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Archived News
11th March 2003
Cricket fans released from Zimbabwe jail
Zimbabwe cops arrest another 24 cricket fans
70 opposition supporters detained in Zimbabwe
Aged priest assaulted
Menashe blew MDC funds: defence
South Africa's 'silent' diplomacy
England dealt a decisive blow
Ben-Menashe loses temper
Zim judge stands up to state after arrest
War vets to green bombers
New forex rates apply to all sellers
Zim makes a plan to combat economic collapse
US rounds on Zimbabwe for repression of dissent
Story stealer Chigodo quits Herald
Lawyer for jailed Zimbabwean politician says RCMP withholding evidence
Witness asks for dismissal in Zimbabwe
Judge's arrest unconstitutional
IBA calls for International Criminal Court to investigate and try Robert Mugabe
Indaba urges action on Zim crisis
Fury is growing in Zim over SA govt position
Bush freezes assets of Mugabe, Zimbabwean officials
Message to the Congress of the United States
Zim: Time for SA sanctions
Treason: Key witness can't quit
Judge warns Ben-Menashe
Zanu PF officials accused of raping militia trainees
Women arrested
Who leaked Zimbabwe report?
Canada's international 'man of infamy' part 1
Signs Mugabe regime is relaxing Catch-22 citizenship law
'I was ordered to kill my father'
Zimbabwe running on empty
Canada's international 'man of infamy' part 2
Tsvangirai witness admits assault charge
Witness 'withheld key facts'
Twenty-seven MDC members arrested
Villagers flee Zanu PF terror
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From Associated Press, 4 March
Cricket fans released from Zimbabwe jail
Harare - A court released 39 people arrested and jailed for four days after protesting the Zimbabwe government at a World Cup cricket match, their lawyer said. But a woman who was also arrested at last Friday's match between Zimbabwe and the Netherlands remains unaccounted for. Those held said they last saw her wearing blood-stained clothing, said Tim Cherry, the group's lawyer. Another woman had already been released for medical treatment. There was no immediate police comment on the missing woman. The magistrate's court in the western city of Bulawayo ordered the release of the group but ordered them to reappear in court this month on charges they violated severe new security laws that prohibit unauthorized political protests and behavior likely to cause a breach of the peace. Cherry said he planned to officially protest the conditions in which those arrested were held. Twenty-three of the group were held in a single cell designed for six prisoners and were unable to sit or lie down. They were denied water and food, until it was eventually brought to them by family members, he said. The cell's toilet was broken so they had to use a bucket in its place. Cherry said police were "totally uncooperative" when approached by lawyers and family members seeking information on the status of the protesters.
On Friday the protesters waved banners critical of President Robert Mugabe and called for a return to law and order in Zimbabwe. Opponents of the World Cup matches in Zimbabwe argue the government has used the tournament as propaganda to obscure its violations of democratic and human rights and state orchestrated political violence. The International Cricket Council, the sport's governing body, ruled Zimbabwe could safely host its World Cup matches. Five other protesters arrested at Zimbabwe's World Cup match against Australia in Bulawayo on Feb. 24 said they had been beaten. One of the five reported beatings to his back by a whip and baton, being kicked in the ribs, severely slapped on the sides of his face and being beaten on the top of his feet. Another said he was beaten and had his toe crushed with police boots and suffered multiple minor lesions and swelling from being beaten. Faced with growing discontent and dissent, Mugabe's authoritarian regime has been tightening control over the opposition and the media. Independent human rights groups reported at least 200 deaths in politically related violence since 2000 and thousands of cases of torture, unlawful arrest, assaults and arson, mainly against opposition supporters. Few alleged perpetrators have been arrested.
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 5 March
Zimbabwe cops arrest another 24 cricket fans
Police arrested another 24 people at the World Cup cricket match being played in the western city of Bulawayo on Tuesday for allegedly violating security laws that outlaw public protest against President Robert Mugabe's government, lawyers said. The 24 were arrested at the Queens Park grounds where Zimbabwe were playing Pakistan and were being held at Bulawayo central police station under the Public Order and Security Act, said lawyer Kucaca Pulu. He did not know under what circumstances they were arrested because officers of the police "law and order" section responsible for monitoring political activity had gone home early, he said. As controversy over Zimbabwe's holding of World Cup matches continued, spectators said police had sharply stepped up security at the grounds following demonstrations at two previous matches to protest against Mugabe's campaign of repression of critics. The new batch of protesters took the place in the faeces-smeared cells of Bulawayo central of 39 who were arrested on Friday after the World Cup match between Zimbabwe and Holland for holding banners and wearing black armbands. They were finally taken to court on Tuesday and released late in the afternoon after four nights in crowded cells with no provision for food or water and where toilet facilities comprised a 10 litre bucket shared among men and women in the same cells. One of the prisoners was suffering from tuberculosis, which is highly infectious and potentially fatal.
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From VOA News, 4 March
70 opposition supporters detained in Zimbabwe
Tendai Maphosa
In Zimbabwe, police have detained at least 70 supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. The suspects are accused of taking two guns from policemen at a rally on Sunday. Opposition party officials openly acknowledge that the two policemen, who were not in uniform, were disarmed by members of the Movement for Democratic Change. The officials say that, for security reasons, it is normal procedure at all party rallies to disarm those carrying weapons. At the end of the rally, the weapons - and those who were carrying them - are then handed over to police. However at the end of Sunday's rally, party officials say the two firearms taken were not handed over. Police then moved in and arrested more than 70 people. Though police say one of the weapons has since been recovered, the other one has still not been found. MDC officials say their efforts to find it have been unsuccessful. Simbarashe Muzenda, a lawyer for those detained, says they are due to appear in court Wednesday and will be charged with public violence under Zimbabwe's Public Order and Security Act. Mr. Muzenda could not give the exact number of those in police custody as he says more people who were at the rally are being arrested every day. In another incident that took place on Sunday, 26 MDC supporters were arrested near President Robert Mugabe's official residence. They were accused of insulting soldiers on guard duty outside the residence, a charge they deny. The 26 were released on the same day, but not before, they say, being beaten up by the soldiers and fined by the police.
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From ZWNEWS, 5 March
Aged priest assaulted
Police on Monday imprisoned and severely assaulted an 82-year-old Jesuit priest suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Father Nilus O'Donavan was found wandering in a confused state in the early hours of Monday morning along Harare's Seventh Street, which runs past Robert Mugabe's residence, Catholic church sources report. Father O'Donovan, an English scholar and a former rector of St. Ignatius College, a distinguished secondary school run by Jesuits near Harare, lives in retirement at the college. On Sunday, he was given a lift to the Seminary located some three kilometers from the college and was supposed to walk back. He had not arrived by dark, and searches by seminarians and others were in vain. Father O'Donovan was still missing on Monday morning when a message came that he was in prison in Harare, having been picked up on Seventh Street at 2 am. The priest, described by those who know him as a gentle old man whose mind was failing, was jailed and badly brutalized. He was released at 2 pm on Monday, his face covered with caked blood, and taken to a Jesuit house in Harare.
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From The Daily News, 5 March
Menashe blew MDC funds: defence
By Lloyd Mudiwa
Ari Ben-Menashe, the key State witness in the MDC treason trial, allegedly blew the US$97 600 (Z$5 368 000) paid by the MDC to his company to hold in trust. Defence lawyer Advocate George Bizos said Ben-Menashe was, therefore, not a credible witness. He said Ben-Menashe and Kevin Legault, his partner at Dickens and Madson, had spent the money, and were not keeping it in trust. Bizos said: "We have an affidavit by a witness stating that you (Ben-Menashe) and Legault made a habit of drawing the money held in trust and sharing it." Earlier, Ben-Menashe said the US$97 600, treated as proceeds of a crime, was held in their trust account. The money would be surrendered to the government after the trial, he said. Bizos yesterday asked Justice Paddington Garwe to censure Ben-Menashe for not disclosing the money’s whereabouts. But, Bharat Patel, the Deputy Attorney-General, said Ben-Menashe had complied with the order as best as he could. Garwe said he would make a ruling "in due course".
The MDC paid the money before the government hired Ben-Menashe in January 2002 for US$615 000 ostensibly to spruce up its battered image. Ben-Menashe later tricked Morgan Tsvangirai, Welshman Ncube and Renson Gasela by filming them as they allegedly plotted President Mugabe’s assassination. Ben-Menashe said only Francis Legault, the company’s finance director, knew where the MDC funds were. She is Legault’s ex-wife. Yesterday, Ben-Menashe denied ever saying the money was in a lawyer’s trust account. He said he failed to give his firm’s balance sheet and profit and loss accounts for 2001 and 2002 to the defence because they did not yet exist. The financial documents were only required under Canadian law by October 2003, he said. But Ben-Menashe supplied the names of his company’s employees, consultants and agents during 2001 and 2002 as ordered by the court. They included former Russian intelligence and military officers who were in Zimbabwe in the last two months working on behalf of the government, he said.
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From BBC News, 5 March
South Africa's 'silent' diplomacy
By Carolyn Dempster
South Africa's attempts to find a solution to the political and economic crisis in neighbouring Zimbabwe with "quiet diplomacy" is stoking the fury of ordinary Zimbabweans who cannot see any benefits of the intervention, and believe that President Thabo Mbeki has sold them out. "President Mbeki is a collaborator with Robert Mugabe in the crimes perpetrated against the people of this country," explodes Job Sikhala, member of parliament for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change MDC, and a recent victim of torture by state police. "What 'quietness' are they talking about? When we supported the African National Congress in their fight against apartheid, it wasn't 'quiet diplomacy'. And we are fighting a worse system than the apartheid regime," he says. As the food shortages mount, and the queues grow longer, with the spectre of famine stalking the rural areas, Zimbabweans are getting angrier over what they perceive as South Africa's complicity with the ruling Zanu PF government. Earlier this week South Africa's Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlaminini Zuma said South Africa would "never" condemn its Zimbabwean counterpart. "It is not going to happen as long as this government is in power," she told journalists. Ms Dlamini Zuma said the South African Government's objective with its policy of quiet diplomacy was to create peace and to build bridges. "We are not there to throw people over the precipice." The visit to Zimbabwe of several high profile South African cabinet ministers, who have endorsed the Zimbabwe Government's chaotic land reform programme, has infuriated Zimbabweans. They suffer the daily exigencies of food and fuel shortages and a collapsing economy, and see no benefit from the quiet - some say "silent" - diplomacy the South Africans claim to be pursuing.
