war veteran, from South Africa, where he, his wife and elderly parents are staying with relatives. "I've come to South Africa with the family because there's an element of danger. We're taking senior government officials to court and the people that I consulted - and my own gut feeling - was that we couldn't take the risk of doing it from within the country," he told the BBC.
Mr Watson-Smith said he believes his farm will be given to a high-ranking Zimbabwean official close to the government and not distributed to the poor. His court action comes amid reports of increasing violence and intimidation, including the recent murders of four opposition members, ahead of the presidential elections due in March. "Everyone - and I mean all sections of the Zimbabwean community is holding their breath and waiting for these presidential elections to be over with," he said. "I think the situation is deteriorating. The violence is most definitely on the increase. The feeling of apprehension and fear in the run-up to the presidential election is growing every day. It's not a happy country." President Robert Mugabe's land reform programme has been marred by violence since government supporters, calling themselves war veterans, began occupying white farms 18 months ago demanding that they be redistributed to landless blacks. An estimated 1,700 white-owned farms have been occupied over the past 18 months, and police have largely failed to stem the accompanying violence. Last month the country's Supreme Court ruled that the land reform programme complied with the constitution, removing the last remaining legal obstacle preventing the government from processing claims to white-owned farms.
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From ZWNEWS, 29 December
Millions face statelessness
By Michael Hartnack
Zimbabweans of Indian descent, hundreds of thousands with links to Malawi and Mozambique, people with Greek ancestry - all are among millions facing statelessness. Only a few anxious days are left before the January 6 deadline for people of foreign birth or descent to obtain proof they have renounced any claim to foreign citizenship. The stringent legislation - which will also strip the newly stateless of their votes in pending presidential elections - was rushed through Parliament and signed into law last July by President Robert Mugabe's government. He had accused whites, particularly an estimated 30 000 of British descent, of responsibility for his defeat in a crucial February 2000 constitutional referendum, and the strong showing of Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change in parliamentary elections four months later.
However, the requirement that people with a possible claim to foreign citizenship produce proof they are not, secretly, dual citizens, presents a greater nightmare for those with links to countries such as Malawi or Mozambique (an estimated 1,5m people) than for those of European extraction. Up to 12 000 Zimbabweans of Indian extraction also faced an insuperable problem when Delhi's representatives announced they cannot provide consular services, in the form of letters confirming recipients were not entitled to Indian citizenship, to persons who were not Indian citizens. Officials under Zimbabwe's registrar general Tobaiwa Mudede meanwhile declared that persons of obvious Indian descent who were unable to produce such letters would be deemed to have forfeited their Zimbabwean citizenship. The Indian High Commission has had discussions on the issue with the Zimbabwean Ministry of Home Affairs, but no resolution has been announced.
Greece has no provision in its law for someone with a claim to a Greek passport ever to renounce it. One Zimbabwean with a Mediterranean-sounding surname was curtly ordered by Mudede's officials to obtain proof he was not a Mexican or Italian citizen. The "Catch 22" operated by Mudede is well illustrated by the test case of Leslie Levente Petho, 41, turned away because his parents fled Hungary during the 1956 rising against Soviet rule. Born in Harare in 1960, he is now seeking leave of Judge Nicholas Ndou to fight a class action in the High Court, backed by human rights' lawyers. Mudede's officials demanded Petho obtain proof from Hungary's Pretoria embassy he was not a dual Hungarian citizen. Hungarian officials replied that he would have to apply for and be granted their citizenship before he could renounce it. But, they added, his application would be refused, since his parents were refugees and had not registered his birth in Budapest.
Zimbabwean law automatically strips a person of citizenship if they apply for a foreign second citizenship, even if their application is refused. When Petho applied to Judge Ndou to institute his class action, Mudede argued Petho should be refused permission since he is "not typical of Zimbabweans of foreign parentage", who now seek to challenge the new citizenship law. Contradicting his own earlier claim that Petho might secretly be Hungarian, Mudede told the judge Petho's parents were stateless, so his was a unique case. The judge is considering his ruling. Mudede said his officials wished to "treat every case on its own merits", a ploy human rights groups say opens the way for political and racial discrimination, and corruption. A recent US State Department report alleged bribery was common in Mudede's department. A Zimbabwe High Court judge, George Smith, has also accused the registrar general's office of countenancing widespread malpractice against Mugabe opponents in elections.
Zimbabweans of British descent were warned by the High Commission to submit applications for proof they have renounced any potential claim to British citizenship by December 12. However, long queues which formed outside the city centre building continued to the end of the week. Some elderly pensioners living on monthly incomes of Z$4 000 (£50 at the official rate) cannot pay fees of up to Z$13 000 to renounce their claim to British citizenship. Part of the fee is calculated at the Zimbabwean "parallel" or "black market rate" for sterling, which can fetch as much as Z$500 to one pound. The South African High Commission make no charge on Zimbabweans seeking proof they have renounced any claim by descent to their citizenship, and are understood to be processing over 40 a day. In London, Foreign Office Minister Baroness Amos has rejected an appeal by a Conservative member of Parliament Keith Waterson to waive or reduce the British fees in cases of distress. She said the fees were a "statutory duty" and overseas missions ``do not have authority to waive them". A spokeswoman at the British High Commission in Harare said staff had been "very busy" handling citizenship renunciations but refused to give numbers. Professor Welshman Ncube, MDC constitutional spokesman, pledged to reverse the citizenship laws if Tsvangirai wins presidential polls scheduled for March. "You cannot legislate for people's loyalty," he said.
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From The Saturday Star (SA), 29 December
New Zim recruits accused of torturing MDC men
Harare - Zimbabwe's national service officers have been accused by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change of political violence and terror over Christmas. Sekai Holland, an senior MDC official, brought three severely injured supporters to hospital in Harare on Wednesday after, she claimed, a rural government clinic refused to treat them. She said on Thursday that they were kidnapped from their homes about 250km south-east of Harare, and were tortured by servicemen. "Some of them had their hamstrings and tendons cut, others have been chopped all over their bodies," said the distraught Holland. The first man allegedly attacked by national service officers, MDC activist Laban Chiweta, died in hospital on Wednesday from injuries sustained on December 6. Three other opposition activists were killed a few days before Christmas, allegedly by war veterans and national servicemen, bringing the total number of MDC supporters killed since the June 2000 election to about 90. About 1 000 national service officers were recruited by the government after one of Mugabe's militant cabinet ministers, Border Gezi, died in a car crash in April. A national service training camp was established in his memory and the first 1 000 graduates were sent into service six weeks ago. Jacob Thabane, an MDC MP, said rural people had reported increased army patrols in their areas. "They're becoming frightened."
