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Archived News
12th August 2003
Government fires Electricity Supply Authority Board, retains Gata
Eskom powers up Zimbabwe deal
Electoral fraud on, says MDC
Hope for Zimbabwe political dialogue fades
Africa's misery stems from human failings
Zanu PF plagued by infighting
Zimbabwe's central bank faces impossible challenge
No relief for Zimbabwe farms
WFP foodstocks to run out by month-end
Report on shooting faults Zimbabwe police, soldier
Garwe to rule on Tsvangirai application
Travellers' cheques to ease Zim cash crisis
Zimbabwe's currency devaluation worries bankers
Zimbabwe pressed to devalue official rate of exchange
SA issues talks deadline
SA's Codesa experts beef up MDC team
Tsvangirai treason trial to proceed - Zimbabwe court
Zimbabwe can't afford ink to print bank notes
Traveller's cheques may not ease cash crisis
Zimbabwe farmers suspend sale of tobacco
Severe hunger stalks prisons
Mugabe bans cash 'hoarding'
Zimbabwe wildlife crisis as elite grabs hunting rights
'Mugabe says we are being stolen. All we want is better pay'
Mugabe hitches a ride on soccer and music
The logic behind scuttling dialogue
Travellers' cheques fail to solve cash crisis
Weird economy is consuming itself
Tractor scandal
Short denied responsibility to Zimbabwe
Kadoma MP dies
Mugabe urges critics to 'repent'
Botswana denies planning to topple Mugabe
Bishop held hostage
Midlands Observer journalist attacked
Mugabe's ties to the architect of apartheid
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From The Daily News, 5 August
Government fires Electricity Supply Authority Board, retains Gata
Precious Shumba, Senior Reporter
The government has fired the entire board of its cash-strapped Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) but is understood to have retained President Robert Mugabe's brother-in-law Sydney Gata, who doubled up as chairman of the dismissed board and chief executive officer of ZESA, it was learnt yesterday. Insiders at the debt-ridden power utility said the ZESA board, which had clashed with Mugabe over what he said was its failure to expedite the government's rural electrification programme, was effectively dissolved on 21 July. A new board had already been picked and Energy Minister Amos Midzi was expected to announce it in the next one to two weeks, the well-placed source told the Daily News yesterday. "Gata and all the other seven ZESA board members were issued with their letters of termination of service to the power utility on 21 July and were signed by the permanent secretary in the Energy and Power Development Ministry, Justine Mupamhanga," said a ZESA source, who spoke on condition he was not named. He added: "The board members were thanked for their services to ZESA but the information that we have is that Gata will remain in charge until other new board members are announced."
The source said Gata, against whom ZESA workers held demonstrations in June this year saying they wanted him fired from the state power company, was being retained as a board member. It could not be immediately established in what capacity Gata, who was the only executive member of the dismissed board, was being retained. Gata yesterday refused to speak on the matter only saying: "The new ZESA holdings board will be announced by the minister." Midzi and Mupamhanga could not be reached for comment on the matter by the time of going to print last night. Mugabe in June called for the dismissal of the ZESA board which he accused of failing to quicken the provision of electricity in rural areas. Analysts say Mugabe views the electrification project as an important vote-catcher for his ruling Zanu PF party which is grappling with its worst economic crisis since taking power 23 years ago. But observers say the old board could not have achieved much on the government's favourite project because ZESA does not have enough cash resources to finance the electrification of rural Zimbabwe. The old board, whose other members were Joshua Chifamba, Wilbert Mubayiwa, the vice-chairman, Timothy Chiganze, Gata, Tichaona Manyika, Thembiwe Mazingi, Peter Madara and Ernest Matienga, was appointed in August last year.
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From Business Report (SA), 6 August
Eskom powers up Zimbabwe deal
By Quentin Wray
Johannesburg - Eskom Enterprises, the commercial and international arm of South Africa's state-owned power utility, has confirmed it is "very interested" in the privatisation of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa). Eskom chief executive Enos Banda said because Eskom Enterprises' mandate was "to be the entity that identified new opportunities in the power sector for the Eskom Group", it would look very closely at any privatisation that happened in Africa, especially within the Southern African Development Community. Eskom's participation would be on purely commercial grounds and would not be linked to Zesa's outstanding debts, Banda said. Fani Zulu, Eskom's spokesperson, refused to disclose the amount Zimbabwe owed for electricity, saying this was a "privileged client information". It is understood the debt is between R50 million and R100 million.
Reuters reported Zimbabwe's state-owned Herald newspaper as saying that the stage for Zesa's privatisation had been set after President Robert Mugabe signed into law legislation that would establish Zesa Holdings. This will retain some shares for the government and operate three subsidiaries dealing with generation, transmission and distribution. This is the model Eskom will use when it restructures and brings in private sector shareholders. Banda stressed that if the costs of a deal with the Zimbabweans exceeded the value it brought or there were too many regulatory impediments or operational problems, Eskom would simply walk away. He said Eskom had already provided commercial maintenance services to Zesa's Hwange Power Station and had a good understanding of the Zimbabwean electricity industry. Asked about the political risk of doing business in Zimbabwe, Banda said he "understood [these] issues and how to manage them". Eskom Enterprises already has interests in more than 30 African countries - from seawater intake in Libya to Lesotho's cellphone operator.
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From The Daily News, 5 August
Electoral fraud on, says MDC
Staff Reporter
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party yesterday accused the government of clandestinely registering voters to boost the ruling Zanu PF party's chances of winning urban council elections scheduled for the end of this month. MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube said his party was still compiling a catalogue of the people registered after closure of registration for the local government polls at the end of June. Ncube said his party, which is already challenging the nomination of candidates in Chegutu town - where it claims its candidates were prevented from submitting nomination papers - will challenge in court the alleged illegal registration for the council elections. He said: "These things have been happening all over the country. We have a catalogue of all these malpractices and we are going to challenge this daylight electoral fraud in the courts. We are already preparing for that. It is not just the illegal registration of ZANU PF supporters that we are dealing with. We also know that the government is using Central Intelligence Organisation and army officers to run the elections and this is meant to rig the elections. It is like a repeat of the elections we have had before where electoral fraud takes centre stage."