"The world must know this is not a black and white issue. It is an issue of the blacks in Zimbabwe suffering," says Harare mayor Elias Mudzuri. "Mbeki is not addressing the Zimbabwean scenario correctly. His people are coming and ignoring us in the opposition, but we constitute almost 45% of parliament. They cannot sustain their colleagues (Zanu PF) when the government is failing the people at the grassroots." Western diplomats based in Harare reaffirm that South Africa's President Mbeki is the preferred conduit for any breakthrough in the political impasse, and that South Africa is now the interface between Zimbabwe and the international community. But political analyst Brian Raftopolous says a breakthrough could be a long time coming: "I think the South African Government has taken the lead role in trying to legitimise the Mugabe regime. One thing is clear - they don't consider the opposition MDC a viable alternative. And the other is that they believe, for stability, the best thing they could have is a reformed Zanu-PF, especially a new leader who could control the army and therefore provide a way forward." Mr Mbeki has always favoured a path of quiet diplomacy for fear of alienating the Zanu PF government and catapulting Zimbabwe into the kind of accelerated collapse which could have disastrous consequences for South Africa and the entire region. Mr Raftopolous also believes that the South African Government has a domestic political constituency to appease. South Africa faces many of the same features as Zimbabwe: rising land hunger, widespread poverty and a ruling party which until relatively recently was a liberation movement. The process of legitimising Mr Mugabe on the international stage has already begun. His presence at the Franco-African summit is a significant step towards this, says Mr Raftopolous, and the divisions within the Commonwealth over whether or not to extend Zimbabwe's suspension from the body is another. Mr Raftopolous believes that relieving the international pressure on Mr Mugabe, coupled with the domestic pressures of imminent economic collapse could create the political space for some meaningful dialogue.
Even though the ruling Zanu PF party has strengthened its hold through repressive legislation, there are some signs of internal dissent. The head of the security forces, General Vitalis Zvinavashe, has publicly admitted that Zimbabwe is in crisis. And in spite of his denials to the party, General Zvinavashe was involved, together with the speaker of parliament Emmerson Mnangagwa, in overtures to the MDC to negotiate a political compact providing for an exit package for President Mugabe. A reliable source close to those involved in the talks says senior Zanu PF politicians are increasingly aware that there is a need to start planning for a political future after Mr Mugabe, but do not quite know how to achieve that end. Recent unconfirmed reports in the South African media also claim that President Mbeki has held secret meetings with Zanu PF moderates, among them the former Finance Minister Simba Makoni, who was ejected from his cabinet post for recommending a devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar last year. But the bitter view from Harare is that diplomacy is not producing the kind of results to halt the country's slide into ruin and despair. "I think there's only really one player in all of this, and that's President Mbeki," says economist Tony Hawkins. "If he wants to, he can force Zanu PF to the negotiating table, the exit package, free and fair elections. It's just that he appears not to want to, or lacks the conviction that this is what he should do."
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 5 March
England dealt a decisive blow
By Martin Johnson
Pakistan (73-3) v Zimbabwe (match abandoned)
England began this World Cup sitting in a South African hotel room fretting about events in Zimbabwe, and, by a sad but nonetheless delicious irony, they ended it in exactly the same way. Cyclone Japhet blew in yesterday morning, at a considerably brisker pace than Typhoon Tyson, and a washed out match equated to a washed up England. In the overall scheme of things, Bulawayo's emergence from a long drought is far more important for a starving population than a cricket match, although there were lives, cattle and houses lost the previous night as the storm blew in from Mozambique. However, England eventually paid for declining to visit a country that is about as dangerous to foreign visitors as Milton Keynes, and their last memory of this World Cup will be of Zimbabwe's players performing a lap of honour after qualifying at their expense with victories over, wait for it, Holland and Namibia. Zimbabwe required only a win or a no-result here, while any faint hopes Pakistan might have entertained of taking the third qualifying place in Group A all but disappeared when the mathematicians presented them with a series of rough guides as to what they had to do yesterday - along the lines of making 250 and bowling out Zimbabwe for 62, or bowling out Zimbabwe for 150 and knocking them off in 12.1 overs.
The Pakistanis opted for the bat-first route when they won the toss, but by then the start had already been delayed, and as the day went on, the pavilion balcony began to resemble the bridge of a North Sea trawler. There were three brief periods of play, during which Pakistan made 73 for three from 14 overs, before time eventually ran out on the minimum required for a result, 25 overs per side. Pakistan were four for one after nine balls when they first came off the field, Saleem Elahi having plonked his left leg right on middle stump and missed with an ambitious hoik to leg. It was a hopeless shot, but appropriate enough in a near-hopeless situation. The only real hope for England lay in the parched subsoil, and had this game been played at Tunbridge Wells instead of Bulawayo, the umpires would have taken one look and announced a further inspection on April 12. However, with the gusting wind threatening to make the poor souls tugging tarpaulins on and off subject to instructions from air traffic control rather than the groundsman, and an Armageddon-like sky hovering over the ground, there was never any real prospect of getting through the day.
In the second period of play, Saeed Anwar struck one enormous six over extra cover, but in the third, Yousuf Youhana was caught behind essaying something extravagant outside off stump, and Inzamam-ul-Haq concluded a tournament that would have secured him an automatic selection in the World Cup's Hapless XI by pinging a catch to deep midwicket. That was just about the last action of the day for a crowd so enthusiastic that you were inclined to feel a good deal sorrier for them than England. It's also been a disaster for the World Cup's executive director, Ali Bacher, who, had he known that two of the three host nations would make it to the Super Sixes, might not have had Zimbabwe and Kenya in mind. While South Africa's departure is being blamed here on (as was more or less inevitable sooner or later) getting their Duckworth mixed up with their Lewis, the biggest single reason that they and England were rained out of the tournament was the scheduling of 54 first-round matches. When it came to a choice between reserve days and raking in as much loot as possible from television and sponsorship, the cricketing argument came a distant second. Nothing much goes right for England in Bulawayo. It was here, in 1996, that they "murdered" Zimbabwe in a Test match, only to discover that the laws of cricket unfairly state that you have to score more runs than the opposition to win. And now this. They will be equally distraught in South Africa, although if they were celebrating anywhere it was in Bloemfontein, where yesterday's events mean that they have at least been spared the Barmy Army.
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From The Financial Gazette, 6 March
Ben-Menashe loses temper
Staff Reporter
The treason trial of three Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leaders was yesterday abruptly adjourned when tempers flared after the state’s key witness, Ari Ben-Menashe, launched a verbal attack on MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai, whom he described as the future president of Zimbabwe. "The future president of Zimbabwe is nuts," shouted Ben-Menashe during cross examination and to the surprise of the courtroom. Ben-Menashe, the head of Canadian political consultancy firm Dickens and Madson, refused to apologise to Tsvangirai despite defense lawyer George Bizos’ insistence that the trial could not proceed when the witness was insulting his client. After Ben-Menashe refused to apologise to Tsvangirai for the unprovoked personal attacks, Justice Paddington Garwe said he was adjourning the trial to today so that he could hold discussions with the lawyers from both sides. Throughout the day, Justice Garwe pleaded with Ben-Menashe to avoid improper and insulting language when answering questions under cross-examination from the defense team. The proceedings had earlier been stopped twice to force Ben-Menashe to apologise after insulting the defense team.
Meanwhile, the defense team yesterday continued to cross-examine Ben-Menashe on the video tape that constitutes the state’s evidence-in-chief in the case in which Tsvangirai, MDC secretary general Welshman Ncube and shadow agriculture minister Renson Gasela are accused of plotting to assassinate President Robert Mugabe before last year’s presidential elections. The defense team pointed out inconsistencies, some of which Ben-Menashe could not explain. For instance, the tape shows Tsvangirai storming out of the secretly video-taped meeting. Ben-Menashe initially said the MDC leader walked out because of frustration when he thought Dickens and Madson did not have the capacity to carry out the assassination. He later changed the explanation to say Tsvangirai walked out because he felt insulted by statements that he was not clear on what he wanted Dickens and Madson to do for him. However, defense lawyers said according to an affidavit filed by Tara Thomas, Ben-Menashe’s business partner, Tsvangirai walked out of the meeting in protest of suggestions that Mugabe should be assassinated. Justice Garwe refused to hear additional evidence that Ben-Menashe wanted to produce, which he said linked the MDC to the plot to kill Mugabe. The judge said the evidence was not being brought before the court properly. However, Ben-Menashe rushed to the Press gallery to present his story to the media during a brief mid-morning adjournment. He was however stopped by Bizos and Deputy Attorney General Bharat Patel.
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From The Natal Mercury (SA), 6 March
Zim judge stands up to state after arrest
By Brian Latham and Reuters
Harare - A Zimbabwe High Court judge is suing the government for wrongful arrest after a "humiliating" night spent in a jail infested with lice, branding it an assault on judicial independence, said his lawyer. Judge Benjamin Paradza was detained overnight in February over allegations that he interfered in the case of a business partner which was being handled by another judge. He was subsequently charged with corruption and released on bail until a court appearance on March 21. Paradza's aides say the charges were politically motivated, designed to punish Paradza for embarrassing President Robert Mugabe's government the previous month when he freed Harare's opposition mayor, held for holding an illegal political meeting. Lawyer Jonathan Samkange said Paradza had filed a wrongful arrest suit against the government in the Supreme Court over his detention. "The judge is saying he was wrongfully arrested, that the way in which his case was handled was heavy-handed and amounts to interfering with the independence of the judiciary, and that his detention in a police cell full of mosquitoes and lice was degrading and humiliating," said Samkange. Paradza, a former guerrilla in Zimbabwe's 1970s liberation war, was detained overnight in Borrowdale Police Station cells in Harare's northern suburbs. The judge, who has previously ruled against the government in some important cases over land, has said his case had brought Zimbabwe's judiciary into disrepute.
Meanwhile, as Zimbabwe celebrated its progress to the next round of the cricket world cup, 70 opposition Movement for Democratic Change members were starving in jail after being arrested at the weekend, claims the MDC. Spokesperson Paul Themba Nyathi hit out at police and said the arrests were unwarranted. "Our lawyers are making frantic efforts to try and represent them, but the police are denying them access to their clients," he said. Zimbabwean police routinely refuse access to lawyers, often claiming the people the lawyers want to see are not in police cells. The MDC detainees have been arrested under Zimbabwe's notorious Public Order and Security Act, a law human rights activists have described as unconstitutional. Police also on Wednesday arrested 19 members of the National Alliance for Good Governance, a small opposition party, in the poor Harare township of Kuwadzana. Among the 19 taken over the weekend was the party's candidate in the forthcoming by election in the constituency. The 19 are said to have contravened the act by going door-to-door campaigning, not for NAGG, but for the MDC.
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From ZWNEWS, 6 March
War vets to green bombers
Since the constitutional referendum in 2000, government militias, under various guises, have been a key component of Zanu PF's strategy to influence electoral results, and to maintain itself in power. Land reform was - and is - a pretext for a variety of unlawful activities, but most importantly as a cover for the moving around the country of militia groups. Externally, the land issue continues to be exploited to counter international criticism. Internally, however, the land issue no longer persuades many, and as a result, recourse to militia groups has had to be maintained. We have available an in-depth study of how the strategy of the use of militia groups has developed since February 2000. Written by Tony Reeler, an Executive Committee member of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, this paper lays bare the organisation and tactics of the various militia groups as they have become increasingly integrated into Zimbabwe's structure of power. If you would like a copy of this study, please let us know. It will be sent as a Word attachment to an email message - total size 400 Kb, or approximately 8 times the size of the average daily ZWNEWS.