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From Associated Press, 30 December
Zimbabwe to name thousands of blacks to get farms of whites
Harare - Zimbabwe's government plans to publish the names of tens of thousands of blacks slated to gain ownership of 20 million acres of farmland, much of it now owned by whites, a state-owned newspaper reported today. The land, 95 percent of the farmland owned by whites in the former British colony once known as Rhodesia, has been earmarked for seizure ahead of presidential elections in March. President Robert Mugabe's project to return land taken by whites during the colonial era to the country's blacks has set off violent clashes between farmers and governing party militants, and has brought production on many farms to a standstill. Many view the land redistribution program as a desperate attempt by Mr. Mugabe to win popularity for the election. The president, 77, has ruled Zimbabwe since it gained independence in 1980, and is seeking another six-year term.
The names of nearly 55,000 blacks cleared to receive plots of land will be published next week, The Herald reported. More than 44,000 others who lack the capital for commercial farming will be given land in new, communal farming areas, the newspaper said, quoting an unidentified government spokesman. Veterans of the war against all- white rule in Rhodesia are guaranteed land if they have not received a previous allocation, he said. The spokesman asserted that the farm seizures would be vindicated by record production. Agriculture Minister Joseph Made last week predicted a bumper grain harvest of three million tons next April, but United Nations experts say the country needs to import up to 1.5 million tons of grain to avert famine.
Zimbabwe's High Court had declared the farm seizures illegal in December 2000, but ruled this month that they were lawful. The decision did, however, leave the door open for farmers to challenge the seizures on a case-by-case basis. In the first legal challenge since then, the High Court on Friday ruled that one farmer, Guy Watson-Smith, had the right to remove cattle and machinery from his farm, now occupied by a former army commander, Solomon Mujuru. Mr. Mujuru, who also owns four other farms, is a member of Mr. Mugabe's inner circle and the husband of a cabinet minister, Joyce Mujuru. She was recently quoted saying, "Africa is for black people only." Mr. Watson-Smith, a local chairman of the 4,500-member Commercial Farmers' Union, fled with his family to South Africa after receiving death threats. He testified that Mr. Mujuru had expected him to continue paying 300 workers and raise a tobacco crop, despite barring him from the property.
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From The Washington Post, 30 December
Digging up Congo's dirty gems
Kinshasa - For much of the past decade, radical Islamic organizations have increasingly turned to a shadowy, lucrative means of survival: diamonds from this vast, war-torn Central African country. Interviews with diamond dealers, intelligence sources, diplomats and investigators in Belgium, the United States and Western and Central Africa open a window on how such groups have exploited the corruption and chaos endemic to Congo to tap into the diamond trade and funnel millions of dollars to their organizations back home. The most prominent of these groups is the radical Lebanon-based movement Hezbollah, these sources said. In some cases, the militant groups have worked in Congo with Lebanese diamond dealers who also conducted business in Sierra Leone with men identified by the United States as key operatives for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, international investigators and regional diamond dealers said.
European and US investigators have been working to untangle the finances of bin Laden's network, and the complex diamond trail may shed light on the flow of money and treasure that are outside the conventional banking and financial systems, the officials said. "While we have seen little overlap between the operations or finances of Hezbollah and al Qaeda, we see some overlap among the dealers we believe worked with both groups," said one European investigator. "We are only now beginning to see the interconnectedness of criminal organizations across the region that are willing to deal with anyone if the price is right and ask no questions. Those are the people different terrorist organizations sought out." Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, President Bush has repeatedly said that choking off the funding for terrorist organizations was one of his priorities in the global war against terrorism. Now US and European officials say that tracing and disrupting profitable terrorist enterprises in African countries that have virtually no functioning governments will be an important component of the next phase in that fight. US officials said they had vastly underestimated the amount of money al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations controlled, and that they were investigating terrorist links not only to the Congo diamond trade, but also to Congo's gold and uranium trade, as well as the trade of diamonds and the semiprecious stone tanzanite in neighboring Tanzania. "We are beginning to understand how easy it is to move money through commodities like diamonds, which can't be traced and can be easily stored," said one US official. "One thing we are learning is not to ignore the obvious."
Johan Peleman, who monitors the illegal weapons and diamond trades in West Africa for the United Nations, said "failed or collapsed states" such as Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone "become free-trade zones for the underworld," where the actors are "international players in the field of chaos, violence and intimidation: organized crime networks and terror groups." "The black market in arms and in diamonds, but also trafficking in human beings, passports, gold and narcotics, is what connects the local players to the global underworld economy," Peleman said. "It is fascinating but especially frightening to see how these international networks have assimilated these areas into their worldwide structures, while the international community has had to withdraw from them." Diamond dealers and intelligence sources said Hezbollah and other groups buy diamonds in Congo - sometimes through middle men, sometimes directly from miners, but always at a fraction of their market value. They are then smuggled out of the country. The best-quality stones are sold in Antwerp, Belgium's diamond-marketing hub, while the bulk of the stones go to such emerging diamond centers as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and Bombay. The diamonds are sold for sizable profits, allowing the groups to finance their operations. Over the past two decades, Hezbollah's Iranian-backed military wing has been infamous for its attacks on US targets, including the 1983 bombings of the US Marine barracks and US Embassy in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, and for the kidnapping of Americans in Lebanon during the 1980s. "It is in the past three years or so, as the Congo really became the Wild West, that we see the influx of hard-core Islamist extremists here," said one intelligence source. "We know Hezbollah is here, we know other groups are here, but they can probably operate a long time before we know enough to stop them."
Congo, a country about the size of Western Europe with a population of 46 million, has been riven by insurrections, war and corruption since its independence from Belgium in 1960. Ruled from 1965 to 1997 by dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, then effectively partitioned by a pair of rebellions, Congo has few roads, hospitals or schools. Kinshasa, a sprawling city of 5 million, was relatively untouched by the years of warfare, but what is left of its colonial-era infrastructure is crumbling in the tropical heat and moisture. Electricity is intermittent, the once-paved roads are rutted and washed out, telephone service is almost inoperative, and armed soldiers from various armies patrol the streets. But Congo also has immense natural wealth: diamond fields, abundant timber and rich deposits of gold, uranium, tantalite and copper. Rather than enrich the country, Congo's resources have put money in the pockets of a relative few. First, Mobutu and his cronies split the treasure; now the armies of various neighboring countries have carved out portions of rich Congolese territory. They did so after the 1998 rebellion aimed at toppling Mobutu's successor, Laurent Kabila. Though Kabila was assassinated a year ago, his allies principally Angola and Zimbabwe - were rewarded with mineral concessions. Rwanda and Uganda, backers of the rebellion, also have laid claim to portions of Congo's riches. A report to the UN Security Council, written by a panel of experts and released in April, found that "exploitation of the natural resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo by foreign armies has become systemic and systematic. Plundering, looting and racketeering and the constitution of criminal cartels are becoming commonplace. These criminal cartels have ramifications and connections worldwide, and they represent the next serious security problem in the region."