Registrar-General (RG) Tobaiwa Mudede, who is in charge of registering voters, was not available for comment on the matter. His office said he was busy attending meetings. Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi, under whose portfolio the RG's Office falls, however denied that people were still being registered for urban council elections on 30 and 31 August. Mohadi said: "There is no truth in that. I would have known about it if people were still registering. People always make unfounded allegations when we are going towards elections. There is no story there." A spokesman for the government's Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC), which oversees elections in Zimbabwe, also denied voters were being registered for the upcoming local government elections. The ESC's Thomas Bvuma said: "We are not aware of any voter registration that is taking place. Advertisements were placed in the Herald of 1 July and the Chronicle of 2 July announcing that voters' rolls for these elections had been closed so there can't be any registration taking place."
Zanu PF spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira could not be reached for comment on the matter but an official of the ruling party in Manicaland province, allegedly one of the areas where voters are still being registered, confirmed people were being registered as voters. But the official said the registration was for future elections and not for the council elections this month. "Voter registration is an ongoing exercise and it doesn't stop because you have an election coming. But what I can assure you is that all those who are registering now are not going to vote in the elections," said Mike Madiro, who is Zanu PF's chairman for Manicaland. He added: "They will only participate in future elections. In any case, how does one know whether those who are registering will vote for Zanu PF? Voting is secret and they might be MDC, National Alliance for Good Governance or Zimbabwe Union of Democrats supporters. The allegations by the MDC are lame."
A candidate for the MDC, who is contesting for the job of executive mayor of Mutare city in Manicaland, Misheck Kagurabadza, accused Zanu PF councillors in the city of launching a campaign to register supporters of the party way after registration for the local government elections ended. Kagurabadza said: "We have established that some Zanu PF councillors are working with some people from the ESC and the RG's Office to register their supporters illegally." Zanu PF, which has lost nearly all major elections in urban councils to the MDC since the opposition party's birth in 1999, battles it out with the MDC in about nine municipalities across the country. But there have already been allegations of unfairness in the polls with the MDC complaining that at least 30 of its candidates in several municipalities were unfairly disqualified after they failed to submit nomination papers because Zanu PF militants chased them away from nomination courts.
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From VOA News, 5 August
Hope for Zimbabwe political dialogue fades
Harare - Hopes of dialogue between Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu PF and the opposition faded Tuesday when both sides got into an argument over candidates for local elections. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change said Tuesday it had lost all trust in the ruling Zanu PF party when it broke a gentlemen's agreement not to obstruct a court petition over local elections. The dispute arose over an agreement that Zanu PF would investigate why all opposition candidates in local elections in Chegutu, a small town in central Zimbabwe, were unable to register with nomination courts last month. Several opposition candidates were attacked by what the MDC says were Zanu PF militants while on the way to the nomination courts to register for the elections. Several candidates ended up in the hospital. Last week the MDC applied for the nomination courts to be reopened and said it was led to believe Zanu PF would not oppose such a move. But instead, Zanu PF's candidates, who were already declared winners because they were unopposed at the nomination court in Chegutu, filed papers Tuesday to challenge the MDC application. Lawyers acting for the 11 MDC candidates said they hoped the dispute would go to court Wednesday.
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Comment from The Scotsman (UK), 5 August
Africa's misery stems from human failings
Gavin Esler
In the past month, as the former dictator of Uganda, Idi Amin, was slowly slipping towards an unmourned death in Saudi Arabia, I had the opportunity to meet two of the new generation of African leaders, President Mbeki of South Africa and President Obasanjo of Nigeria. Thabo Mbeki is a small, dapper man who favours elegantly cut western suits and who speaks softly - and surprisingly for the democratically elected leader of Africa’s richest country, almost with a degree of shyness. President Obasanjo, on the other hand, is a bigger and louder figure, much more animated in his speech. He favours the elaborately colourful traditional Nigerian cloth dress. But in their very different ways, these two men from the two most powerful black African states personify both the hope and the hopelessness of Africa a generation after Amin was forced from power and some 50 years after the imperial powers began to get out of Africa on the breath of the winds of change.
First, the good news. Thabo Mbeki is a democrat in a country which has made the painful transition from white minority rule. He lives in the shadow of Mandela, and that is enough to keep most men honest. Meanwhile, in Nigeria - a country impossibly split between Muslim north and Christian south - President Obasanjo’s very existence is proof that military dictatorships (from which Nigeria suffered for years) do not work. They impoverish their countries, feed corruption and lead to the military being hated as parasites and brutalisers. As far as the good news is concerned, that’s about it. Almost everything else these days across Africa looks bleak. For weeks, Obasanjo has promised 1,300 peace-keepers to go to Liberia as part of a west African force to stop the country’s civil war, which has raged on and off since 1990. The problem, as the president explained it to me, was that his men could not get into Liberia without outside assistance. He means the kind of big transport planes that the Americans use. When I pressed him on this, he said a previous peace-keeping role in the Nineties had cost 1,000 Nigerian lives and billions of dollars while Nigeria had not received any debt relief from rich western countries. The result is that peacekeepers which were talked about in June and said to be ready to go in July, by early August still had not set off.
I asked the president whether under such circumstances there were African solutions to Africa’s problems. The British had brought order to Sierra Leone and the French brought order to Cote D’Ivoire. It might take the Americans to bring order to Liberia. President Obasanjo replied that he never claimed there were African solutions to all Africa’s problems. Well, fine. Except that at the other end of the continent, in Zimbabwe, that is exactly what is being claimed. President Mbeki of South Africa (assisted by President Obasanjo) is supposed to be helping solve the problems of Zimbabwe, which are said to be "internal matters" and a problem for Zimbabweans themselves. When I talked to President Mbeki, he claimed that talks were going on between the Mugabe government and the opposition. The opposition - (who you might think would know) - denied strongly that any talks were taking place. Meanwhile, President Mbeki presides over a country where AIDS and TB are devastating the most productive young people in a relentless plague made worse by the inability or unwillingness of the government to provide the latest drugs and healthcare advice to those who are suffering.
And so, 50 years after de-colonisation began, Africa is a continent of biblical misery. The root cause is human incompetence rather than acts of God or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The famines in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe are largely the creation of men. The destruction of the Congo, of Sierra Leone and Liberia, were all fuelled by greed for diamonds and other resources. Those of us on the outside see Africa as the face of a starving child, an AIDS mother or a drug-addled teenage thug with a Kalashnikov. For us, too, there is a simple, almost biblical choice. We can pass by, shrug our shoulders and say that Africa is hopeless. Or we can do what we can. I suggest that despite the air of hopelessness, we have no choice but to do what we can.