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From The Financial Gazette, 6 March
New forex rates apply to all sellers
Staff Reporter
Banks yesterday adjusted the mid-rates for major foreign currencies in response to a Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) directive to devalue the Zimbabwe-United States dollar rate from $55 to US$1 to $824, which the Ministry of Finance says will apply to all sellers of hard cash, not just exporters. Central bank director for banking supervision Steven Gwasira directed financial institutions to make the change last Friday after the Ministry of Finance announced an export incentive scheme under which exporters would be paid a rate of $824 for their foreign currency. Last Friday’s Government Gazette specifies that the rate of $55 will now apply to cases "where the state is the buyer or seller of foreign currency using the foreign currency pool managed by the Reserve Bank." "The mid-rate at which the Zimbabwe dollar may be exchanged in the inter-bank market with the United States dollar shall be $824 to the United States dollar in every other case," the Government Gazette says. Finance Secretary Nicholas Ncube told the Financial Gazette this week that the new mid-rate would apply to all sellers of foreign currency and not just exporting companies. He said: "What we have said is that anyone who brings in foreign currency is technically an exporter and this we did to harness as much foreign currency as possible." Banks were yesterday quoting the mid-rate of US$1-$824 to all of their customers, including ordinary individuals. The banks have also devalued the Zimbabwe dollar-British pound rate from $92 on Tuesday to around $1 300 yesterday. The local currency-pula rate is now $160 from $10.95, the euro $903 from $61.62, the rand $105 from $7 and the Japanese yen is around $7 from $0.48. But Ncube denied that the government had devalued the Zimbabwe dollar, which has been pegged at $55 since 2000 despite the country’s severe foreign currency shortages and inflation differentials with its trading partners.
Zimbabwe, whose hard cash squeeze has led to the birth of a thriving parallel market, has inflation of 208.1 percent compared to the single or double-digit inflation of most of its trading partners. Ncube said: "Those who import will use the rate of $55, which kills your argument of devaluation." He said the rate of $55 would still be used for those requiring forex for the importation of critical commodities and goods such as fuel, electricity and raw materials. But analysts questioned the government’s decision to use the rate of $55 for importers while those selling hard cash would be paid devalued rates. They said that by buying foreign currency at $824 and selling it at $55, the RBZ would be forced to fork out the difference, which amounted to a direct subsidy. Consultant economist John Robertson said given Zimbabwe’s dwindling revenues, the RBZ could either run down its reserves or would be forced to print more money to meet the difference. "They (RBZ) are going to run down their reserves and to me the current arrangement will not last long," he said. "They can print more money but that’s where all the distortions like inflation and money supply growth come in," he added. First Mutual Life fund manager Nyasha Chasakara added: "It’s not economically practical (and) you risk creating chaos and allowing the parallel market to come back." The government hopes to curb the parallel market by adjusting the fixed exchange rate. Banking executives said the devaluation would go a long way towards reflecting the real value of the local currency and this could result in increased inflows of foreign currency into the official market.
But foreign currency dealers yesterday said it was too early to determine whether the new mid-rates would result in the immediate improvement of foreign currency inflows. The latest weekly foreign currency inflow statistics released by the central bank yesterday show that inflows totalled US$1.3 million in the week February 27 to March 5 2003, an improvement from US$600 000 for the week ending February 26. NMB Holdings deputy managing director James Mushore said the government, through the RBZ, should constantly review the Zimbabwe dollar in line with inflation and this would assist in eradicating the parallel market. "In our view, it is a step in the right direction but I believe the government should review the rates in line with the rate of inflation and get our currency to where it should be," Mushore told the Financial Gazette. "In reality this is a devaluation by any name you can call it."
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From The Star (SA), 6 March
Zim makes a plan to combat economic collapse
By Brian Latham
Harare - The Zimbabwean government is introducing a 10-point National Economic Recovery Programme devised by President Robert Mugabe to "revive an economy distorted by political pressure". The programme will see import duty lifted on basic foods like maize, wheat flour and cooking oil, while it will also remove duty on private imports of up to 200 litres of petrol and diesel, the state-controlled Herald reported. State radio said the new economic recovery plan "seeks to redress an economy distorted by political pressure". The Herald said the programme was essential to combat Zimbabwe's severe economic challenges. "These have been compounded by a hostile external and internal domestic environment arising from our detractors opposed to the land and agrarian reform programme. Sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe have seen important sources of foreign exchange, donor funding for development projects and bank lines of credit dry up. If not urgently addressed, foreign currency unavailability will lead to national instability and pose a threat to national security," according to a statement from the programme.
Aside from removing import duty on basic foods and fuel, the newspaper said a ban would be imposed on the export of scrap copper and aluminium. It went on to say interest rates would rise, but didn't say by how much. Import duty on music, film and video equipment would be scrapped, said the paper. Rural buses would travel only on weekdays. Economist John Robertson said: "All of this will only work while the central bank has reserves, because the Reserve Bank is going to make a thumping loss. "They say they'll pay Z$800 to the US dollar and sell it to the government for Z$55. Everyone in the government is going to ask for money to buy a new Pajero and tickets for Disneyland. Unless they put limits on how much the government can buy, they'll run out of money in weeks." Robertson said he believed the government would have to be limited in its purchases of foreign currency so that the central bank could pay for desperately needed fuel and power imports. "Even then, we'll have to have further price hikes in about six weeks' time because fuel is still being sold at a massive loss. None of it makes much sense," he said.
Zimbabwe's fuel doubled in cost last week, but remains the cheapest in the region. Robertson said even if Zimbabwe's interest rates were raised to 80 percent on borrowings, it would still be "cheap money". "With inflation at 208 percent, that's wiping out savings, pensions and pension funds. It's doing incredible damage to everybody," he said. Robertson warned that with winter approaching, Zimbabwe could expect power cuts as the Electricity Supply Authority had failed to pay foreign debt to South Africa and Mozambique. "All this is tweaking - it addresses the symptoms but not the problems," he added.
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From The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 March
US rounds on Zimbabwe for repression of dissent
The United States has condemned Zimbabwe over the mass arrests of opposition supporters and civil society leaders and called on other countries to join in its "forthright" condemnation of Harare. A US State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said recent detentions and alleged beatings of more than 100 opposition activists are part of a systematic campaign of repression by President Robert Mugabe's government. "These arrests are part of a sustained campaign by the Government of Zimbabwe and its supporters to suppress civil society and to suppress supporters of the political opposition through intimidation and violence," Mr Boucher said. Those arrested included a group holding anti-government posters at a World Cup cricket match in Bulawayo, 19 protesting clergymen, and 26 supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the capital Harare. A court has released 39 people jailed for four days after the incidents at Friday's match between Zimbabwe and the Netherlands, their lawyer, Tim Cherry, said.
They were ordered to reappear in court later this month on charges that they violated severe new security laws that prohibit unauthorised political protests. Mr Cherry will officially protest against the conditions in which the detainees were held. He said the whereabouts of one woman who was arrested is unknown. Twenty-three of the group were held in a single cell designed for six prisoners and were unable to sit or lie down. They were denied water and food, until it was eventually brought to them by family members, he said. Mr Boucher took aim at comments from Zimbabwean officials and "some members of the international community" who have said that conditions in the country, beset by massive food shortages and a crippled economy, are improving. These comments, he said, "have no basis in reality". The rebuff appeared to be aimed at South Africa, whose Foreign Minister said this week that Pretoria would never condemn Harare and that "slow" progress was being made.
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From The Daily News, 6 March
Story stealer Chigodo quits Herald
Chief Reporter
Tim Chigodo, the disgraced senior sub-editor with The Herald, has not reported for duty this week amid reports he resigned last Friday after he was exposed for stealing a story published by The Daily News. Insiders at the government-controlled Zimbabwe Newspapers stable said Chigodo, a former editor of the group’s Manica Post in Mutare, stopped reporting for work after the article was published. "The man has resigned," said a source. "Since the article was published he has not reported for work. It’s shocking because we respected him so much, only to find out that he plagiarised a story from a newspaper he was so critical of." Efforts to get a comment from Pikirayi Deketeke, The Herald editor, proved fruitless, while Chigodo himself could not be reached. Chigodo wrote critically of the private Press in his stridently pro-government articles. But the story he sent to a Kenyan church publication under his own by-line was taken word-for-word from The Daily News. The article was published in The Daily News on 15 January under the headline Hunger gnaws as villagers wait for maize that never comes. Chigodo, who once worked for The Times of Zambia in Lusaka in the 1970s, sent the story to the African Church Information Service of Nairobi, Kenya, on 24 February. The original story was jointly written by Precious Shumba and Ntungamili Nkomo of The Daily News. Chigodo admitted he plagiarised the story.
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From The Montreal Gazette (Canada), 6 March
Lawyer for jailed Zimbabwean politician says RCMP withholding evidence
A lawyer for Zimbabwean Opposition Leader Morgan Tsvangirai says he may use Canadian courts to force the RCMP to disclose evidence related to the leader's treason trial in Africa. Lawyer Innocent Chagonda said this week the Mounties won't release the results of their probe into allegations Tsvangirai hatched a plot in Montreal to assassinate Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai and two colleagues face the death penalty if convicted. The RCMP says its investigation last year into the alleged plot found no evidence a crime took place in Canada. Chagonda said the RCMP files on the case could be "useful" to Tsvangirai's defence. "We may have to make a court application to see that they (the Mounties) comply," Chagonda said in an interview from Zimbabwe. "Time is of the extreme essence. If they did not find that there was a crime that Morgan Tsvangirai committed, then we want their report." The RCMP acknowledged this week they conducted a probe and found no evidence of wrongdoing in Canada, but they refused to discuss any details.
Tsvangirai is currently on trial alongside two senior colleagues from the Movement for Democratic Change, Welshman Ncube and Rensen Gasela. The treason charges against them were filed last March after Ari Ben Menashe, a Montreal-based consultant and the trial's star witness, accused the three of hiring him to help them kill Mugabe. Last month, a Harare court heard a secretly recorded videotape of a meeting in Montreal on Dec. 4, 2001, in which Tsvangirai and Ben Menashe discussed what would happen if Mugabe were no longer in office. A media monitoring group in Harare has said the recording had been heavily edited and rearranged, and Tsvangirai insists his remarks were taken out of context. Chagonda said he would prefer not to take the Mounties to court, explaining that Movement for Democratic Change officials in Canada are trying to persuade the Canadian government to voluntarily release the results of the RCMP probe. "I still believe they might give it to us because the implications are quite serious," Chagonda said.
RCMP Staff Sgt. Paul Marsh confirmed the Mounties received questions on Feb. 13 related to the Zimbabwe matter and that the Mounties issued a response the following day. But Marsh refused to say what questions were asked by the lawyers or what answers and documents were provided by the RCMP. "I'm not at liberty to discuss that because it relates to the matter that is before the courts," said Marsh. An Ottawa-based source close to the Movement for Democratic Change, who said he received the RCMP's written reply to the defence, claimed in an interview that many pages were heavily censored. The source, who refused to be identified, said some pages had a heading on top, with the rest of the page completely blank. "I read it, and I can't tell what the hell they're talking about," said the source. Marsh refused to say how the Mounties concluded no crime was committed in Canada in connection with the alleged plot against Mugabe. He would only say the RCMP "exhausted all leads and that the investigation is closed."