Authorities in Antwerp - where more than 90 percent of the world's diamonds are bought, sold, polished or cut - estimate that about $600 million in diamonds are exported annually from Congo but that only about $180 million worth of the gems are exported legally. The rest is smuggled out and sold in different markets. "How much of those smuggled diamonds go to these [terrorist] organizations is impossible to say," said a European investigator in Kinshasa. "And how much of what they take goes to terrorist activities and how much goes to their other work like hospitals and feeding programs is even more difficult to determine. We are only now really beginning to look at this and it will take a long time to have a clear understanding of the operations." The Congolese government acknowledges that in a country where flight plans, customs, and immigration and passport control can easily be avoided, smuggling is difficult to combat, and terrorist activity hard to detect. "We know Congo is a very fertile territory for terrorist activities," said Information Minister Kikaya Bin Karubi. "We have a huge country with a huge jungle where people can do anything and we don't know anything about it. So many people bring dirty money to Congo, Congo being in its current state of affairs. We are very concerned."
In the past 18 months, two Belgian intelligence reports have linked the Congolese diamond trade to the funding of terrorist organizations, specifically Hezbollah. Belgian and US officials familiar with the reports said they warned that Antwerp was becoming the financial headquarters for radical Islamic groups and urged that more intelligence resources be dedicated to monitoring and investigating the groups' finances. After being ignored for months, those requests are only now being addressed, Belgian officials said. Among those now under criminal investigation in Belgium are Samih Osailly and his cousin, Aziz Nassour, Lebanese diamond merchants linked by witnesses to dealing with al Qaeda in Sierra Leone, according to Belgian law enforcement officials. The two men said in separate interviews that they were involved in the diamond business in both Sierra Leone and Congo but strongly denied any ties to radical Islamic organizations or al Qaeda. Osailly and Nassour are of particular interest to European and US investigators. They have a long history as important middle men in the diamond trade in Congo, mostly in rebel-controlled regions. The sources with direct knowledge of the deals said they began working closely with al Qaeda operatives in West Africa last year, shipping millions of dollars of diamonds from rebel-controlled areas of Sierra Leone through neighboring Liberia. Both men, Belgian and US officials said, are important middle men for a wide variety of Islamic organizations. According to sources with direct knowledge of the transactions, Osailly and Nassour sold large quantities of diamonds to Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed - all of whom are identified as al Qaeda operatives on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list. Because of their ties to the illegal diamond trade in Sierra Leone and Liberia, both men earlier this year were barred from international travel under UN sanctions imposed on participants in the illicit diamonds-for-weapons trade in West Africa.
Business associates who know the two men well said Nassour was a gruff, hardheaded businessman who made a fortune in the diamond trade, while Osailly worked for Nassour and was not particularly successful in his own right. The report to the UN Security Council on Congo identified Nassour as one of the main dealers of "conflict diamonds," or diamonds used to finance Africa's wars, in eastern Congo and said he provided about $2 million a year in tax revenue to Rwandan-backed rebels in the area where he operated. In a telephone interview from Beirut, Nassour said the allegations of his ties to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups were "absolutely incorrect and untrue" and have "seriously hurt me and my business." Nassour, who diamond dealers said had survived longer than most in the cut-throat world of diamond-dealing in Africa, said the allegations were spread by competitors in the diamond trade. Nassour, who had a monopoly on diamond exports from rebel-held territory in Congo's north-central Kisangani region until December 2000, said he did not always know who was buying his diamonds. "Guys are calling us all the time," Nassour said. "We don't know if they are Qaeda or not Qaeda. We are selling diamonds."
The Washington Post reported last month that sources with direct knowledge of the sale of Sierra Leonean diamonds to al Qaeda operatives said the sales were directed by Nassour, who used the code name Alpha Zulu. The sources said Nassour and Osailly ran the operation from a safe house in Monrovia, the capital of neighboring Liberia, and that the diamonds were bought and shipped by people Nassour sent from his diamond operation in Congo. Nassour said in the interview that he was widely known in Congo as Alpha Zulu but had not used the name elsewhere. He also said he had long-standing working relationships in Congo with the men who then staffed the house in Monrovia. But Nassour said that he did not know they had gone to Monrovia and that he did not meet with them when he visited there in July. He said the visit was tied to a prospective deal for mobile phones. But sources involved in the diamond trade said the visit was made to cement his diamond-dealing relationship with the Sierra Leone rebels. Osailly, in an interview, also denied dealing with the al Qaeda operatives, but said he did not always know the identity of his buyers. He said he lived in Monrovia and was in the diamond trade there for several months last year and this year. Osailly, 35, a soft-spoken resident of Antwerp, said he received funding for his diamond-buying venture from Nassour. But Osailly said the reports of his ties to Hezbollah were fabricated by his ex-wife during a custody battle for their children.
Control of much of the diamond trade in Congo has shifted in recent years from well-established Lebanese businessmen who had been in the country for decades, to a new group of younger, violent middle men who muscled their way into the business and are closely tied to Hezbollah and other radical Islamist groups, according to diamond dealers and intelligence officials. Intelligence sources here said some of the new businessmen were Palestinians who were active in Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war and were given Lebanese passports after the war in exchange for promises to leave the country as it stabilized. "The face of the business has changed," said one source in the diamond business in Kinshasa. "Hezbollah and the others have always been here, but not like in recent years. Now we have all these people who say they are not known to us or our families, and they are much more political. They even extort money from other dealers for the cause."
As the importance of conflict diamonds has grown over the years, so have efforts by activists around the world to keep such gems off the international market. The Kimberly Process, a series of meetings among diamond-producing states and countries that are major markets, resulted last month in a draft agreement that would theoretically make all diamonds traceable to their points of origin. The agreement is to be presented to the United Nations early next year. Belgium has moved in the past two years to make the importation of conflict diamonds more difficult. But while conflict diamonds make up less than 10 percent of the $10 billion global diamond trade, senior Belgian officials said they were afraid the growing international outrage would cause the diamond trade to decline, and that controls would only prompt dealers in conflict diamonds to seek new markets. "There is nothing wrong with the legal trade in diamonds, it is a beautiful product," said a senior Belgian official who deals with the diamond trade. "But the illegal trade is a big problem. Conflict diamonds are used to some extent to finance terrorist networks. We are trying to plug the holes here, but unless all the holes are plugged at once, the money just flows through another hole."