Incidentally, when it comes to Africa’s variety, nothing quite prepared me for an interview with a tall black man with an African name I had to interview live on BBC News24 a year or so ago. "What part of Africa do you come from?" I said as he sat down in the studio. "Peckham," he replied, in an impeccable Sarf London accent. As Pliny wrote: Out of Africa, always something new.
Gavin Esler is a presenter on BBC2’s Newsnight
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Comment from The Mail & Guardian (SA), 6 August
Zanu PF plagued by infighting
David Masunda
Shuvai Mahofa, the Zanu PF matriarch from the powerful Masvingo province, recently let the cat out of the bag: serious tribal jockeying for President Robert Mugabe’s post has rocked the party since it became apparent that he might leave office before the end of the year. Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980. Mahofa, a long-serving official in the party’s women’s league, said an informal Zanu PF committee, made up of some of its most powerful members, was operating clandestinely, vetting possible candidates for Mugabe’s seat if it becomes vacant in December, as expected. The 79-year-old Zimbabwean president, under attack from the United States and Britain over Zimbabwe’s current economic and political crisis, is widely expected to leave office at that month’s crucial Zanu PF national conference. Mahofa said some senior Zanu PF members had approached her. "I was shocked to realise that some people were already canvassing for support for certain individuals," said Mahofa, adding that some of those involved had "dangerous political ambitions" that threatened to divide the party along tribal lines.
While keeping mum in public, Zanu PF officials privately admit that discussions about Mugabe’s successor has already been marked by tribal and regional battles. Party officials say Karangas and Ndebeles - who form what has been termed "the southern axis" - feel it is time one of their own came into power. They say it would not be "feasible" for another Zezuru to succeed Mugabe. The Zanu PF leader is a Zezuru. The officials say while the Ndebele and other Nguni speakers were expected to rally behind a single candidate from their ranks, the same cannot be said of the majority Karangas. Eddison Zvobgo, a Karanga lawyer once considered the person most likely to succeed Mugabe, has over the years watched helplessly as Mugabe has used his rivals in Masvingo to destroy his formerly formidable power base to an extent that many believe Zvobgo is no longer a serious presidential contender. The sharp, US-trained lawyer with the gift of the gab, was for years considered Mugabe’s heir apparent until the two fell out after Zvobgo reportedly made some unflattering remarks about Mugabe’s capabilities. A traffic accident in the late 1990s and subsequent bad health have also conspired against Zvobgo, a highly respected legislator blamed in some quarters though for crafting the post-independence Presidential Powers Act that gave Mugabe unlimited power. Although Zvobgo said recently he was in the race to succeed Mugabe, current developments within Zanu PF might scuttle his ambitions. Zvobgo is being investigated for not campaigning energetically enough for Mugabe during last year’s presidential election. Without Zvobgo, a founder member of Zanu PF in the early 1960s, Masvingo’s claim to the presidency of both the party and Zimbabwe becomes rather lightweight and inconsequential. While the names of Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge and former Airforce commander Josiah Tungamirai, are touted in some quarters, the duo are considered too young and lacking in the necessary qualities to launch any serious campaign for Mugabe’s position.
John Nkomo, the Zanu chairperson and a Cabinet minister, is perhaps the best placed of the current top Ndebele leaders to succeed Mugabe. A quiet, self-effacing, but calculating man, whom party insiders say has won over Mugabe, Nkomo was the surprise compromise for the post of Zanu PF chairperson ahead of Mugabe’s preferred choice, Emmerson Mnangagwa. Political analysts say Nkomo, although a relative "outsider", is most likely to win the coveted post should a stalemate arise within the warring tribes over who should succeed the veteran nationalist. They point out that while Nkomo’s appointment might annoy some Karangas and Manyikas, they would probably settle for the soft-spoken politician and hope that his tenure would be short. Among the other senior Ndebeles in Zanu PF, the only other person with the kind of war credentials to be considered a possible successor to Mugabe is former home affairs minister Dumiso Dabengwa. Dabengwa’s problem is that although he remains a member of Zanu PF’s powerful politburo, his past may continue to haunt him. Dabengwa was arrested for allegedly organising a military campaign against Mugabe just after independence in 1980. He is no longer a member of Mugabe’s ruling clique after a novice from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change challenged his alleged invincibility in Matabeleland and trounced him in the 2000 general election.
That brings us back to Speaker of Assembly Mnangagwa. Although the man considered Mugabe’s blue-eyed boy says he is not interested in his mentor’s post, many Zimbabweans believe that the sly former intelligence chief is playing his cards too close to the chest for comfort. Punters for the former head of the dreaded Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) spy agency say Mnangagwa displays the same kind of ruthlessness that Mugabe admires and believes can hold Zanu PF together after his departure from public life. They say Mnangagwa’s love affair with commerce and industry, epitomised by his close relationships with Zimbabwe’s new breed of black entrepreneurs, also places him above others in the eyes of interested foreign parties such as South Africa, the US and Britain, as well as the crucial Bretton Woods institutions. Mnangagwa’s blemish, though, remains - he was the CIO boss who advised Mugabe when he unleashed his North Korean-trained Five Brigade, blamed for massacres in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces in the early 1980s. Then, of course, there is the unpredictable Edgar Tekere. Once the second-most powerful man in Zanu PF, Tekere - fired by Mugabe in the late 1980s - formed the now defunct Zimbabwe Unity Movement and is now reportedly coming back into the party. Addressing a crowd in the packed auditorium of a Harare hotel last week, Tekere declared that he had never emotionally or "intentionally" left Zanu PF and revealed that there was a concerted move to lure him back, with the offer of a very senior position. Tekere’s critics say Zimbabweans are unlikely to have forgotten his drunken antics, which were gleefully exposed by the government press while he was in the Zanu PF wilderness. Others say Mugabe believes that Tekere is not to be trusted. Officials say, while "Twoboy" - as he is affectionately called - might bring back nostalgia for the party’s good old days, nobody in Zanu PF is sure how he would behave if allowed the chance to assume the top office in the party.