Canadian Alliance MP Keith Martin, the party's critic for Africa, said Canada will share the blame if Tsvangirai, Ncube and Gasela are found guilty. Martin urged the Foreign Affairs Department to press the RCMP to co-operate fully with Zimbabwean opposition lawyers. "Our failure to fully disclose could result in the deaths of three innocent people," Martin, a medical doctor and outspoken critic of alleged human-rights abuses by the Mugabe government, said from Victoria, B.C. But Foreign Affairs spokesman Reynald Doiron blamed the Mugabe administration for hampering Canada's efforts to get to the bottom of the Tsvangirai case. Doiron said the Mounties have asked to analyse the videotape of the Montreal meeting involving Tsvangirai, but that the Zimbabwean government refuses to hand it over. Foreign Affairs officials in Harare are monitoring the trial, said Doiron, who suggested the RCMP's hands are tied without the co-operation of the Mugabe government. "Until the alleged evidence is provided by the Zimbabweans to the RCMP for some forensic analysis, there's nothing that can be concluded," Doiron said. "It is, and will remain until that day, unsubstantiated allegations."
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From ABC News (Australia), 7 March
Witness asks for dismissal in Zimbabwe
The key witness in the treason trial of Zimbabwean Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has asked to be dismissed from the case. The Canadian-based political consultant Ari Ben Menashe says he has been abused by the defence and prosecution lawyers. Mr Ben Menashe has made an emotional plea to step down from the trial. The prosecution witness says he has been treated like a prisoner. Mr Ben Menashe has faced several days of cross examination about his involvement in a meeting with Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The prosecution alleges Mr Tsvangirai who was captured on video tape, spoke about plans to eliminate President Robert Mugabe. Mr Ben Menashe has admitted that he lured Mr Tsvangirai to the gathering under false pretences. The trial is continuing in the capital Harare. If found guilty Mr Tsvangirai and two of his colleagues could face the death penalty.
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From Business Day (SA), 7 March
Judge's arrest unconstitutional
Harare - Zimbabwe's high court judges have protested against the arrest last month of a colleague on charges of corruption, saying his detention was unconstitutional and amounted to harassment and victimisation. Justice Benjamin Paradza, was arrested on February 17 for allegedly trying to defeat the ends or obstruct the course of justice. He is the first sitting judge to be arrested in the country. Ten of the 18 high court judges stated yesterday they "felt compelled to express publicly our deep concern at the manner in which allegations against Justice Paradza were handled". The judges said that while they appreciated that they were neither above the law nor immune from arrest, a judge should, according to the constitution, be investigated first by a tribunal set up by President Robert Mugabe before any arrest was made.
But Paradza was picked up by police from his chambers while he was preparing to attend pretrial conferences. He was taken to a police station where he was detained for a night in cells before being freed on bail the next day by a magistrate's court. They said for a police officer to just walk into a judge's chambers on the belief he had committed a crime and arresting him "would undermine completely the independence of the judiciary". "The image of the judiciary is severely tarnished and the status of the judges is belittled if a judge who has not been suspended from office ... is detained in police cells," said the judges. They said such treatment would make it difficult for them to interact with other judges and legal practitioners. "If a judge is treated in the manner in which Justice Paradza has been, the impression in unavoidable that the judge concerned is being harassed and victimised," they said.
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From IBA, 6 March
IBA calls for International Criminal Court to investigate and try Robert Mugabe
London - The International Bar Association (IBA) today called for the trial of Robert Mugabe for serious violations of international humanitarian law. The IBA addressed its call to all State Parties to the International Criminal Court (ICC), each of whom has the authority to request that prosecution be initiated. The IBA urged that the first act of the ICC's Prosecutor should be directed at the alleged atrocities committed by Zimbabwe's President and his regime. 'No single act would more accurately reflect the purpose and importance of the ICC than to have Mr Mugabe as the first individual tried by the new Court', said Mark Ellis, the IBA's Executive Director. 'Fortunately for the international community and for those who have suffered under Mr Mugabe's policies, the existence of the ICC means that if found guilty he will not escape being held accountable for his actions.' Mr Ellis states that there is already sufficient evidence to justify the investigation of allegations that Mr Mugabe has committed and continues to commit crimes against humanity. These are defined as acts that are part of a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population, including murder, torture, imprisonment or other inhumane acts of a similar nature intentionally causing great suffering.
Evidence and reports are emerging almost daily in support of these claims from Zimbabwe, where threats, beatings, and torture appear to be systematically directed at those groups who stand outside, or criticise the ruling Zanu PF party. Mr Mugabe's rhetoric increasingly defines those who do not actively support him as traitors, and many of the actions of the police and the militia appear to be motivated by such rhetoric. In the current atmosphere, the independence of the rule of law has been consistently undermined, as frequently highlighted by the IBA's Human Rights Institute. The ICC came into existence on 1 July 2002 as the first permanent court ever established to investigate and try individuals for the most serious violations of international humanitarian law, including crimes against humanity. The ICC is currently recruiting its first Prosecutor, hence the timing of the IBA's call.
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From The Star (SA), 7 March
Indaba urges action on Zim crisis
By John Battersby
Pro-democracy Zimbabwean activists have drafted a plan to restore good governance in Zimbabwe. Senior members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have called on the African Union and the Southern African Development Community to back their call for a group of eminent persons to promote dialogue and ensure the Zimbabwean government complies with the plan. The group has drawn up a set of preconditions for a return to normality in the country and called on the government of President Robert Mugabe to recognise the current political crisis. The call was made following a two-day conference held in a lodge north of Pretoria under the auspices of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa. It was attended by about 50 activists including trade unionists, church leaders, civil rights leaders and politicians from Zimbabwe and South Africa. Zimbabwe, which is facing economic meltdown and a crippling famine, has been mired in a political crisis since parliamentary elections a year ago which were declared flawed by several monitoring groups.
The conference, which sought to promote dialogue between adversaries in Zimbabwe, turned into an internal dialogue between activists when only one Zanu PF member, former justice minister Eddison Zvobgo, arrived but declined to speak. A handful of SA government and ANC participants attended the conference, which was marked by intense debate about the way forward. The South African government drew hostile criticism for its alleged bias towards the ruling Zanu PF party and the systematic marginalisation of the MDC. The MDC, which has filed a lawsuit contesting last year’s parliamentary election, has rejected offers to give it token ministerial positions in a government of national unity dominated by Zanu PF. It has insisted that it would enter into a transitional arrangement only if it was linked to new elections, if Mugabe relinquished political office and if an impartial body to ensure compliance by Zanu PF was established. The SA government has followed a policy of "quiet diplomacy" in a bid to get an internal dialogue going in Zimbabwe. Recent statements and actions have indicated a clear tilt towards the ruling party. The seminar heard detailed accounts of widespread human rights violations in Zimbabwe, including the systematic intimidation and torture of hundreds of thousands of Zimbabwean citizens by trained youth militias. The Zimbabwean government denounced the seminar publicly before it began and several Zanu PF and MDC participants withdrew shortly before the conference got under way. Most of the participants had been either detained or tortured by the Zimbabwean authorities.
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From The Star (SA), 7 March
Fury is growing in Zim over SA govt position
Peter Fabricius
The South African government should not underestimate the depth of anger and resentment towards it that is growing among opponents of President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. At a seminar this week, they booed when a senior SA official enunciated the SA position on Zimbabwe - especially when he said that the position was based on the assumption that Mugabe's government was legitimate because he is a democratically elected president. "Zimbabweans must resolve their own problems," he insisted. But these Zimbabweans see a glaring inconsistency between this position and SA actively lobbying against sanctions in international bodies like the Commonwealth, Non-Aligned Movement and European Union. Brian Raftopoulos, widely acknowledged as one of Zimbabwe's sharpest analysts, expressed the criticism of SA more coolly and succinctly than the others. He said: "One of Mugabe's most skillful achievements has been to displace the Zimbabwe crisis onto the region and make it a broader Pan-African problem."
Mugabe had persuaded SA, Africa - and indeed the entire developing world - that the essence of the crisis was a fight against the former colonial power Britain to redress colonial-era maldistribution of land. "It's important for South Africa to show solidarity with Zimbabwe on the issue of the marginalisation of the Third World, but not at the expense of the oppression of the Zimbabwean people," Raftopoulos said. Political persecution, including torture, has got worse over the past year, human rights activist Tony Reeler said. Raftopoulos said that SA's position had recently shifted from a neutral one - supporting a government of national unity incorporating the ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition MDC - towards "more overt support for Mugabe".This was most evident in Mbeki and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo's efforts to block the extension of Commonwealth sanctions against Zimbabwe because the situation in Zimbabwe was now normal.
The SA official at the seminar suggested that SA considered land reform a success. He said he had been moved by a meeting with a black farmer who was newly settled on land that had been seized from a commercial white farmer and who was now growing his second crop. The Zimbabweans believe that SA ministers and officials like him who have visited the country recently have been hoodwinked by Mugabe's selective window-dressing. They say very few peasants are prospering because the violent and haphazard land reform programme has not given them the wherewithal to work the land and because the best farms have been given to Mugabe's cronies like Information Minister Jonathan Moyo.The say that if the visiting SA officials had talked to the opposition - which they did not - they would have been shown the vast swathes of recently productive farmland now lying fallow, while over 7-million people queue for emergency food aid.
Mbeki has recently justified his constructive engagement policy on the grounds that it is producing results. He cites three examples of things he has persuaded Mugabe to do: to give back one farm to each white farmer kicked off the land; to soften the draconian media legislation; and to grant citizenship to thousands of descendants of foreign-born black farmworkers who have lived in Zimbabwe for generations. The Zimbabwean opposition says that none of these reforms has happened or is likely to. Meanwhile, Mbeki's claims are legitimising a government which the opposition says is morally, politically and economically bankrupt - and he is thereby blunting other weapons such as international pressure which might just help to force real reforms. "We don't want you to do the job for us," Raftopoulous said. "We will do it ourselves. But just give us the political space." Others put it less politely: "If you can't help us, at least get the hell out of the way."
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From The Washington Post, 8 March
Bush freezes assets of Mugabe, Zimbabwean officials
By Peter Slevin, Washington Post Staff Writer
President Bush yesterday froze the assets of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and dozens of leading officials in his government, accusing them of undermining democracy and contributing to a "deliberate breakdown" of the rule of law. In an executive order, Bush blocked all property belonging to any of 77 Zimbabwean figures, including cabinet ministers, the head of central intelligence and the speaker of the parliament. He also banned U.S. citizens from doing business with them. The order said the actions of Mugabe and his lieutenants - architects of a violent land reform policy and considerable repression - have contributed to "politically motivated violence and intimidation," as well as political and economic instability in southern Africa. The U.S. sanctions parallel a European Union effort to pressure Mugabe by freezing assets, restricting travel and barring arms sales. Also, the Commonwealth suspended Zimbabwe's membership after Mugabe declared victory last year in presidential elections widely considered to be rigged.