Many of the diamonds bought by Hezbollah and other radical groups in Congo are sold in less-regulated diamond markets that have sprung up in countries where the organizations can operate relatively freely, such as Dubai, Mauritius and India, according to diamond dealers here and diplomats and intelligence sources monitoring the trade. As an example of just how unregulated the diamond trade is, diplomats and diamond dealers here said, there now are direct charter flights to Dubai from some of Congo's richest diamond and gold areas. The planes file no flight plans and no cargo manifests. "Borders here, in terms of control, are a joke," said a senior diplomat in Kinshasa. "Who is going to control charter flights from diamond fields when there are not even radars to cover most of the country? Basically this is a country without authority."
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From News24 (SA), 1 January
Youths rampage in Harare
Harare - Militant backers of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe rampaged through a Harare township on New Year's Eve, looting food shops and beating residents, witnesses and the political opposition said on Tuesday. "I was coming home from town, when I saw people running, running," one resident in Kuwadzana township told AFP, asking not to be named out of fear for his safety. "These Zanu PF people were stealing from the tuckshops, beating people - even in their houses," he said. Officials in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said the looting spree began around 13:00 on Monday in Kuwadzana Extension, a poor township on the outer fringe of the capital.
"Graduates from the Border Gezi Training Camp, who are being trained ostensibly under a national youth service training program, descended on Kuwadzana township. They randomly beat up and harassed the residents of Kuwadzana," MDC's national youth chairperson, Nelson Chamisa said in a statement. "They then proceeded to Mabvuku township where they did the same thing. This group of about 100 youths was beating up people accusing them of being MDC supporters," he added. Police officials said they could not confirm the incident. The privately owned Daily News on Tuesday reported that police officials stood by while the militants assaulted residents, who eventually grouped together to chase away the attackers on their own. The latest attacks cap a violent holiday period in Zimbabwe, in which the MDC says four of its members were killed in northern Zimbabwe by suspected Zanu PF supporters, and a pro-government militant was found dead in southeastern Zimbabwe.
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From The Guardian (UK), 2 December
Ministers urged to halt deportations
Zimbabwe asylum seekers face torture, objectors claim
Home Office ministers are being urged to suspend the imminent deportation of a group of Zimbabwean asylum seekers because of the increasing violence against members of the opposition. Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Baroness Williams, the leader in the Lords, and Lord Avebury, the foreign affairs spokesman, have identified seven individuals who they believe face persecution or worse if their planned removal goes ahead. But while the Home Office accepts that the human rights situation in Zimbabwe is worsening in the run-up to April's presidential election, Lord Rooker, the home office minister, is refusing to intervene. In a letter on Monday to Lord Avebury, the minister said: "I do not accept that the situation is so serious that it requires suspension of removals."
Lord Avebury responded: "There have been some extremely nasty incidents only in the last week with four murders and groups of Zanu PF thugs going into towns and beating up the inhabitants. These removals must be reviewed." One of the seven was due to be put on a plane for Harare last night. A second man spoke to the Guardian yesterday from Tinsley House detention centre at Gatwick about his fear of being returned home. Lawrence N who does not want his surname published - said he was due to have been flown out on New Year's Eve but has won a stay until Friday. "The violence is getting worse by the day," Lawrence said. "I fear I will be going into deep trouble." Lawrence says he can prove he was a youth chairman of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) when he was picked up by Robert Mugabe's supporters six months ago."The veterans followed me to my mother's house where I was planning to lie low for a while," Lawrence said. "They abducted me and took me to a farm outside the city. There were seven of us. We were whipped for about two hours and I was beaten on the feet. Then they dumped us in the bush. I managed to escape the country and claimed asylum as soon as I landed at Gatwick. But the people here don't believe I am a full member of the MDC."
A number of Zimbabweans being held at Tinsley House suspect that one of their number is a spy for Mugabe's central intelligence organisation. "This man is dangerous," Lawrence said. "He has said he has no interest in staying in the UK and seeking asylum. We believe he has been sent over to gather names for the government." A spokeswoman for the Zimbabwe Association, which is also seeking a stay on the deportations, said: "Bona fide asylum seekers are in danger of violence if they are returned. The election campaign has started and the militia have been given the go-ahead to wreak havoc. Returnees will be moving targets." Simon Hughes said: "It is clearly now not safe for people with any record of political party activity to go back to Zimbabwe. The government must suspend deportations until the Commonwealth heads of government agree that normality has returned and people can live in Zimbabwe in safety and freedom." It was reported at the weekend that one dissident who was refused asylum in Britain and sent home has been beaten and tortured. Gerald Muketiwa was deported on December 16 and picked up at Harare airport. He escaped through a police station window. When he arrived at a relative's house in the southern city of Bulawayo he was bleeding and bruised. A spokeswoman for the Home Office, which is holding about 100 Zimbabweans in detention, said the situation was under constant review.
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From The Observer (UK), 30 December
Mugabe regime tortures activist deported by UK
A Zimbabwean dissident who was refused asylum in Britain and sent home has been beaten and tortured by local security police, The Observer can reveal. Gerald Muketiwa, who supported the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had his asylum claim turned down and was deported on 16 December. He arrived in Zimbabwe a day later despite protests from human rights groups. Muketiwa was picked up at the airport by secret police from President Robert Mugabe's feared CIO and beaten. He escaped through a police station window. He then turned up at a relative's house in the southern city of Bulawayo bleeding and bruised, and wearing only shorts. 'He found the CIO waiting for him [at the airport] and [they] took him to jail. Their main aim was to kill him,' said written testimony obtained from a relative by human rights activists. Muketiwa has now fled to a neighbouring country. The relatives who helped him flee have been beaten by security police looking for the activist.
Other Zimbabwean asylum seekers with links to the MDC are also awaiting deportation from Britain after having their claims turned down, despite evidence of the killing of opposition figures. Last week, pro-Mugabe militias killed four MDC activists, including Milton Chambati, 45, who was beheaded by 50 followers of Mugabe's Zanu PF party in the small north-western hamlet of Magunge. Zimbabwean asylum seekers waiting to be deported from Britain are terrified of the fate that awaits them. 'They are going to take me away and God knows what they are going to do to me,' said Laurence N, whose full name cannot be revealed because of fears for his safety. Laurence is being held in Tinsley House detention centre near Gatwick, and is scheduled to be deported on New Year's Eve. Gerald B, another Zimbabwean detainee at Tinsley House, is also set to be deported soon. Gerald, who bears scars on his arm and chest after being knifed by pro-Mugabe militias last year, said he feared for his life if returned to Zimbabwe. 'I don't mind being taken somewhere else that is not England. I just don't want to go home,' he said.
Activists said the deportation of the dissidents was against Britain's own political stance on Zimbabwe which has been critical of Mugabe's actions against the opposition. 'The Home Office is unwilling to recognise the situation is going into freefall in Zimbabwe. It is getting worse every day. The risk to these people who are being sent back is very real,' said Sarah Pennell of the Zimbabwe Association. Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Simon Hughes said the returnees faced a 'very dangerous' situation and that Britain was ignoring the massive human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. A Home Office spokeswoman declined to comment.