Then there are the dark horses. Political analysts say the succession issue cannot be settled without taking into consideration the feelings of Solomon Mujuru, one of Zimbabwe’s most respected war heroes. They point out that the retired army chief, who is still a kingmaker in Zanu PF, might actually consider that with Mugabe’s departure, he himself is presidential material and throw his hat into the ring. Other relative newcomers whose names are sometimes bandied about include the loquacious Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, former minister Simba Makoni, Mugabe’s former long-time confidant Charles Utete, and the current Airforce commander Perrence Shiri. Asked about Moyo’s prospects, one senior Zanu PF member laughed out loud. But given the dearth of young and capable politicians in the party, Moyo could, indeed, have the last laugh.
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From The Star (SA), 7 August
Zimbabwe's central bank faces impossible challenge
By Basildon Peta
Zimbabwe's galloping inflation rate and plummeting exchange rate are causing major headaches at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. The RBZ is now faced with the impossible challenge of printing at least a trillion Zimbabwe dollars of banknotes to solve a huge shortage of banknotes. But the bank does not have the foreign exchange to import all the materials it needs to print the necessary banknotes. Reports in Zimbabwe say senior RBZ officials are abandoning their posts in frustration. RBZ governor Leonard Tsumba left his post two months before the expiry of his contract and he has not been replaced. Zimbabweans have begun hoarding the highest-denomination Z$500 banknotes because of the shortage. The government has launched a plan to counteract the hoarding by withdrawing and cancelling the old $500 notes and replacing them with new ones. But the plan is floundering because the RBZ lacks the foreign currency to buy the materials to print the new notes. Sources close to the RBZ said Zimbabweans were unlikely to release their hoarded Z$500 bills before the new ones were ready. And even if the foreign currency to print the new bank notes was found, the RBZ lacked the capacity to print the vast number of required notes fast enough to alleviate the cash shortage, they said.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 7 August
No relief for Zimbabwe farms
Harare - Zimbabwe's commercial farmers held their 60th annual congress yesterday, but it was a day of heartache, gloom and tears for the dwindling band, some of whom now depend on charity to survive. As another appeal went out for international donors to replenish emergency food stocks for almost half Zimbabwe's population, President Robert Mugabe renewed expired notices of acquisition on 152 farms yesterday, including five prime ranches in the Matabeleland province, belonging to the Oppenheimer mining dynasty of South Africa. Doug Taylor-Freeme, the vice-president of the farmers' union, told the meeting that Mr Mugabe's policies had destroyed the agricultural sector. "Zimbabwe continues on its downward path to economic ruin with no relief in sight," he said. Agricultural production had fallen more than 50 per cent in the past year, he added.
One farmer who survived the three-year campaign against the mainly white commercial farmers only to succumb a month ago is Bruce Stobart, 40, who was attending his last congress. "I went into every deal available to stay on my farm, but when a mob arrived at my house and ate my son's pet rabbits, and did all the other usual stuff, we had to go, and now there is nothing, absolutely nothing I can do." To try to stay on his farm in Mazowe, about 20 miles outside the capital, Harare, he gave two thirds of his land, about 1,600 acres, to Mr Mugabe's supporters. Last summer he ploughed for them, planted their crops and gave them technical help. He was supported in his effort to remain on his farm by one of Zimbabwe's two vice-presidents, Joseph Msika and the local governor, Peter Chanetsa. But it wasn't enough. Mr Stobart, his wife and three children fled after about 25 supporters of the ruling Zanu PF party surged towards the family home, and they are now living in rented accommodation in Harare, planning to emigrate to New Zealand next January.
Until three years ago, agricultural produce accounted for 40 per cent of Zimbabwe's exports. Now it cannot sell beef to the European Union under preferential tariffs, not only because it does not have enough quality cattle left, but because the chaos allowed foot and mouth to spread across the country. Tobacco production is down more than 60 per cent, and Zimbabwe will grow less than 10 per cent of its normal wheat production this year. "It is catastrophic," said Alan Stockil, a farmer in charge of a national evaluation committee. "Zimbabwe will continue to slide until agriculture recovers. That is why we are gathering data for compensation for farmers. So far fewer than half of those who have been evicted have completed estimates of what they have lost. Many are too heartbroken to do so, but we are pushing them." Out of 4,000 productive white commercial farmers three years ago, fewer than 400 remain on their land. About 300,000 black workers and their families working and living on former white commercial farms are in abject poverty, according to the union's president, Colin Cloete. They were left out of Mr Mugabe's land reform programme and are jobless, homeless and hungry.
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From The Daily News, 6 August
WFP foodstocks to run out by month-end
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has foodstocks in Zimbabwe to last until the end of this month, according to WFP spokesman Luis Clemens, who said food insecurity in the country was worsening because of the Grain Marketing Board (GMB)'s failure to import adequate grain. Clemens said the WFP would have fed about 1.4 million in Zimbabwe's 35 districts by the end of this month. The United Nations last week appealed for emergency food aid from international donors, after the government of Zimbabwe officially submitted a request for the extension of humanitarian assistance in July. UN agencies have indicated that about 5.5 million Zimbabweans need food aid because of food shortages caused by drought and a controversial government land reform programme that has cut food production. Clemens told the Daily News: "Right now, we have stocks to the end of the month, but we hope there will be emergency responses (to the food aid appeal) and the situation will be normalised. The food situation in Zimbabwe is worsening. The field reports that we are getting from many districts in many parts of the country indicate that grain for sale from the GMB is not widely available and the situation is worsening." " We have people showing up at our distribution centres, each time we are feeding people begging to be included on the food aid register. We have also seen an increase in the consumption of wild fruits and an increase in gold panning," Clemens added, referring to the survival strategies adopted by people in food insecure areas.