The Bush administration "condemned the elections. Now we're following through as the situation has worsened over time," a U.S. official said yesterday. The administration issued a travel ban against Mugabe and other top figures in May. "This action is aimed not at the people of Zimbabwe, but rather at those most responsible for their current plight," said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. He added that the United States is working with partners to deliver "adequate food supplies" to a struggling country where an estimated 6 million people - about half the population - need emergency aid. Zimbabwe is a broken-down land where Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, recently has intensified the intimidation of journalists and political opponents. A poorly executed land reform project has stripped property from white farmers, sparked violence and diminished economic performance. In targeting Zimbabwe for sanctions, Fleischer said, the White House concluded that the country's troubled situation "threatens to undermine efforts to foster good governance and respect for the rule of law throughout the continent."
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From The White House, 6 March
Message to the Congress of the United States
TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES:
Pursuant to section 204(b) of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 U.S.C. 1703(b) and section 301 of the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. 1631, I hereby report that I have exercised my statutory authority to declare a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy interests of the United States posed by the actions and policies of certain individuals who have formulated, implemented, or supported policies that have undermined Zimbabwe's democratic institutions.
Over the course of more than 2 years, the Government of Zimbabwe has systematically undermined that nation's democratic institutions, employing violence, intimidation, and repressive means including legislation to stifle opposition to its rule. This campaign to ensure the continued rule of Robert Mugabe and his associates was clearly revealed in the badly flawed presidential election held in March 2002. Subsequent to the election, the Mugabe government intensified its repression of opposition political parties and those voices in civil society and the independent press calling on the government to respect the nations democratic values and the basic human rights of its citizens. To add to the desperation of the besieged Zimbabwean people, the current government has engaged in a violent assault on the rule of law that has thrown the economy into chaos, devastated the nations agricultural economy, and triggered a potentially catastrophic food crisis.
As a result of the unusual and extraordinary threat posed to the foreign policy of the United States by the deterioration of Zimbabwe's democracy and the resulting breakdown in the rule of law, politically motivated violence, and the political and economic instability in the southern African region, I have exercised my statutory authority and issued an Executive Order which, except to the extent provided for in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the effective date:
? blocks all property and interests in property of the individuals listed in the Annex to the order; ? prohibits any transaction or dealing by United States persons or within the United States in property or interests in property blocked pursuant to the order, including the making or receiving of any contribution of funds, goods, or services to or for the benefit of the persons designated pursuant to the order.
The Secretary of the Treasury is further authorized to designate any person determined, in consultation with the Secretary of State, to be owned or controlled by, or acting or purporting to act directly or indirectly for or on behalf of, any persons designated in or pursuant to the order. The Secretary of the Treasury is also authorized in the exercise of my authorities under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to implement these measures in consultation with the Secretary of State. All Federal agencies are directed to take actions within their authority to carry out the provisions of the Executive Order. This Executive Order further demonstrates the U.S. commitment to supporting Zimbabwe's democratic evolution, and strengthens our cooperation with the European Union in efforts to promote that evolution. The European Union has acted to freeze the assets of 79 individuals responsible for the political, economic, and social deterioration of Zimbabwe. With the exception of two individuals no longer associated with the Government of Zimbabwe, this order encompasses all those identified by the European Union.
I have enclosed a copy of the Executive Order I have issued.
GEORGE W. BUSH THE WHITE HOUSE, March 6, 2003
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From News24 (SA), 7 March
Zim: Time for SA sanctions
Jannie Ferreira
Cape Town - The time has come for South Africa to impose smart sanctions against Zimbabwe. Silent diplomacy can hardly be called policy said parliamentary researcher Tim Hughes and South African Institute for International Affairs national director Dr Greg Mills. "Silent diplomacy hardly qualifies as policy. It has no clear aims as a benchmark for progress nor can local and international communities understand it. It is a totally inadequate reaction to a catastrophe," Hughes and Mills wrote in an article. They call for sanctions aimed specifically at individuals among the ruling elite, including freezing bank accounts, travel restrictions and seizing property. This ought to be followed up with similar action by the United Nations, Southern African Development Community, European Union, African Union and the Commonwealth. In extraordinary circumstances it should result in drastic action including closing the border for exports and imports and suspending Zimbabwe from international bodies. These measures should include a resignation clause for Mugabe and possibly leadership amnesty.
The International Crisis Group has estimated investment losses in Southern Africa as a direct result of the Zimbabwean disaster at R305.5bn. Zimbabwe owes Eskom, Sasol, Telkom and Transnet millions of rands since it cannot pay for electricity, fuel, telecommunications and transport services in Southern Africa. President Robert Mugabe's government owes Eskom R80m. Sasol chair Paul Kruger said in his annual report to shareholders: "The South African government's silent diplomacy has no effect on devastating events in Zimbabwe." Zimbabwean post and telecommunications department owes Telkom R60m. The South African Reserve Bank has imposed an overdrawn limit of R75m on its Zimbabwean counterpart for this. South African Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told parliament two years ago: "Our foreign policy is based on the responsibility that South Africa offers hope to all of humanity. Internationally we are to continue the struggle for a better world by offering the following values: democracy, good governance, people-centred development, peace, stability and safety, promoting co-operation, partnerships and good neighbourliness." Hughes and Mills say it is "simply impossible" to reconcile the above mentioned policy statement with the current approach to Zimbabwe.
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From News24 (SA), 7 March
Treason: Key witness can't quit
Harare - A court in Zimbabwe hearing the treason trial of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Friday refused a request by the key prosecution witness to be immediately dismissed from the proceedings. Witness Ari Ben Menashe made the request on Thursday, claiming he was being abused by both the defence and state lawyers. "The request by the witness to be immediately released will not be granted," said Judge Paddington Garwe. Ben Menashe, a Canadian-based political consultant, has been giving evidence for four weeks on an alleged plot by the opposition leader to eliminate President Robert Mugabe ahead of presidential elections last year. Ben Menashe, who claims to be a former Israeli intelligence agent, has been frequently reprimanded by the judge for his emotional, often angry outbursts in response to intense grilling by defence lawyers. The consultant's testimony hinges on a video tape he secretly made of a meeting with Tsvangirai at his offices in Montreal in December 2001, at which the opposition leader allegedly requested Mugabe's elimination. Garwe said defence lawyers would need to continue cross-examining Ben Menashe until mid-day Monday, while the state would only require another day and a half with the witness for re-examination. The marathon trial is expected to continue for at least another nine weeks, with another 10 witnesses due to appear for the state. Tsvangirai is standing trial along with two senior officials from his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party. They deny the charges, which carry the death penalty on conviction.
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From The Daily News, 8 March
Judge warns Ben-Menashe
By Fanuel Jongwe
Judge President Paddington Garwe yesterday warned Ari Ben-Menashe, the key witness in the treason trial of three top MDC officials, that he would be penalised if he continued ignoring warnings to stop insulting the defendants and their lawyers. "The witness has previously been warned against using inappropriate language and let me stress that the warning still stands," Garwe said. Earlier, Ben-Menashe had accused defence lawyer George Bizos of hiding Rupert Johnson, a potential witness in the trial. Bizos objected to the accusation which he said was "a serious professional offence". He demanded that Ben-Menashe be reprimanded. "In future the court may consider a penalty against the witness if this conduct continues," the judge ruled. Ben-Menashe alleged that Bizos knew where Johnson was since "he is your man". "You are hiding him," the Canadian-based political consultant charged. He was answering Bizos’ question on who paid for Johnson’s travel to the DRC where Ben-Menashe and Johnson allegedly met the DRC Minister of State Security, Mwenze Kongolo. The defence alleged Johnson approached Renson Gasela, one of the defendants, claiming to be a director at Ben-Menashe’s consultancy, Dickens and Madson. But Ben-Menashe disowned him, claiming he was a member of the MDC.
On Wednesday, Garwe adjourned the proceedings abruptly after Ben-Menashe refused to apologise to Morgan Tsvangirai for saying he was "nuts". Tsvangirai, the MDC president, Welshman Ncube, the party’s secretary-general and Gasela, the shadow minister of agriculture, have pleaded not guilty to the charges of conspiring to assassinate President Mugabe and depose his government. Garwe yesterday threw out an application by Ben-Menashe to be immediately dismissed from the witness stand saying he had "answered every possible question". "It’s clear that the evidence is coming to an end," the judge said. "Not much purpose will be served by allowing the witness to go back to Canada and call him again at a later stage to conclude his evidence. "The witness has been giving evidence for a long time. There is need for some conclusion to his evidence." Asked why he did not mention in his statement to the police allegations that Tsvangirai wanted to be President of Zimbabwe by December 2001, Ben-Menashe said: "I don’t remember." He claimed he was not being paid anything by the Zimbabwean government for entrapping Tsvangirai. "They paid for my air ticket," he said. "I have not been paid as opposed to you who has been paid very heavily by the MDC to waste time in this court." The trial, which has attracted much national interest, is scheduled to continue on Monday.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 7 March
Zanu PF officials accused of raping militia trainees
Loughty Dube/Cynthia Mahwite
Senior Zanu PF officials in Bulawayo have been implicated in a rape scandal at national youth militia training camps that were scattered throughout the city in the run up to the 2002 presidential election, the Zimbabwe Independent has learnt. The revelation came last Thursday when a number of female "Green Bombers" gave a harrowing account of rape ordeals they endured. The girls testified during a church meeting organised by church leaders in Bulawayo for torture victims. Archbishop Pius Ncube presided. The MP for St Mary's, Job Sikhala, testified on his torture by police at the meeting that was attended by church leaders from South Africa. Implicated amongst the perpetrators of the rape ordeals are senior Zanu PF executive members for Bulawayo province (named) and base commanders for the training camps (names supplied). Girls who were based in a training camp situated in Burnside spoke of serious abuse of female members in the camps.
"I do not know the father of my baby because I was repeatedly raped by a number of different men and boys every night," said one of the girls who spoke on condition of anonymity. "When we reported the incidents to our base commander we were beaten up and told we were MDC sellouts." She said the cases of rape were reported to Hillside police station but the police have remained silent on what course of action they have taken. "Police would also visit the camp and leave with some girls," said one of the girls. Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said if the cases of rape were reported to the police they would be investigated irrespective of whether they were political or not. "Irrespective of whether these cases are political or not, if they are true rape cases the culprits would go to court because we would be dealing with criminal cases," Bvudzijena said. He however said some people were taking advantage of the current political climate to misrepresent facts.
However, the girls insisted that serious abuse of female members of the youth militia at the youth camps took place. "It is painful to speak of that today, the filth I went through of being made a wife of so many men is horrible, especially the fact that some of the boys we shared the same room with forced themselves on us," said one of the girls. She said the training they underwent included a 20-km marathon in the early hours of the morning and returning to base where they had to do 200 press ups before going for party sloganeering and re-education lectures.