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From The Star (SA), 31 December
Mugabe's 'cronies' occupy seized farmland
Harare - The Zimbabwean government published the names on Monday of more than 1 000 new land owners who have benefited from President Robert Mugabe's controversial seizure of hundreds of white-owned farms. The state-owned Herald newspaper published what it said was a first list of land recipients. It included some senior officials from the ruling Zanu PF party. The government says it has given commercial farm plots to more than 100 000 applicants under the "fast-track resettlement programme". A former local government deputy minister, Tony Gara, and Agripa Gava, an executive member of the independence war veterans association, appear on the published list.
Zimbabwe state television quoted Agriculture Minister Joseph Made on Monday as telling a Zanu PF party meeting: "We have started redistributing some farms because we are committed to achieving justice in the area of land ownership. We are not apologetic about our stance at all." Made told the television station on Sunday the list of names would show the world Mugabe's land reform was not merely for cronies of government leaders. "No-one who wants land is going to be denied land," he said. Made made no reference to the violence and chaos that has accompanied the land redistribution programme since pro-government militants started invading hundreds of white-owned farms ahead of parliamentary elections last year.
Zimbabwe's High Court last Friday ordered that a white farmer evicted from his two farms under the programme be allowed to retrieve property from the farms. Guy Watson-Smith appealed to the High Court after he was evicted in September from his Elim and Alamein farms, among the largest white-owned farms in Zimbabwe. Watson-Smith said his eviction was instigated by retired army commander Solomon Mujuru, a senior member of Zanu PF. The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), grouping 4 500 mostly white farmers, said Mujuru was among Zanu PF officials who had been allocated farming plots under the land programme. Critics accuse Mugabe of using the land issue to win votes ahead of presidential elections scheduled for March. Mugabe faces a stiff challenge from opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change. Nine white farmers have been killed and scores of black farm workers assaulted in violence that has accompanied the invasion of farms since February 2000 by militants who say they are backing Mugabe's programme.
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From IRIN (UN), 2 January
Opposition looks to SADC
Civic organisations in Zimbabwe see regional and international pressure as the last hope for ending the country's worsening political violence, despite the failure so far of southern African leaders to take effective action to stem the political crisis. Advocacy groups are planning to lobby regional leaders at an extraordinary Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit on Zimbabwe in Malawi later this month, Brian Raftopoulos of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Committee told IRIN on Wednesday. Raftopoulos, an associate professor at the University of Zimbabwe, said that civic representatives would also visit key countries in the region in a bid to persuade their governments that sustained pressure on Harare was needed to ensure free and fair presidential elections in March.
The two-day SADC summit, called by the organisation's chair and Malawian President Bakili Muluzi, is expected to take place from 13-15 January in Blantyre, Malawi's Daily Times reported. It will follow a meeting in Harare last month by a SADC ministerial task team that refused to call the Zimbabwean government - widely blamed for the political violence - to order. The regional grouping was labelled as irrelevant by Zimbabwe's main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Raftopoulos, whose organisation provided testimony to an earlier SADC meeting on Zimbabwe, said he did not at the moment foresee the regional body taking action against President Robert Mugabe - a key figure within SADC. But, SADC could be spurred into action by the European Union and the United States who have threatened sanctions against Zimbabwe's ruling party, but would need to work in consultation with Harare's neighbours, Raftopoulos said. He added that minimum measures by SADC, such as setting preconditions for what it would deem a free and fair election, would be "a huge step for the region".
According to Bidi Munyaradzi, director of the human rights group ZimRights, "we have already dismissed all domestic channels of appeal. As civil society we can only revert to international and regional bodies for support". He told IRIN in a recent interview that "although ZimRights does not actually support general sanctions, the Commonwealth and SADC should put pressure on the Zimbabwean government to ensure the immediate restoration of the rule of law. [Election] observers should be here now, instead of later." In the worsening political violence, the MDC has accused ruling Zanu PF party militants of the murder of four of its members over the Christmas period. At least one Zanu PF supporter was also killed.
Last week, Sekai Holland, a senior MDC official, brought three severely injured supporters to hospital in Harare whom she claimed had been kidnapped and tortured by national service officers. "Some of them had their hamstrings and tendons cut, others have been chopped all over their bodies," Holland was quoted by the London-based Daily Telegraph as saying. The government has touted its national service scheme as an initiative to provide unemployed youths with skills training. However, critics allege that instead, the Border Gezi training camp in Mount Darwin named posthumously after one of Mugabe's most loyal ministers - is turning out politically indoctrinated "shock troops" for Zanu PF. They, the war veterans and the police, are expected to spearhead Mugabe's recent call for "war" against the opposition.
Meanwhile, Britain's Observer reported on Sunday that a Zimbabwean dissident who was refused asylum and sent home was beaten and tortured by security police. Gerald Muketiwa, an MDC supporter, had his asylum claim turned down and was deported on 16 December. He arrived in Zimbabwe a day later despite protests from human rights groups. Muketiwa was picked up at the airport by secret police, but later managed to escape through a police station window. Muketiwa has since fled to a neighbouring country and relatives who helped him flee have been beaten by security officers looking for the activist, the newspaper said. It reported that other Zimbabwean asylum seekers with links to the MDC are also awaiting deportation from Britain after having their claims turned down, despite evidence of the killing of opposition figures. It interviewed dissidents in detention awaiting deportation who said they were scared to return home.
"We are expecting to see an escalation in violence in areas that are considered contested," Raftopoulos said. "There is no doubt MDC will not be able to restrain their people indefinitely," he added. Concern by the opposition that the government would respond to retaliation by MDC militants with a state of emergency, has to an extent been superseded by the fear surrounding a series of draconian pieces of legislation awaiting parliamentary approval. Raftopoulos and Munyaradzi said that when passed, Zimbabwe's opposition would effectively be operating under emergency regulations. The Public Order and Security Bill, the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, the Labour Relations Bill and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Bill would "outlaw all opposition", Raftopoulos said.
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From The Financial Mail (SA), 14 December
Delaying the crunch that must come
Harare - As the pressure mounts on President Robert Mugabe, Zimbabweans are beginning to believe that their nightmare is coming to an end. Two events - the approval last week by the US House of Representatives of the Zimbabwe Democracy Bill and President Thabo Mbeki's new tough line evoked furious, even panicky, reactions from the ruling Zanu PF party and the State-owned media. The most damaging element in the sanctions Bill is the requirement that US representatives at international agencies, such as the IMF and World Bank, withhold support for any loans to Zimbabwe. Since Zimbabwe is in arrears to both institutions, as well as to the African Development Bank, fresh lending by the multilaterals is on no-one's agenda, except that of Harare. However, Mbeki's response is by far the more serious for Mugabe. From a Zanu PF viewpoint, Pretoria's attitude is life-threatening. Reports that Mbeki is insisting on free and fair elections have stunned the government. Harare has said that international observers are not an option, though it will accept teams from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union. Mbeki hopes his SADC colleagues will follow his lead in trying to force Mugabe to level the electoral playing field. In the past the SADC, like Pretoria, has avoided confrontation, but the accumulating evidence of economic damage across the region, highlighted by the rand's woes, may by now have convinced regional leaders.