The WFP official added that the government should urgently consider allowing the private sector to participate in food imports, which he said would boost the amount of food coming into the country. The state-controlled GMB is the sole trader in maize and wheat in Zimbabwe and the government has maintained the monopoly even though humanitarian agencies have advised that involving the private sector in food procurement would ease food insecurity. Because of severe foreign currency shortages, the GMB is unable to import adequate food to avert starvation in food-insecure areas, making it necessary for humanitarian agencies to meet the shortfall. "In terms of food security, it (involving private sector) would increase the amount of food available on the market, which means less people would need food aid," Clemens said. "That issue is particularly very important this year given the country's serious shortage of foreign currency. The government mentions the removal of the GMB monopoly in its appeal and made presentations to the International Monetary Fund about the private sector. But on the ground, it's not happening to the degree that WFP believes is needed to increase the amount of food aid on the market." He added that there was "very little" GMB food available in areas such as Tsholotsho in Matabeleland and supplies were "erratic and inadequate". He said in Tsholotsho, the WFP had been feeding 70 000 people every month since June after reducing food aid beneficiaries from 107 000 of the district's population of 119 000. Food aid supplies were reduced because of a larger harvest in some households, which would enable some villagers to sustain themselves for the next four months. Clemens said the WFP's practice was to distribute food to the most vulnerable people, especially those with no food supplies at all. He added that starvation was not a threat to villagers in the area because food aid supplies were continuing. But he said the main problem facing humanitarian agencies was that food was "simply not available on the market in Tsholotsho".
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From Newsday (US), 6 August
Report on shooting faults Zimbabwe police, soldier
Torrington, Conn. - The shooting death of a Torrington man happened as a result of errors made by Zimbabwe police and a soldier, according to a report from the African magistrate investigating the death. Richard Gilman, 58, was in Zimbabwe on a humanitarian mission to bring food and supplies to schoolchildren last November when he was shot after driving away from a roadblock. In his report, which was obtained by the Republican-American of Waterbury, the magistrate accused the two officials manning the station, Pvt. Shadreck Shereni and Sgt. Ashton Machingauta, of grave errors. But he did not file charges against them. "This report is the closest thing to the truth we've seen so far," Donna Vincenti, the attorney representing Gilman's widow, Mary Gilman, told the newspaper. "We're getting closer and closer to the truth of what happened." The report is the summation of two days of testimony from five officials who were stationed at the roadblock and medical personnel who treated Gilman after the shooting.
Witness testimony said that Gilman was stopped because his rental car papers were not in order. Machingauta said he told Gilman to drive to Mutare, get his passport and insurance papers, and return to the checkpoint. He said he kept the man's car permit while he waited. But when Gilman returned, he said an argument ensued, and Gilman rolled up his window and drove off suddenly. Machingauta said Gilman almost ran over police officers and soldiers at the checkpoint. He said Shereni fired at Gilman twice. "I was not ordered by Sgt. Machingauta to fire, but he had instructed that the vehicle should not go," Shereni said in a statement. African Magistrate H. Mujaya said the gunfire was not necessary. "There was no immediate danger and Gilman had returned to the roadblock on his own after inquiries were raised about his papers," the report said. "The bottom line seems to be that Gilman was not escaping from lawful police custody when he drove off as he had not been arrested."
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 8 August
Garwe to rule on Tsvangirai application
Dumisani Muleya
Justice Paddington Garwe will this morning make a ruling on the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)'s lawyers application for the discharge of party leader Morgan Tsvangirai who is facing treason charges for allegedly plotting to kill President Robert Mugabe. MDC attorney Innocent Chagonda said Garwe, who is judge president, would hand down his judgement on the application by head of the defence team George Bizos today. "The ruling will be made tomorrow morning at 11:00," Chagonda said yesterday. The High Court deferred judgement on the case on July 28. Garwe had promised two weeks earlier to deliver a ruling on Bizos' application to have treason charges against Tsvangirai and others dropped on the grounds they were allegedly trumped-up by government agents for political reasons. Tsvangirai is jointly charged with MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube and secretary for agriculture Renson Gasela for plotting to assassinate Mugabe in 2001. The trio has denied the charges but face the death penalty if convicted. The alleged intrigue was uncovered after Canadian political consultant Ari Ben-Menashe accused the MDC officials of approaching him to arrange Mugabe's murder. Ben-Menashe has produced grainy video and inaudible sound tapes recorded at meetings between MDC members and himself in London and Montreal as evidence. However, MDC attorneys led by Bizos have dismissed the purported evidence as contrived and useless after a dramatic long-running trial. Ben-Menashe was "a notorious and demonstrable liar", Bizos said in his application for a discharge. A number of state witnesses have concurred that the evidence is unreliable.
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 7 August
Travellers' cheques to ease Zim cash crisis
Harare - The government made the unprecedented move of unveiling a range of new travellers' cheques in huge denominations on Thursday, which it said would ease acute shortages of local currency in Zimbabwe where the economy is hovering on the brink of collapse. The Reserve Bank said the cheques in denominations of up Z$100 000 are to be launched on Friday and will be legal tender accepted by major stores and businesses. The largest Zimbabwe bank note, the Z$500 bill, has been in short supply for several weeks, prompting long lines outside banks. Banks have rationed withdrawals to Z$5 000, or $ 0,60 at the official exchange rate of 824-1 or $ 0,12 at the black market exchange rate of about 4 000-1. The Reserve Bank did not say how much money would be available in the new travellers' cheques that would be valid only in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is suffering its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, with official inflation at 365%. Unofficial estimates that take into account thriving black market trading in scarce food and gasoline put inflation closer to 700%.
The Reserve Bank announced last month it planned to issue a Z$1 000 bank note by October. In another attempt to keep the sinking economy afloat, it also plans to replace the Z$500 bill with a new design within two months to force hoarders to turn in old bills. Local currency shortages are blamed on out of control inflation, the central bank's inability to print money quickly enough and the hoarding of cash amid uncertainty in the crumbling economy. In the past, the Reserve Bank has repeatedly balked at suggestions to issue larger denomination bills, saying that it would prompt psychological jitters and further fuel inflation. Similar to bank notes, the travellers' cheques are printed on security paper with fibres visible under ultraviolet light, the Reserve Bank said Thursday. Tony Hawkins, a Zimbabwean economist, said the new cheque denominations of 5 000, 10 000, 20 000, 50 000 and 100 000 appeared to be an attempt to get around printing new bills. "It's bizarre. Whether companies will be happy to accept the cheques remains to be seen. Travellers' cheques have always carried a high risk in respect of fraud," he said.
Executives at private banks say they have been receiving less than 10% of the required cash from the central bank to cope with daily withdrawals. Riot police routinely patrol long lines of frustrated Zimbabweans desperate to cash paycheques or make withdrawals. As customers also write more regular cheques than usual, banks have said they are running out of chequebooks. Banks that normally issue new chequebooks within 48 hours, say there is now a month-long waiting list for new cheques. Part of the deepening economic crisis is blamed on the state programme that seized thousands of commercial farms from the white minority for redistribution to black settlers. Foreign investment and aid have largely ended in protest of human rights abuses and the disputed presidential elections last year that gave embattled President Robert Mugabe another six-year term in office.