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 9 March
Women arrested
By our own Staff
Bulawayo - Armed riot police wielding baton sticks yesterday violently broke up a peaceful demonstration by city women to commemorate the International Womens' Day and arrested 15 women who included three national executive members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The group of about 500 women, who were carrying placards denouncing abuse of human rights in the country and the suffering women are subjected to as a result of the food shortages, were sent scurrying in all directions when the riot police pounced on them. The demonstration which took place at the main car park of the City Hall turned nasty when police tried to whisk away eight of its organisers. The women defied the pounding rain and blocked the path of the police vehicle carrying the organisers of the demonstration leading to riot police being called in. Women, some of them carrying babies, were kicked and beaten with baton sticks while a group of about five policemen took turns to beat an elderly woman as she lay on the ground pleading for mercy. The three MDC national executive members who were arrested are Thokozani Khuphe (MP for Makokoba), Gertrude Mthombeni and Zodwa Sibanda, the wife of the MDC deputy president Gibson Sibanda. Jenni Williams the spokesperson for Woman of Zimbabwe Arise was arrested by police who questioned her for allegedly using her mobile phone near the demonstrators. Meanwhile, the director of the UNFPA Thoraya Obaid said woman across the world continued to face difficulties. "I challenge all nations to join hands in the global effort to improve women's health. Universal access to reproductive health services by year 2015 remains an affordable, cost effective and achievable international development goal," she said.
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From The Sunday Times (SA), 9 March
Who leaked Zimbabwe report?
Row erupts in Harare's corridors of power over probe into how Mugabe's pals grabbed land meant for landless peasants.
A Zimbabwe government audit which exposed a pattern of wholesale farm seizures by government officials has provoked a storm of controversy in Harare's corridors of power. Official sources said this week that Land Reform Minister Flora Buka, who is linked to the compilation of the report and has acknowledged its existence, came under fire from her senior colleagues for allegedly leaking the report. "She is now under extreme pressure from her senior colleagues mentioned in the report as land grabbers," a government source told the Sunday Times. "The problem is that the report was leaked before some of the officials knew about it and that is why Buka is bearing the brunt of this official rage." The report, published in last week's Sunday Times, accuses President Robert Mugabe's senior government ministers, his hangers-on, and ruling Zanu PF party officials of seizing farms from peasants. Those implicated in the report include Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo, who is also chairman of the Land Audit Committee; Defence Minister Sydney Sekeramayi; air force of Zimbabwe commander Air Marshal Perence Shiri; Information Minister Jonathan Moyo; provincial governors Josiah Hungwe and Obert Mpofu; Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi; Mines Minister Edward Chindori-Chininga and many Zanu-PF MPs, including the president's sister, Sabina Mugabe. Several businessmen are also mentioned.
Moyo, in particular, has denied taking land, as suggested in the Buka-led audit. In a faxed letter to the Sunday Times, his attorneys stated: "Our client takes great exception at your deliberate and calculated fabrications, which are devoid of the basic truth and obviously premised on unrelenting colonial and apartheid hangovers bent on perpetuating white domination in this region." The attorneys maintained that, instead of three farms, as suggested in the audit, Moyo has only one - Patterson. The other farms, Little Connemara and Lot 3A of Dete Valley, in Lupane, were unknown to Moyo, they said. Of Little Connemara , they added: "For all we know this piece of land is still owned by white people as there is no peasant on that land." Last weekend, Zimbabwe's Sunday Mirror quoted unnamed officials as saying that Buka's land audit did not exist. But it did report that Zanu PF Mashonaland West provincial chairman Philip Chiyangwa confirmed some reported facts in the document. Another Zimbabwean newspaper, The Tribune, also reported on the matter this week, saying that Buka was grilled by Vice-President Joseph Msika, who also chairs the National Land Acquisition Committee, over the report. It quoted Rural Resettlement director Edward Samuriwo as saying: "We don't know anything about that report. We only read about it in the newspapers." The Cabinet also reportedly dismissed the report this week.
Although some officials were anxious to dissociate themselves from the report, Buka confirmed the report was compiled by the government and would be debated in Cabinet. "I am not going to release the report to anyone because I know government procedures," she said. "I need to first discuss it with Cabinet and I will do soon. I will not stoop so low as to release the report to any media despite rumours I leaked it to the international media." Speculation is rife in Harare that Buka produced the report with London-based Ugandan researcher David Nyekorach-Matsanga, who describes himself as Mugabe's adviser. Nyekorach-Matsanga, a former spokesman for the Ugandan rebel group Lord's Resistance Army, heads a shadowy research outfit called Africa Strategy and has tirelessly defended Mugabe in the media. He frequently visits Zimbabwe and is thought to have leaked the report in London, although it is not clear why he would have done so. Commercial farmers previously produced their own land audit which also revealed that Mugabe's ministers and party leaders had grabbed large farms for themselves despite official claims that the process was largely meant to benefit landless peasants.
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From The National Post (Canada), 8 March
Canada's international 'man of infamy' part 1
Ari Ben-Menashe: Star witness in Zimbabwe treason trial called 'delusional'
He may be the most controversial Canadian on the planet. He is involved in court cases at home and abroad. His life reads like a political thriller. His enemies are legion. Who is Ari Ben-Menashe? Brian Hutchinson reports from Montreal.
Ari Ben-Menashe is working his cellphone from some secret location. His assistant patches him through. "I'm in Montreal," he allows. "I've been in Zimbabwe the last three weeks. Testifying at a trial. The judge was kind enough to give me a short break." The trial is all the talk of southern Africa. At stake are the lives of three politicians from Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change party, including the party's popular leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. They are charged with treason. Ben-Menashe, a Canadian, is the prosecution's star witness. He says the three accused recruited his Montreal-based "consulting" firm to assist in a plot to assassinate Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe. Tsvangirai and his two colleagues were arrested last year. They did not know that balding, paunchy Ben-Menashe was also working for the ageing dictator. Their trial, which began under heavy security in Harare four weeks ago, has won world-wide media attention and is receiving close scrutiny from human rights organizations and diplomats based in Zimbabwe.
Most independent observers believe Tsvangirai and his colleagues were framed. Few expect justice to be served. Zimbabwe is a pariah state, disease-ridden, crippled by rampant corruption and government-sanctioned violence. The country has already been suspended from the 54- nation Commonwealth. The United States has declared trade and travel sanctions against it; so has the European Community. To hear Ben-Menashe tell it, however, Zimbabwe is just this side of paradise. "It's one of the safest places in the world," he told me. "It is beautiful. It is free. People have it all wrong, believe me." Trust Ari Ben-Menashe? "People say all kinds of stuff about me," he says. "But I know things." Secret agent, double agent, international provocateur: He is all of these and more.
He has a business partner in Montreal, Alex Legault. They have been banging around together the past 10 years. Houses in Westmount, the Laurentians. BMers all around. They have been accused, again and again, of running a bogus commodities business from an office in downtown Montreal. One of their companies, Carlington Sales Canada Corporation, was put into bankruptcy after being sued by angry customers around the world. Legault is wanted in the United States on separate fraud and racketeering charges. And next week, Ben-Menashe is to appear in Quebec Superior Court, to face allegations that he assaulted his estranged wife and mother-in-law. He has been at the centre of one public maelstrom or another, long before coming to Canada 10 years ago. He spins tales of political intrigue, dropping himself at the centre of covert campaigns, weaving wild conspiracies starring, among others, George Bush Sr., Diana, the late Princess of Wales, and Yitzhak Shamir.
Until recently, Ari Ben-Menashe supplied reams of information to the Canadian government. On numerous occasions, he met with officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, discussing his many trips to developing countries. The department took him seriously, despite its suspicions that he wasn't who he claimed to be, and never was. Even after the department dropped him, he was allowed to carry on, brokering deals and framing African politicians. "The fact that Ben-Menashe continues to do business in Montreal without being investigated by anyone is disturbing," says Keith Martin, a Canadian Alliance MP. "Is he being protected by our government? I want to know, is Canada still using him for information? Do we really know who we are dealing with?"
Ari Ben-Menashe was born in Iraq in 1951, to Jewish parents. A few years later, he moved with his family to Iran, where his father operated a successful Mercedes- Benz dealership. Young Ari was educated at the American Community School in Tehran; it was there that he learned English and Farsi. In 1966, he left for Israel, where he attended boarding school. He later enrolled at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, and then taught English to Arab students. In 1973, he was drafted into the Israeli army and joined the Signals Intelligence Unit 8-200 as a translator. Four years later, he joined Israel's intelligence service, as a civilian. Ben-Menashe has told people he co-ordinated anti-terrorist assassinations on behalf of Israel and planted homing devices inside an Iraqi nuclear reactor. These statements are disputed by his first wife, Ora Friedman, to whom he was briefly married in Israel. "He lives in an imaginary world," Friedman once told an Israeli newspaper. "Anyone who counts on him will be misled and will mislead.... That's how Ari's mind works -- one measure of reality, and nine measures of unreality." Ben-Menashe was fired from Israel's intelligence service in 1987. He claims he spent the next two years as a senior advisor to Yitzhak Shamir, then Israel's prime minister, although that has been flatly denied by Israeli officials.
In 1989, Ben-Menashe was arrested in New York, following a undercover sting operation led by the U.S. Customs Service. Accused of attempting to sell Israeli airplanes to Iran, via the United States, Ben-Menashe was imprisoned for 11 months before standing trial on charges of criminal conspiracy. He admitted his role in the affair, but said he was operating under orders from Shamir, who, he added, wanted to sell the airplanes to Iran in an effort to secure the release of three captured Israeli soldiers. Ben-Menashe also claimed the plan had been approved by President George H. W. Bush, and that it represented just a fraction of arms traded illicitly with Iran. American and Israeli government witnesses called the notion preposterous, and tried their best to discredit Ben-Menashe. His personnel file, produced at his trial, described him as a "low-level translator" prone to making "delusional" and grandiose claims about his role within the service.
But some of his testimony demonstrated a certain knowledge of Israel's intelligence network. And it contained shades of the so-called Iran-Contra affair, the secret U.S. arms-for-hostages and money scheme that had unravelled a few years earlier. A reporter from Time magazine recalled that in 1986, Ben-Menashe had told him of such a scheme. "Mr. Ben-Menashe consistently tried to get a story into print," said the reporter, Rajiz Samghabadi. "[He alleged] that as of 1980, there was a huge conspiracy between the U.S. government and Israel to supply Iran with billions of dollars of weapons, off the books." Lacking any corroboration, Time refused to print the allegations. Three months later, the story broke in a Lebanese magazine, and a full-blown scandal ensued. Ben-Menashe was acquitted. He immediately became a prime source for reporters investigating all kinds of "black operations" allegedly conducted by U.S. and Israeli authorities.