This week's meeting of SADC ministers in Harare, ostensibly to review progress of the land resettlement scheme, highlighted the gap between government claims and reality. A submission to the meeting by the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) revealed that far from allocating farms to "land-hungry peasants", government is giving 99-year leases with an option to purchase to party big-wigs. As a result of the land policy, the CFU added, the soya bean crop has been cut by 60%, and maize production will fall from 850 000 t to 220 000 t next year. Ironically, and puzzlingly, the sense of economic crisis in Zimbabwe is less than palpable. Listed companies report turnover growth ahead even of inflation of 98%; some house prices have trebled; consumer spending is buoyant. Indeed, those businessmen who predicted an economic crunch before the March poll are now having second thoughts. Informal cross-border business is booming. Shoppers who come to Zimbabwe and change their money at the parallel market rate are finding goods cheaper than at home. There is a substantial (unmeasurable) inflow of foreign currency from expatriate Zimbabweans, which is keeping spending afloat.
Despite these anomalies, the fundamentals could hardly be worse. Money supply, growing at over 100%/year, is out of control. So, too, is inflation, which is likely to breach the 100% level by the year-end despite the imposition of price controls on basic goods. The parastatal sector teeters on the brink of bankruptcy: by rolling back, or banning, rate and price increases by local governments and parastatals, government is merely delaying a crunch that must come after the elections. Latest official figures for mid-year show that 24,6% of all commercial bank loans were "adversely classified". The stock exchange bubble is deflating, with equity prices - which trebled in the first eight months of the year - down 19% in the last two. Interest rates have hardened, with the yield on 91-day Treasury bills firming recently to around 25%; yet real rates have become even more negative as inflation accelerates. Foreign exchange inflows dwindled to a mere US$30m in November, less than the US$40m/month needed to finance fuel imports. The parallel market rate for the US dollar is back to its worst levels of Z350 - a premium of more than 500% over the official rate.
Commercial farmers predict a 35% slump in output next season, but the latest official tobacco crop projection of 160m kg is only 20% lower than last season and well above the pessimistic forecasts of 120m kg or even less. There are isolated reports of food problems and predictions of a food crisis in the new year. But as the weeks go by, there is a sense that the crunch on virtually every front - from food production to government finances - will be delayed until after the vote. If Mugabe were to win, it would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed, whereas should the MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai become President, as two recent opinion polls suggest, he will need all the help he can get from the international community, including SA, to solve the country's worst-ever crisis.
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From The Financial Gazette, 4 January
Mugabe to scrap poll
President Robert Mugabe is expected to use his sweeping powers next week to postpone indefinitely Harare’s mayoral and council elections, which were ordered to be held next month by Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court, official sources said yesterday. Mugabe’s expected action would follow a decision this week by Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo to extend by six months the tenure of the state-appointed caretaker commission which has been running the affairs of Harare City since 1999. The sources said Chombo’s decision to renew the mandate of Elijah Chanakira’s panel until June this year was in line with a plan crafted and agreed by the Politburo - the supreme organ of Mugabe’s Zanu PF after the Supreme Court ruling a month ago.
The 12-member commission’s tenure had expired on Monday this week. The Supreme Court ruled that Harare’s mayoral and municipal polls must be held on February 11 after embittered Harare residents, represented by the Combined Harare Residents’ Association, challenged the legality and tenure of the hand-picked commission. Harare has been without an elected mayor and council since 1999 when the government sacked a Zanu PF-dominated council that was led by businessman and party cadre Solomon Tawengwa for alleged gross mismanagement and corruption. The sources said Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa is crafting a statutory instrument under the Presidential (Temporary) Powers Act which Mugabe would use to amend the Urban Councils Act and postpone the eagerly awaited ballot in Zimbabwe’s capital. "A statutory instrument issued under presidential powers amending the Urban Councils Act should be released in the coming week or so which will postpone the mayoral elections," an official in the Ministry of Justice told the Financial Gazette yesterday. Other sources said the government’s legal officers were already busy cobbling up the statutory instrument that could see the municipal polls moved to a date well after a landmark presidential ballot due in March. In the March plebiscite, Mugabe - in power since Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain in 1980 - faces the stiffest challenge to his autocratic rule from Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) who enjoys massive support in all urban centres, crucially Harare.
Zanu PF has already lost three mayoral elections to the MDC this year in the cities of Masvingo, Bulawayo and Chegutu. The sources said Zanu PF’s leadership and Mugabe had been briefed by the government’s spy Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) on the need to postpone the mayoral ballot because, the CIO argued, its timing and outcome would lift the MDC’s political momentum ahead of the presidential poll. Zanu PF insiders said the CIO had concluded that the ruling party will lose heavily in the Harare mayoral elections. "The decision to postpone the elections was reached after we received adverse intelligence reports on our projected performance," a Zanu PF Politburo member said yesterday. "We decided to hold the municipal elections after the presidential poll because the outcome and campaign itself for the mayoral elections would derail our momentum," the official added. The Chitungwiza municipal elections which are scheduled to be held later this month are also likely to be postponed under the proposed presidential amendments. The sources said the government would also claim that the postponements were necessary for the office of Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede, a Zanu PF member, to adequately prepare for the presidential election.
The MDC yesterday blasted the extension of the tenure of the Harare commission, saying it was a deliberate move by the government to delay the mayoral ballot it knew it would lose. "The people of Zimbabwe fought a war of liberation where, among other things, they sought the right to be governed by their own elected representatives and not to have leaders imposed on them," said Paul Themba Nyathi, the party’s shadow minister of local government. "The Supreme Court has shown that the government acted illegally in its failure to hold the Harare elections for two years. We hope that the government will, for a change, learn to live by the laws of the country," he said. MDC legislator Tendai Biti said were the municipal elections to be postponed as suggested, this would not surprise him because "it would be the usual executive hooliganism against the judiciary", a reference to the government’s flouting of the rule of law. Washington has already imposed smart sanctions on Mugabe, which include banning him and his officials from travelling to the US and freezing their overseas assets, for their persistent refusal to restore law and order, in suspension since 2000 when Zanu PF militants were allowed to seize farms nationwide with Mugabe’s open approval. The 15-nation European Union, the world’s biggest trading bloc, is expected to take similar action shortly.