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From VOA News, 7 August
Zimbabwe's currency devaluation worries bankers
Harare - Zimbabwe's currency went into free fall Thursday, losing one third of its value since Tuesday, and currently changing hands at one U.S. dollar to about 6,000 Zimbabwe dollars. Bankers say the latest fall in the Zimbabwe dollar is largely caused by private sector demand for foreign currency to import fuel. Until recently, the government was the only legal importer of fuel, but it has no foreign currency reserves, and has relaxed regulations to allow privately owned companies and individuals to bring fuel into the country. Gasoline and diesel fuel are now available to those who can pay in foreign currency up to 60 cents a liter, about five times more than what it cost when it was widely available in local money. People can no longer buy fuel from gas stations, and instead, have to go to a variety of new outlets, sometimes in the back yards of private homes. To ease the acute shortage of bank notes, the government said Thursday it will start issuing travelers checks in large denominations. Starting Friday, the checks will be accepted as legal tender in Zimbabwe, but will not be valid abroad. Meanwhile, the country's economic crisis continues to deepen. In the last five days, tobacco growers have twice canceled sales of their crop at the annual auctions, because they are paid at the official rate of 820 Zimbabwe dollars to one U.S. dollar. Even though tobacco crops have been dramatically reduced, earnings from tobacco exports contribute a large share to Zimbabwe's foreign currency reserves.
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From The Financial Times (UK), 8 August
Zimbabwe pressed to devalue official rate of exchange
By Tony Hawkins in Harare
The Zimbabwe government is under mounting pressure to devalue the official exchange rate of the Zimbabwe dollar as the parallel market rate has collapsed over the past two weeks from Z$2,750 to the US dollar to Z$5,500. The official exchange rate has been held at Z$824 to the US unit since the end of February, when the government devalued the currency by some 93 per cent. Last week, angry small-scale tobacco growers forced the temporary closure of the tobacco auction floors in protest against the official exchange rate, at which they are paid. They say their production costs are in effect double the revenue they earn at the current rate of exchange. The growers abandoned their boycott following official assurances that the exchange rate was under review. This suggests that the authorities are preparing either to announce another substantial devaluation or that the government will resurrect its export price support scheme for exports such as tobacco and gold. There is no single explanation for the sudden weakening of the Zimbabwe dollar in the unofficial market, but the country has been gripped by a spending frenzy as individuals and businesses respond to rapidly worsening inflation outlook. The year-on-year inflation number for July, due out next week, is expected to reach 400 per cent: share prices on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange have risen some 90 per cent in the past two months as asset inflation takes hold.
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From The Daily News, 7 August
SA issues talks deadline
Sydney Masamvu and Precious Shumba
South Africa has told Zimbabwe's governing Zanu PF party to resume formal talks with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party by November, diplomatic sources told the Daily News yesterday. The well-placed sources said Pretoria, whose ambassador to Zimbabwe Jeremiah Ndou they said was shuttling between the MDC and Zanu PF to get the two parties negotiating, wanted to report tangible progress on Zimbabwe at the Commonwealth summit in Nigeria in December this year. South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki is expected to push for the lifting of Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth at the 54-nation group's heads of governments meeting in Abuja, according to the sources. "South Africa has leaned on the Zimbabwean government to ensure that by November some concrete and formal talks are under way," a South African government source said yesterday. The source, who spoke on condition he was not named, added: "At the Commonwealth we want to merely report progress and demand that Zimbabwe's suspension be lifted - by then they should be a tangible and unquestioned view that formal talks are in progress."
The sources spoke as an initiative by Zimbabwe's church leaders to broker talks between Zanu PF and the MDC yesterday appeared to be faltering with the ruling party failing to submit proposals for dialogue to the church leaders as promised. Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe president Trevor Manhanga confirmed yesterday that they had not received Zanu PF's position paper by yesterday when the party was supposed to have done so. The MDC presented its position paper earlier this week. Manhanga, who said he was expecting Zanu PF to make its submissions today, said: "If we don't receive the Zanu PF submissions (by today) we would have to go back to them and find out what is happening, which nobody knows." Manhanga, Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops' Conference's Patrick Mutume and Zimbabwe Council of Churches president Sebastian Bakare, who is leading the church initiative, met Zanu PF and state President Robert Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in separate meetings over the past two weeks. Mugabe and Tsvangirai promised the clergymen that they were committed to resumption of dialogue between their two parties. Zanu PF, however, appears split over the Church- proposed talks with the party's legal affairs secretary Patrick Chinamasa accusing the church leaders of being biased in favour of the MDC.
But, the sources said, South Africa and Mbeki - designated the point-man on Zimbabwe by American President George W Bush - were optimistic that dialogue would be resumed between the Zimbabwean parties and that by next June there could be a political settlement between Zanu PF and the MDC. A South African government official said: "There will be a political settlement in Zimbabwe by June next year. We see an arrangement where Zanu PF and the MDC would in the interim have to form a coalition government or a government of national unity." Secretary-general of South Africa's ruling African National Congress Kgalema Motlanthe said: "We expect a quick resolution to the impasse. The situation in Zimbabwe is grave enough and has to force the two parties to engage in a more meaningful dialogue immediately." Motlanthe the also confirmed that Ndou was actively pushing for resumption of dialogue between Zanu PF and the MDC. He said: "We are involved indirectly in facilitating the talks. Our ambassador Jeremiah Ndou is shuttling between the two parties. We hope that his efforts will lead the parties to talk."
Zanu PF national chairman John Nkomo, commenting on reports that Pretoria was pushing for resumption of dialogue by November and possibly a political settlement by June next year, said: "It is not a Zimbabwean line (solution). I suppose it is a South African line which may have or may not have a bearing on what goes on in Zimbabwe. If people want to engage or influence discussions they must do so without making unfounded suggestions." MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube yesterday said a political settlement had to be reached now rather than in a year's time. "The crisis in Zimbabwe is grave enough - it cannot wait until June. We in the MDC believe that a settlement has to be reached now rather than later because we are faced with a total collapse - and Zanu PF should be the last to be reminded of this."