Seymour Hersh, an award-winning American author, was among those whom Ben-Menashe beguiled with cloak-and-dagger stories. In 1991, Hersh published The Samson Option, a book that claimed Robert Maxwell, the British newspaper magnate, and Nicholas Davies, foreign editor of the London Daily Mirror, worked for Mossad, Israel's spy service. Hersh acknowledged Ben-Menashe as a key source of information. Maxwell and Davies denied everything. Later that year, Maxwell's corpse was found floating off the Canary Islands. His death was ruled an accident, but Ben-Menashe seized upon it, telling wide-eyed hacks that it confirmed everything he had been saying about Maxwell and the Mossad. Not everyone believed him; producers at ABC television had Ben-Menashe submit to a polygraph test before using information he had supplied them. "Ari appeared credible at first," recalled the ABC producer Christopher Isham. "But we were unable to corroborate the stuff so we gave him the polygraph test. He failed miserably.... We dropped him like a stone."
Undaunted, Ben-Menashe went on a kind of conspiracy blitzkrieg. In November, 1991, he turned up in Australia and dropped a bombshell on national television, claiming a major Australian political party had received a secret $8.5-million donation from Israel, arranged by none other than himself. The money, he said, was part of "a decade of international arms sales to Iran," via Australia. Still in Australia, he shopped around a new book he had written, called Profits of War, in which he described more covert arms deals and laid out the so-called October Surprise theory. This held that in the months leading up to the 1980 U.S. presidential election, members of Ronald Reagan's campaign team had hush-hush meetings with Iranian leaders, in an effort to have the release of 52 American hostages delayed until a new Republican administration took control of the White House. Naturally, Ben-Menashe claimed to have attended the meetings, and that he ran into Reagan's running mate, George Bush Sr., at one of them.
The October Surprise theory received huge play in the Western media, and was taken seriously enough to warrant two congressional inquiries in Washington. Ben-Menashe testified at each of them. While the inquiries both concluded his theory was bogus, they lent Ben-Menashe some valuable credibility, which he exploited to the fullest. In September, 1992, Profits of War was released in the United States by a small, independent publisher. In it, Ben-Menashe alleged he had flown around the world many times on behalf of Israel, searching for weapons to sell to Iran and handling vast sums of money. Israel's profits, he claimed, were used to fund the conservative Likud party, to build settlements in Gaza and the West Bank and to finance covert operations designed to discredit Palestinians. He also alleged the Mossad had arranged the 1990 execution of Gerald Bull, the Canadian "artillery genius" commissioned to build a "supergun" for Iraq. Mark Thatcher, son of Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister, acted as a link between Bull and Iraq, he added.
Even if nothing he said could ever be verified, Ben-Menashe was a constant source of juicy copy. "I'm a man of infamy," he bragged to the Village Voice in July, 1992. "George Bush, Robert Gates [a former CIA director], Shamir. My enemies are the most powerful men in the world." The most flattering consensus to emerge among most journalists who have met Ben-Menashe is that during his days with Israeli intelligence, he had learned of some covert activities, but had embellished what he knew into fantasies, assigned himself a starring role and then went about selling them. By 1993, his notoriety had caught up with him. Israel considered him a troublemaker, and refused to renew his passport. His application to settle in Australia had been denied. The United States seemed like hostile territory. Ben-Menashe needed a safe haven, in a country where authorities didn't ask too many questions. He chose Canada.
To be continued...
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Comment from ZWNEWS, 9 March
Signs Mugabe regime is relaxing Catch-22 citizenship law
Zimbabwe-born Judith Todd, civil rights campaigner and daughter of a former Southern Rhodesian prime minister, fought a tough, expensive and nail-biting court battle on behalf of some two million Zimbabweans with foreign-born ancestors to retain her Zimbabwean citizenship. Some of them are still stateless and mired in Robert Mugabe’s draconian 2001 legislation designed mainly to strip 40 000 whites of citizenship, and thus their votes. Now there are signs the regime plans to relax this law. Three Supreme Court judges, including Mugabe’s handpicked chief justice Godfrey Chidyausikyu, handed down a speedily delivered judgement on 27 February, as Ms. Todd ended a four-week visit to Britain. They gave her two days to renounce citizenship of New Zealand where her father, Sir Garfield Todd, was born in 1908. It was a citizenship she had never held, never sought, and to which, according to the New Zealand High Commission in Pretoria, she has no automatic right but she could apply.
Under the 2001 citizenship legislation, Zimbabweans with foreign-born ancestors were told to prove they had renounced all claims to citizenship of the countries in which their ancestors were born, in terms of the laws of those countries, or be deemed to have forfeited the right to Zimbabwean citizenship. Ms. Todd, 59, went to court saying she could not renounce a citizenship she didn’t have. A High Court judge agreed with her, ruled she was Zimbabwean by birth, and ordered registrar-general Tobaiwa Mudede to issue her a passport. When the Supreme Court overturned this ruling, Ms. Todd had no alternative but to rush to the New Zealand High Commission in London to pick up renunciation forms. She then flew home before the deadline and her lawyers lodged the papers with the Citizenship Office in Harare, which accepted them provisionally. Had she delayed a day, she faced arrest and imprisonment for unlawfully using a Zimbabwean passport while a citizen of another country.
In the Todd case, the Supreme Court judges outdid Mugabe in their enthusiasm for the 2001 Act, which has thrown up so many insoluble problems that even the regime is having second thoughts. The Cabinet, in a statement in September which the Supreme Court judges rejected as irrelevant said that people with a mere potential right to foreign citizenship need not renounce it. Now a Citizenship Amendment Bill has been introduced - but not yet passed - in Parliament saying that children of people who came to Rhodesia before independence as Zimbabwe in 1980, particularly from neighbouring southern African countries, would not lose Zimbabwe citizenship if they failed to get papers saying they had renounced any right to foreign citizenship. Most of the people affected are of Malawian, Mozambique or Zambian descent, many of them former workers on commercial farms who are destitute since being driven off land seized from white owners. Spare a thought for them, and others, too. There are Zimbabweans of Indian descent. The Indian government said it does not provide consular services to non-citizens, so it was impossible for them to get any kind of proof from the Indian government that they had been disowned.
And then there’s the man in the real life Catch-22. Lesley Leventhe Petho, a self-employed businessman in Harare, was born in Zimbabwe in 1960, the son of parents who fled Hungary after the 1956 uprising against the Communists. The Hungarian embassy in Pretoria told him he would have to obtain Hungarian citizenship before he could renounce it and diplomats said he would almost certainly be refused citizenship anyway (his parents were Hungarian residents, not citizens). But, under the Zimbabwean law, the simple act of applying would constitute irrevocable renunciation of Zimbabwean citizenship. So Petho would be stateless and still is whatever he did or did not do. So Petho is making his weary way through Zimbabwe’s courts. Last year a judge refused him permission to fight a class action on the ground he wasn’t typical of people with a mere potential right to foreign citizenship because he was stateless. The Supreme Court reversed this, and said Petho could fight a class action providing he advertised in national newspapers and on radio to let others in the same plight know he was doing this. And then guess what? The state-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation refused to accept his ads. Petho’s next step is back to court, seeking an order to force the ZBC to run the ads. On the other hand, if the law is amended, or if the registrar-general changed tack and agreed Petho is not Hungarian, and if …. Well, anyway, the whole thing may fall away.
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From The Sunday Independent (SA), 9 March
'I was ordered to kill my father'
By Charlene Smith
Hundreds of Zimbabwe's notorious youth militia, nicknamed the "green bombers", are fleeing to South Africa because they say they too are being beaten and starved, and are tired of "killing for nothing". This week The Sunday Independent interviewed 14 green bombers aged from 15 to 28, giving the first insight into the terror organisation. One youth said he fled Zimbabwe after being forced to take part in the murder of his uncle, a supporter of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Another said he was involved in the murder of an MDC party chairperson and claimed that within hours of that death, Jonathan Moyo, the Zanu PF minister of information, visited the area, followed by President Robert Mugabe. A large consignment of food was moved in while green bombers exhorted villagers to chant Zanu PF slogans. Yet another said he fled to South Africa after being instructed to murder his father, an MDC supporter.
Hundreds of youths have fled to South Africa, according to human rights organisations, churches and law offices. The stories of the youths interviewed - who come from different areas of Zimbabwe and who did not previously know each other - provide chilling details of the green bombers, their training and methods. They come from the hundreds of youth militia training camps which have sprung up in Zimbabwe, many at secondary schools where pupils are forced to take part in activities or risk death. Most of those interviewed fled in December and January, some swimming the Limpopo and risking crocodiles to get to South Africa. Their real names are being withheld to protect them and their families in Zimbabwe. Camps that the boys were trained at include the infamous Border Gezi in the north of the country and Tsholotsho training centre (a former training centre for nurses and police officers). At Tsholotsho, the green bombers claim, there are 2 000 trainees. Camps are sometimes much smaller, however, with only 100 trainees.
The green bomber operatives have alleged that:
They were taught how to kill people in "ways that would be quick and silent and leave no evidence".
Before a killing mission they were given alcohol and dagga to smoke by their instructors and Zanu PF political commissars, because then "you feel nothing for anyone".
At Border Gezi, they claim, they were taught how to kill. "Maybe two of us would approach you like we were lost, one would grab you on the front of the neck and others would push you down and hold you so that you don't have a chance to scream before you die."
At camps they would have rigorous programmes of running from 5am to 8am, often after a night of toyi-toying and singing party slogans.
Instructors at Border Gezi allegedly gave instructions that led to the death of a man in his 30s near Bulawayo. The man was walking along the road and when asked what political party he belonged to, he said that he did not believe in politics. And so the militia killed him. Instructors at a camp near Khami prison, Bulawayo, allegedly gave instructions for youth militia to kill Michael Sibanda, 41, secretary for the MDC Nkulumani branch. They gave a group of 10 young men dagga and alcohol before they sent them on the mission. In March last year, one 22-year-old green bomber claims, a woman instructor at Border Gezi and a Zanu PF political commissar instructed 13 youth militia that the MDC chairperson of the Siphepa branch, a Mr Sibindi, was to be killed. "She said it would need a strong person to kill him. We went to his house at 1am. His wife and seven children ran away. We beat him and broke his neck. It was so bad. They told us to burn him. We refused. We laid him next to the railway line. Later that morning we made a rally at Siphepa for Jonathan Moyo - everyone had to come, if we found someone in their house, we beat them. The Tsholotsho police tried to investigate but no one told them the truth."
A trainer at Tsholotsho allegedly told green bombers they must "beat white people because the MDC wants to give the country to the whites". A 19-year-old former operative said: "We were not paid. They gave us pap only. We sold mealiemeal in the shops to those with Zanu-PF cards. If MDC people came we chased them away. We were very rough." Some joined after being told they would get jobs. MN, 22, who was taken to Tsholotsho training camp, said he became tired of singing chimurenga songs all night so he went home to sleep. As punishment they "stripped me and made me roll over and over while they sprayed water on to me while I was beaten." BN, 18, said he was forced to burn the houses of opposition supporters. "I was in form four, all I wanted was education. One day we were told to beat an old man coming from a shebeen. He was MDC. We used broomsticks and donkey pills [truncheons]. I think he died."