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From The Times (UK), 4 January
Zimbabwe law fears grow as another leading judge resigns
Harare - One of Zimbabwe’s most respected judges has resigned as fears intensify for the rule of law and the prospect of fair presidential elections in March. Four High Court judges have resigned since last year’s forced early retirement of Anthony Gubbay, the former Chief Justice, in the face of death threats from pro-government militants. Zimbabwe’s courts will be the final internal arbiters of the freedom and fairness of President Mugabe’s pursuit of a further six-year term in elections due early this year. He has vowed to resist the admission of overseas monitors. Mr Justice David Bartlett, 49, submitted a letter of resignation to President Mugabe on Monday, The Herald, the state-controlled newspaper, said yesterday.
Although Mr Justice Bartlett gave no reasons, the paper quoted analysts who said that his resignation, due to come into effect on March 31, was a sign that "white judges were realising they were losing their grip on the judiciary following reforms". He was appointed in 1992 by President Mugabe, but The Herald said that his departure helped to "rid the bench of those elements from the sad colonial era who were still occupying critical positions". It ushered in a "non-racial, democratic society". Only two white judges and two of Asian descent remain on the 30-member bench. Mr Mugabe has told his party: "We shall prove that we can do without the white man."
Mr Justice Bartlett, born in Bulawayo, won international admiration for his handling of the 1996 trial for the murder of a former State House aide, Jefta Dube, ordering an investigation of claims that Dube had been traumatised as the sex slave of Canaan Sodindo Banana, the former President. The credibility of President Mugabe’s denunciation of homosexuals as "lower than pigs or dogs" was shattered when it was revealed that there had been a 15-year cover-up of Banana’s activities. Last month Mr Justice Bartlett failed to secure the attendance at court of Emmerson Mnangagwa - the parliamentary Speaker and the ruling Zanu (PF) party’s secretary for administration - to explain the early release of an armed robber serving a 35-year sentence. Mr Mnangagwa blamed officials for clemency shown to the robber, who promptly returned to crime. The robber’s mother, a long-standing acquaintance of Mr Mnangagwa, was given her son’s booty to invest instead of having it seized.
Giving the John Foster Human Rights Trust lecture in Britain in November, Mr Gubbay accused President Mugabe’s Government of flouting Zimbabwe’s Constitution, "setting one standard for themselves and another for the people they govern". This was echoed by Mr Justice Michael Gillespie, who left for Britain last year. Mr Justice James DeVittie, who is of mixed race, and Mr Justice Ishmael Chatikobo, an African, also left the High Court last year. They made no public statements. Adrian de Bourbon, chairman of Zimbabwe’s Bar Council, said that Mr Justice Bartlett’s departure further weakened the judiciary.
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From IRIN (UN), 3 January
WFP emergency operation delayed
Poor donor responses have delayed the launch of a World Food Programme (WFP) emergency feeding operation in Zimbabwe. With more than 550,000 Zimbabweans considered to be at risk of hunger and starvation, WFP launched an appeal in December for US $60 million to buy about 117 mt of food. It was hoped that food distributions would be under way, with the help of local non-governmental organisations, by the beginning of January. WFP deputy regional director Nicholas Siwingwa told IRIN on Thursday that "responses have been extremely slow". He said WFP had already purchased about 5,200 mt of maize meal from suppliers in South Africa and hoped to begin distributing the food by the beginning of February - more than a month late. However, it is clear that unless more contributions are received soon, the feeding operation could fail to reach those in need. A combination of flooding, drought, severe disruptions on farms and a shortage of foreign currency have caused food shortages in the country. The government has ordered about 150,000 mt of maize from South Africa for its commercial market, but will have to import much more to replenish its reserves.
"The initial parcel we are purchasing in South Africa is coming from our own standby facilities so that we can at least start off the emergency operation, which will require roughly about 10,000 mt of food a month. The more we delay, the more we will be putting many lives in danger ... We need these food resources very urgently. If we don't get this food now, we will begin to see very stressful situations in the areas where we want to begin this operation," Siwingwa said. "We are now in January. This is normally the lean season. The harvest is not expected until about April or May and we are already receiving a lot of information to the effect that food security is worsening the rural areas of Matabeleland North and South. We are actually making very urgent appeals to our donors to contribute so we are able to launch this operation as soon as possible," he added.
When the appeal was launched in December, WFP regional director Judith Lewis appealed to the donor community for cash contributions, saying that this would help secure food stocks rapidly and locally. It takes about three months from the time a donor pledges money towards an appeal to the time food is purchased, transported and distributed to the needy. She said at the time that WFP believed that a complex emergency was developing in Zimbabwe, with a "variety of serious problems which when added up, gravely threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of people". WFP said in a statement that already many Zimbabweans were averaging only one meal a day, or were going without food for the entire day. What little grain many rural families managed to harvest last year was consumed long ago and their ability to buy food on the market was hindered by increasingly high prices, and limited opportunities to either earn cash through casual labour, or receive money from family or friends who worked in urban areas or in South Africa, the statement had said.
On Thursday Siwingwa said that the 116,651 mt of food the agency was looking for comprised of cereals, vegetable oil, pulses, corn soya blend and ground nuts. He said contributions in kind would be welcome too as they could be more rapidly transported and distributed. The operation was expected to target the most vulnerable, including female-headed households, the terminally ill without support, households with low food crop harvests and households without any income. While some believe the sluggish donor response to the WFP appeal is a result of the crisis facing Afghanistan, one diplomatic source said it was also possible that donors were concerned about political developments in Zimbabwe, especially since campaigning for the presidential elections in March has already been marred by violence. Many local non-governmental organisations voiced concern about a month ago that food aid could be used as a political tool by the government in the run-up to the presidential polls. President Robert Mugabe, facing the stiffest opposition he's had since assuming power in 1980, will contest the election.
Meanwhile, according to a report in the state-controlled Herald, the government has finally put in place mechanisms for the importation of about 150,000 mt of maize from South Africa. The report said that the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) had cancelled a tender awarded earlier amid debate over whether going to tender was necessary given the strategic importance of maize and wheat - both controlled products, with GMB being the sole buyer. "The bottom line is that we are talking about a strategic interest which should supersede everything else. Accordingly, it should be prudent for the GMB to import maize in its own right as a national interest. This should reduce overhead costs and minimise the risk of sabotage," an unnamed government official was quoted as saying. GMB acting general manager Joan Mutukwa told the newspaper that maize imports were being finalised, but that more details would be released soon.