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 8 August
SA's Codesa experts beef up MDC team
Dumisani Muleya
Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) officials have met veteran negotiators of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) to sharpen their bargaining skills as they prepare for the resumption of talks with the ruling Zanu PF. An MDC technical task team on transitional issues chaired by the party's national executive committee member Yvonne Mahlunge met seasoned Codesa political brokers in Pretoria recently to gather information and share experiences on transitional issues. The Codesa process ushered in a democratic dispensation in South Africa in 1994. It was held between 1991 and 1993 in Kempton Park, Johannesburg, and represented a variety of political players. The MDC delegation included opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's advisor, Professor Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, party spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi, Priscilla Misihairambwi-Mushonga, Isaac Maphosa, Mahlunge and a diplomat based in Harare. The South African group comprised former African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general and key Codesa negotiator, Cyril Ramaphosa, United Democratic Movement deputy president and ex-Provincial Affairs and Constitutional Development minister after 1994, Rolf Meyer, South African Communist Party secretary-general Blade Nzimande, and ex-ANC national executive committee member and outgoing chief executive of the National Economic and Labour Development Council, Phillip Dexter. It also included Cape Town High Court Justice Dennis Davis, an ANC top official and parliamentary portfolio committee on justice chair, Johnny De Lange, and former South African President Nelson Mandela's legal advisor during Codesa, Fink Haysom. Meyer, a vastly experienced politician, was the National Party's chief Codesa negotiator, while Haysom was also involved in advising on transitions in Chile, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Documents to hand indicate that the teams discussed case studies on transitional issues in relation to Zimbabwe. The MDC used the meeting to gather "lessons, experiences, perspectives, and ideas around the issues of talks, negotiation and transition". Although the South Africans made valuable input, documents suggest the MDC "controlled, determined, guided and made decisions on the intellectual aspects of the discussion". The opposition wanted to sufficiently understand the terrain, challenges and complexities of talks with the aim of "develop(ing) its own suggested road map or framework of negotiations and transition". The MDC proposed a road map that include talks about talks for two months, formal negotiations for two months, transitional arrangements for three months and implementation of agreed issues for another three months before free and fair elections are held. It also alluded to a transitional constitution. Direct informal talks are currently going on between the MDC and Zanu PF to clear obstacles before the dialogue that collapsed last year in May officially resumes. The parties have been meeting for sometime now over the current crisis. The South Africans said there was need to establish a framework and broad objectives for talks. They also said there would be need to "respect deadlines and avoid or prevent unilateralism" during talks. The MDC, Codesa negotiators said, should know the first rule for negotiations was that there were no rules. But the meeting agreed "there was need to establish mechanisms to secure the irreversibility of the negotiations and transition" in Zimbabwe. "Zimbabwe must think through the process of how to secure its own transition," the records of the meeting say. "There is need to strengthen the resolve for internal process to ensure legitimacy is accorded it." It was said the international community should only play a supportive role.
The June meeting concluded there was a "mutually hurting stalemate" in Zimbabwe that must be resolved urgently. It was observed that the objective conditions on the ground, as in South Africa towards the late 1980s, were now ideal for talks because the balance of political forces has shifted dramatically. While Zanu PF still controls the state machinery and has some rural support, the MDC has 54 parliamentary seats, chairs portfolio committees in the House, sponsors four mayors, and holds sway in most urban areas. It also has considerable international support. This represents a sea change from the early 90s when Zanu PF was the sole political force.
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From Reuters, 8 August
Tsvangirai treason trial to proceed - Zimbabwe court
By Cris Chinaka and Lucia Mutikani
Harare - Zimbabwe's High Court ruled on Friday that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai should be tried for treason, saying state lawyers had demonstrated he may have plotted to kill President Robert Mugabe in 2001. But Judge Paddington Garwe dismissed similar charges against two other senior members of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) - party Secretary-General Welshman Ncube and agriculture chief Renson Gasela. The court ruling came amid expectations that the MDC might agree to resume talks with Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party to begin resolving Zimbabwe's deep political and economic crisis. "This court will acquit accused two and three. In respect of accused one (Tsvangirai), the application for his discharge is dismissed," Garwe ruled, rejecting a defense motion that charges against all three be dropped. "I am satisfied that there is no basis upon which accused number one can be acquitted," he said in a court packed with MDC supporters and some Western diplomats. The MDC leader, Ncube and Gasela sat motionless in the dock as the judge read his ruling, and all declined to speak to reporters when they came out. Tsvangirai, who faces a possible death sentence if convicted of the plot, remains free on bail.
Acting Attorney-General Bharat Patel said the state might appeal against the acquittal of Gasela and Ncube, considered by many to be key MDC strategists. The state's case hinges on a videotape of a meeting in Montreal between Tsvangirai and political consultant Ari Ben-Menashe which it says captured Tsvangirai discussing Mugabe's "elimination." Ben-Menashe admitted he taped the meeting to get evidence for the government - with which he later signed a political lobbying contract - but denied entrapping Tsvangirai. The defense says the video was doctored to discredit the MDC, the biggest political threat to Mugabe since he led the country to independence from Britain in 1980, and has criticized Ben-Menashe and his assistant Tara Thomas as unreliable witnesses who gave contradictory evidence. It formally asked Garwe to drop the charges against all three defendants, saying the government had failed to present a coherent case for treason.
The prosecution said Tsvangirai and his colleagues should answer the charges because the state had shown sufficient evidence that the MDC defendants discussed seeking the support of the army for a post-Mugabe transitional government. It said that alone amounts to treason. Tsvangirai also faces a separate treason trial in connection with MDC protests in June which the government said were an attempt to spark a coup d'etat. That trial is expected to begin in October. The MDC and several Western countries accuse Mugabe of rigging his re-election in 2002 and blame his government for chronic food and fuel shortages and inflation running at 365 percent - one of the highest rates in the world. Mugabe says the MDC is a stooge of Western powers and insists his opponents have sabotaged the economy in retaliation for his seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 9 August
Zimbabwe can't afford ink to print bank notes
Harare - Zimbabwe's central bank promised yesterday to issue large denomination travellers' cheques to ease a chronic cash shortage, caused because the nation cannot afford many of the printing inks. However, many traders said they would refuse to accept the cheques, which were still not widely available yesterday. "Sorry, they haven't arrived yet," said a teller at a branch of Standard Chartered Bank. The cheques are supposed to be available from all branches of mainstream banks, but those canvassed yesterday said they had had no deliveries yet from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. The nation is running out of cash. An inflation rate approaching 400 per cent has devalued notes in circulation and many people have begun to hoard money. The country is so short of hard currency that it cannot afford many of the inks required to print higher denomination notes. But the government's plans to fill the gap with travellers' cheques raised scepticism among traders across the capital.