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From The Toronto Star (Canada), 9 March
Zimbabwe running on empty
Wilson Lee
Mugabe keeping terror campaign in high gear, endless line-ups legacy of last year's rigged election
Bulawayo - "The president is lying," Jacob Undenge says angrily. "Look around you and you will see that Mugabe is not telling the truth. Everything is falling apart," the 34-year-old unemployed hotel clerk adds with a wide, sweeping gesture at the kilometres-long vista of vehicles lined up for gasoline near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second-largest city. Undenge, who asked that his real name be withheld for fear of reprisals, joined the line at 3 o'clock the previous afternoon to refuel his battered but beloved 1974 Datsun. Now, next day, the hundred vehicles behind him and the hundred ahead, many with only fumes left in their tanks, await the weekly, sometimes biweekly, arrival of tanker trucks that dole out gasoline in Mzilikazi township. As the line begins to glacially move again, most throw their ancient cars into neutral, get out and push to conserve every drop of increasingly scarce fuel. They do this for hours in the merciless heat. Justice is rough and swift when a queue-jumper tries to edge into the line. The offending vehicle is quickly surrounded by a mob, picked up and moved to the middle of the road - a warning to the impatient.
The fuel shortage and consequent paralysis of the country's industrial sector is only the most visible indicator of the steady economic decline that grows deeper as President Robert Mugabe's death grip on the country grows ever tighter. It was one year ago this week that Mugabe won yet another term in a rigged election condemned in Canada and throughout the West. Today, Mugabe's main rival in that election, Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), is on trial for his life, fighting treason charges in a Harare courtroom. On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department condemned Zimbabwe for using intimidation and violence in a "sustained campaign" to suppress opposition to Mugabe. State Department official Richard Boucher said more than 100 participants in various political events have been arrested since Feb. 28 while pursuing basic rights such as attending rallies and engaging in free speech In addition, Boucher said, 23 clergymen were detained while protesting police brutality. "The government of Zimbabwe has done nothing to address fundamental concerns about human rights, rule of law and basic respect for democratic values," Boucher added. "Indeed, conditions in these areas continue to deteriorate."
"We are hungry," says a 47-year-old mother with a baby strapped to her back as she waits in yet another endless line-up, hoping there will still be a loaf of bread at the end. "There is no bread, no milk, no mealie meal, nothing. "Things are not good," she adds, shuffling forward lest she lose her spot in line and a chance at a meal. The lives of average Zimbabweans have become a series of interminable line-ups for food, fuel and other basic necessities. The lucky ones, those with wads of increasingly worthless Zimbabwean dollars, turn to the burgeoning black market, where basic commodities can be purchased at mark-ups as high as 1,000 per cent. Despite tonnes of international food aid donated by Western nations, an estimated 6.7 million of Zimbabwe's 13 million people risk starvation. Opposition politicians say that's because much of the food aid is being distributed only to Mugabe's Zanu PF supporters and many of the black marketeers operate in collusion with the police or senior Zanu PF members, hoarding goods purchased at official prices and selling them for obscene profits. "Initially, they would ask for cards and people got clever and started to buy Zanu PF cards," says Abednico Bhebhe, an MDC member of parliament. "After seeing that, they were very quick to modify the system ... and fish out all those they know to be opposition supporters."
But even as the country suffers critical shortages - not to mention massive unemployment, an alarming HIV/AIDS crisis and violent political repression - Mugabe denies that any of this is happening. Indeed, Mugabe is attempting to project to the international community a state of normalcy even as he uses ever-more violent means to silence political opponents, human-rights activists and average Zimbabweans who dare to speak out. In major cities such as Bulawayo and Harare, police use truncheons to routinely break up rowdy and impatient bread and fuel queues. Most journalists, with the exception of foreign correspondents and reporters for the handful of remaining independent newspapers, are compliant and ignore such events. "We carry stories that say maize is in abundance, but people are hungry," says a reporter for a state-controlled weekly. "We keep carrying stories that fuel is on the way, but it never gets here. But if I don't write it that way, chances are I'll get that famous phone call from the professor (Prof. Jonathan Moyo, the minister of information and publicity) and he asks" `Why did you write this?' "And then you're told that, if you want to keep your job, you need to know which side your bread is buttered on." Foreign journalists are also subject to Mugabe's pressure. "Each day when I go out, I don't know what I'll be facing, what kind of harassment, threat of violence or threat of arrest," says Andrew Meldrum, correspondent for the British newspaper the Guardian, who was one of 16 journalists charged last year under the state's new draconian media-control laws. "And that is what all journalists in Zimbabwe face. But I and many others don't want to give into being afraid. It's simply an attempt to cow us into a state of fearfulness so we stop doing our jobs."
Harrowing tales of arbitrary arrest and torture of opposition politicians and human-rights activists are also increasingly common. "I was captured by soldiers based in my Nkayi constituency," says Bhebhe, who has been arrested four times and tortured twice, most recently in January. "There was heavy shooting and we were all assaulted. I was with 37 members of my provincial party and we were all thoroughly beaten by the soldiers. We were then taken to the police station and we thought that was the end of the beating, but when we got there, we found Zanu PF supporters and we were further assaulted as the police watched. I was axed on the head then locked up for two days with no water or food." Also in January, MDC legislator Job Sikhala and human-rights lawyer Gabriel Shumba were arrested in a police raid on Sikhala's residence. They say they were held for two days and tortured with electrodes placed on their tongues, feet and genitals.
"We've recorded 590,000 cases of serious human-rights violations ... from arson to assault," says Brian Kagoro, co-ordinator of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, which includes more than 350 human-rights groups. "We've seen rapes and over 180 people have died in incidents of political violence. We've seen a very ugly turn in our politics that is inconsistent with the democratization of the rest of the southern Africa region." Kagoro says the terror campaign is being organized by Mugabe's Zanu PF and perpetrated by police, soldiers and two Zanu PF militias - the War Veterans, ostensibly representing soldiers who fought for liberation in the 1970s, and the National Service Youth, often referred to as the Green Bombers because of their members' army fatigues. Despite claims by the government that many youth militia units and training camps have been dismantled, Green Bombers can still be seen roaming the streets of Harare and Bulawayo, terrorizing opponents of the regime, both real and perceived. The escalating violence began in February, 2000, when Mugabe used these two militias to confiscate white-owned commercial farms, after a national referendum rejected proposed constitutional reforms that would have given the president additional powers.
The farm confiscations - aimed at giving land to the landless - have led to the near total destruction of the country's agricultural sector and failed to win Mugabe the support he thought his "land reforms" would bring. A key reason is that many of the best farms went to senior members of his ruling party. When opposition parties sought to point out the ruse and win greater political support, Mugabe escalated the terror campaign against them and stole the 2000 parliamentary election as well as the March, 2002, presidential election. Now, there are growing fears that, as the regime intensifies its terror campaign, the opposition could retaliate and ignite further civil strife. Says Kagoro of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition: "One does foresee that the sort of pressure that people are living under, and the sort of deprivation they are suffering, is just not sustainable. Either people will continue to die in silence or, one of these fine days ... people may take the law into their own hands."
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From The National Post (Canada), 8 March
Canada's international 'man of infamy' part 2
Ari Ben-Menashe: Star witness in Zimbabwe treason trial called 'delusional'
He may be the most controversial Canadian on the planet. He is involved in court cases at home and abroad. His life reads like a political thriller. His enemies are legion. Who is Ari Ben-Menashe? Brian Hutchinson reports from Montreal.
"I had been to Canada many times in the past," recalls Ben-Menashe, talking over his cellphone, somewhere in Montreal. "I liked it. I had lots of friends there." One of them was a woman named Haya Chetrit, whom he says he had met on the Canadian leg of his book tour. They married in June, 1993, and settled into a large apartment in downtown Montreal. He then applied for permanent resident status, one step on the road to full citizenship. When that didn't immediately materialize, he complained. "I'm married to a Canadian citizen," he told a reporter. "I have no convictions. I fit the criteria." Ben-Menashe hired a local immigration lawyer named Richard Kurland, who succeeded in getting him permanent residency. "I used to do a lot of wacko files," Kurland told me this week. "I worked cheap and I kept my mouth shut." He did Ben-Menashe a second favour, putting him in touch with another client, Alex Legault. "My thinking was, maybe they could work together," Kurland says. "Here were two intelligent guys. They both had interesting histories." Interesting, indeed.
A native of Maine, Alexander Henri Legault moved to Canada with his wife in 1982, and had obtained a ministerial permit to remain in the country. Four years later, however, he was indicted in the United States on fraud charges, stemming from a botched deal to export 5,000 tonnes of frozen chickens from Louisiana to Egypt. An arrest warrant was issued in the United States, and in 1988, when his ministerial permit expired, Legault was told he would have to leave Canada. He ignored the order. Five years later, he claimed refugee status, "on the basis of a fear of prosecution by virtue of having allegedly provided confidential information and damaging evidence against the CIA." The story he would tell immigration officials went as follows: Legault's mother-in-law, Frances Langleben, was among the victims of a secret mind-control experiment conducted in Montreal in the 1950s. The experiment was funded by the Central Intelligence Agency. Legault says he tried to help his mother-in-law receive compensation for her role in the experiment by approaching a lawyer, who, he claims, divulged his name to the CIA. The spy agency, Legault continued, decided to persecute him for talking to a lawyer about the experiment.
After he filed his client's unusual refugee claim, Kurland introduced Legault to Ben-Menashe. Apparently, the two men hit it off; in December, 1994, they formed Carlington Sales Canada Corporation and opened an office in Montreal. Carlington's business, states its charter, was the sale of commodities. What the two partners actually knew about selling food is an open question. Ben-Menashe was a wanna-be arms dealer and conspiracy peddler. Fraud charges seem to follow Legault wherever he went. Their inexperience - or, perhaps, their disregard for the law - soon landed them in hot water with clients. In February, 1997, new criminal charges were brought against Legault in the United States, this time by the State of Florida. Legault was accused of participating in a large "Ponzi" scheme from 1993 to 1996, in which some 300 victims, most of them retired folk in Florida, were defrauded of US$8-million. The alleged scam offered investors huge profits from the "food brokering business," when, in fact, "very little" food was bought or sold, and profits were nonexistent, according to state prosecutors. Legault's chief accomplice was captured and has pleaded guilty to his role. He is serving a 22-year jail sentence in Florida.
The Florida trouble did not exactly help Legault's lingering claim before Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board. He had an explanation, however: The charges were "trumped-up," and "fabricated by the CIA." The board was not impressed; it found Legault's claim "incoherent and illogical," and dismissed it. Legault then launched a series of appeals that continue to drag their way through Canada's immigration and justice systems. With Legault unable to leave Canada, for fear that American justice officials might pick him up and prosecute him, it fell to his partner, Ari Ben-Menashe, to hustle up new business. He didn't operate alone, however; in June, 1998, he hired his immigration lawyer, Richard Kurland. "It was exciting," recalls Kurland. "I'd never travelled like that before." The money was good, too. Kurland made US$8,000 a month, plus expenses. "I paid off my credit card debt," he says. Kurland's task had nothing to |