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From ZWNEWS, 4 January
Rand, regional shortages threatens SA food security
The South African milling industry has warned that the precipitate fall in the rand exchange rate and southern African regional food shortages are putting economic policy in jeopardy. As far back as the end of November, the National Chamber of Milling said that bulk maize prices had risen 107% over the course of the year, and that it expected this to feed through to a 60% increase in the price of maize to consumers. Wheat prices, due mainly to the fall in the rand’s exchange rate, had risen 27%. Since then, the rand has fallen a further 25%. The weakening of the South African currency has been blamed in large part on the deteriorating political situation in Zimbabwe. "At these prices, consumers will be unable to afford maize meal as a staple food", the Chamber said. "These increases must surely raise a red flag as to the status of household food security in South Africa." The Chamber also warned of the effects of exports of grain to other countries in the region. The disruptive effects of farm invasions in Zimbabwe and erratic rains last season have added another burden to the region’s maize supplies. In the past, Zimbabwe would have used its grain reserves and imports to cover the deficit. But the reserves have been run down to virtually zero, and the damage to Zimbabwe's export industries resulting from political turmoil has meant that there is no foreign currency to pay for imports. "The only containing factor on further maize price increases currently, is the inability of the road and rail transportation system to effectively export just over a million tons of local maize that is rumoured to be destined for export markets," the Chamber said, in an apparent reference to plans for food aid distribution in Zimbabwe and elsewhere.
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From CNN, 3 January
Political violence flares again in Zimbabwe
Harare - Ruling party militants armed with axes and clubs ransacked the home of an opposition party official Thursday, opposition officials said. In a statement Thursday, the opposition said a mob of about 50 people, armed with stones, axes and clubs and led by ruling party militia, attacked the house in western Harare of former opposition parliamentary candidate Derrick Mzira, smashing furniture and looting food and personal belongings. It was the latest report of violence in Zimbabwe, which has been rocked by nearly two years of chaos and government-sanctioned attacks on white-owned farms and political opponents. The police said they were investigating reports of clashes in the township of Glen Norah, where Mzira lives, that followed violence in the nearby township of Kuwadzana on Monday.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change and President Robert Mugabe's ruling party, Zanu PF, have accused each other of launching attacks on their rivals and provoking retaliation. Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said he had no information immediately available on disturbances in western Harare on Thursday. He said there was no confirmation from district police northeast of Harare of the arrest of Tapera Macheka, the opposition's provincial chairman in Bindura town, 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Harare. The opposition party statement said Macheka and 10 of his supporters were arrested before dawn on Thursday and that the police gave no reasons for the arrests. Some of those arrested were guarding the home of Trymore Midzi, a district opposition official who died December 29 after a knife attack, the statement said.
It said there had been no arrests of suspects in the murders of four opposition activists, including Midzi. "The police have not arrested anyone. They say they are still investigating. They have instead arrested mourning MDC supporters," the statement said. During clashes between rival party supporters in the cramped Kuwadzana township Monday, windows were smashed in about seventy houses. Several shops and open-air food stalls were looted. Human rights groups warned that the pattern of violence was likely to worsen ahead of presidential elections in March. Political violence has continued since parliamentary elections last June. The March elections promise to be the most significant challenge to Mugabe's 21 years of rule.
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Comment from The Cape Argus (SA), 3 January
SA's only way out of trouble is to get tough with Mugabe
Cape Town - About 10 weeks from now, Zimbabwe is due to go to the polls. All indications are that it could lead to a catastrophe southern Africa hasn't seen in decades. If the government of South Africa doesn't take decisive action in the next few weeks, our currency will most likely lose another half of its value and we will be overwhelmed by several million refugees. We have many months of strong evidence that Robert Mugabe has become so unpopular among his citizens that it is highly unlikely that he could win the election. We have even stronger evidence that he will not willingly leave office. It is virtually certain that he will rig the election, stop opposition supporters from voting, disrupt the election process or simply not accept the results. Despite utter provocation, Zimbabweans have been very patient and peaceful the last year or two. They probably remember the suffering that their own war for liberation brought to their people. But this patience has now worn out. If Mugabe uses his military, fat from raping the Democratic Republic of the Congo, against his own people to stay in power, there will be a violent resistance. It could escalate into a civil war, which will destabilise all Zimbabwe's neighbours. Mugabe has recently said openly, referring to the election: "This is no longer just a contest. This is a revolutionary war."
The last thing Africa, especially southern Africa, needs now is for one of its most prominent and once powerful and prosperous countries to turn into an Angola, Somalia or Liberia. It will make a joke of Thabo Mbeki's New Partnership for African Development. It will scare tourists and investors off the entire region. It will lead to large scale starvation inside Zimbabwe, and millions will cross the borders into neighbouring states, especially South Africa. It will be too heavy a burden on our infrastructure and service delivery, and the working classes, the unemployed, the old and the sick in South Africa will pay the highest price. This likely disaster is just a few weeks away, yet I see little urgency in Pretoria, Gaborone, Maputo, Lusaka and Dar es Salaam to avert it or deal with it. Are we going to wait for it to happen before we start making plans, and then will we ask the Western world to come and help? There is only one man who can take a decisive lead now, and that is President Thabo Mbeki. The time for demonstrations of "African solidarity" or"solidarity between former liberation movements" is over. The crisis is upon us. The other countries in the region have repeatedly shown they are not willing or able to deal with Mugabe, and most have turned their eyes to Pretoria for action.
Mbeki has the ear of the British government and that of the Commonwealth. These two bodies should be co-opted into the southern African rescue plan for Zimbabwe. Speak very loudly and carry an enormous stick, should be the approach. Mugabe, his senior Zanu-PF comrades and his generals should be warned of very serious consequences if they interfere with or rig the election. A minimum requirement should be that election monitors of Southern African Development Community countries and the Commonwealth be given full and safe access to all parts of Zimbabwe before and during the election. Mugabe's credibility is so low that even if he did not interfere with the election and won, Zimbabweans and the rest of us will still believe that he rigged it. But while that process of negotiations with Zanu PF is going on, we should be preparing refugee camps on our border and prepare to feed hundreds of thousands, if not millions. At the same time, our security forces should start deploying on our northern border to ensure stability and law and order. The best outcome at this late stage would perhaps be to persuade the Zanu PF leadership to forcibly oust Mugabe and to postpone the elections for a few months for things to settle down a bit. Rightly, Mugabe should face an international tribunal on charges of gross human rights violations, if not genocide, after the slaughter of some 20 000 people in Matabeleland in the 1980s. But Mugabe knows that he will face justice if he is no longer the president, which is probably the main reason why he is clinging to power.
Perhaps the uncomfortable compromise would be to offer him and some of his top generals and ministers asylum somewhere else - perhaps he could go to some Arab dictatorship, like Uganda's Idi Amin many years ago. But the main issue is that the contingency plans should be made now. If we wait for the disaster to happen before we prepare, we will pay a very dear price. This time, we will not be able to blame colonialism, Western imperialism or apartheid. It is a disaster purely made in Africa. If we don't deal with it quickly and decisively, we will end up not only paying a heavy material price, but also the price of an undermined self-esteem as Africans.
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