A supermarket manager said: "We will not accept them because how do we know they are genuine, and how do we give change for these big notes when we are short of cash ourselves?" As shoppers went on a spree yesterday before a long weekend, another supermarket manager said the plan could even make the cash shortage worse. "What do we do if someone buys a box of matches for Z$20 and gives us a travellers' cheque for Z$100,000? We can't afford to give change." The head of one supermarket chain, who asked not to be quoted for fear of reprisals from edgy Reserve Bank officials, said: "We have told staff that if a consumer spends about Z$30,000, we will then give change, but nothing less than that. It's a mess. A terrible, terrible mess. There is going to be massive fraud." The owner of a hardware store said: "Travellers' cheques in every other country can only be cashed with a passport. We are selling sandpaper and paint. We don't know how to deal with travellers' cheques."
About 70 per cent of Zimbabweans of working age are unemployed, and most survive on the informal market, worst hit by the inflation-fuelled cash shortage. "We don't know these cheques. They are not money," said a broom seller in central Harare. Newspaper sellers, taxi drivers, bus conductors and brick sellers said they would also reject the cheques, even if they were readily available. "We want cash. We can't use that piece of paper," said a newspaper seller whose trade has dropped by more than a third since the cash crisis crept up on President Robert Mugabe's administration two months ago. A frail, white-haired man was one of those looking for the new travellers' cheques yesterday and groaned when he heard there were none. "My cheque book is finished. I am waiting for my bank card, and you will only let me have Z$10,000 (about £1.25) in cash, so what do I do?" The central bank said: "The receiver of a payment in travellers' cheques is guaranteed payment of the value of the cheques by banks nationwide."
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From IRIN (UN), 8 August
Traveller's cheques may not ease cash crisis
Johannesburg - The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe on Friday launched local currency traveller's cheques in a bid to ease the cash shortage crisis affecting the country. Zimbabwe has suffered a scarcity of hard currency for some time as the central bank has been unable to print enough bank notes. The official Herald newspaper on Friday said the internal traveller's cheques, ranging from Zim $1,000 to Zim $100,000 denominations, would "go some way in alleviating the crisis ... traveller's cheques are safer and more convenient to use than the large amounts of cash that people have been moving around with". However, others believe the move by the central bank may not help at all. Dennis Nikisi, director of the Graduate School of Management at the University of Zimbabwe, told IRIN on Friday there was no guarantee that merchants would accept the traveller's cheques as payment. "It's a question of attitude, are merchants going to accept these traveller's cheques, will they change them into liquid cash? People are still very, very doubtful whether it's going to be practical or not. People here are saying there's no value in anything other than actual cash. In my view it will be slow in taking off, the cash shortage will persist," he said. Nikisi added that it would take "a month or two" to properly gauge the use and acceptance of the traveller's cheques. It was important to note, also, that a large proportion of everyday commodities, ranging from fuel to bread, had to be purchased on the black market, he said. "If you want fuel and you have to get it on the black market, is the person who is selling the fuel going to accept such a kind of currency? If the seller on the black market is not going to be able to immediately use the traveller's cheques for purchasing other items, and the requirement is that they have to bank them, then it's the same as using regular [personal] cheques - which they don't accept. You still require cash to buy any product on the black market," Nikisi explained.
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From VOA News, 8 August
Zimbabwe farmers suspend sale of tobacco
Tendai Maphosa
Harare - Angry Zimbabwean tobacco farmers have suspended the sale of their produce twice in the past week to try to force the government to give them a better exchange rate. The farmers say they face bankruptcy if they are forced to continue selling tobacco at the official rate. Tobacco is Zimbabwe's number one foreign currency earner. But farmers say that may change if the government does not address their complaints. The tobacco is priced in U.S. dollars, and the farmers get their payment in Zimbabwe dollars at a rate of 820-1 U.S. dollar. The farmers say that is far from sufficient because it costs as much as 6,000 Zimbabwe dollars to buy a U.S. dollar on the parallel market, the only place they are available. As a result, the farmers have to pay extremely high prices for imported products such as fertilizers and other chemicals for their farms. In addition, the cost of transporting their crops is high because of the high price of imported fuel. The tobacco farmers are demanding that government revise the official exchange rate upwards to at least 2,000 Zimbabwe dollars.
One angry tobacco farmer told the state controlled Herald newspaper the farmers are suffering huge losses. The spokesman for the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association, Oliver Gawe, says at the start of the tobacco selling season in April, the government promised to review the exchange rate every quarter. But he says this has not been done. Mr. Gawe says Zimbabwe has experienced a drop of 66 percent in its tobacco output since the start of President Robert Mugabe's sometimes violent land reform program in 2000. The program was meant to take land from white commercial farmers and give it to landless blacks. The president himself has admitted that things did not go according to plan, as senior officials of his ruling party grabbed some of the land for themselves. A lack of money and expertise has led to an all-around reduction of agricultural production. And Mr. Gawe of the Tobacco Association says another drop in tobacco production is imminent if the situation is not addressed soon. Representatives of the tobacco industry are talking to the government to try to find a solution to the problem.
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From The Daily News, 7 August
Severe hunger stalks prisons
By Farai Mutsaka, Chief Reporter
When a Harare magistrate denied him bail, instead ordering him to spend two weeks in remand prison awaiting trial for armed robbery, Kizito Mulenga, 28, did not expect a holiday at the state prison. He did not expect hell either, after all he was still innocent until proven guilty. But when the warder opened the heavy doors to usher him into his first prison cell, it immediately dawned on Mulenga that the fortnight he was going to spend inside Harare Remand Prison was going to be a tough test of endurance. As Mulenga this week recounted to the Daily News, the overcrowded cell, equipped with one malfunctioning toilet which resulted in human waste, urine and water "sharing" the cells with the inmates, was to prove the least of his worries. Inmates have to learn how to survive on a single "meal" a day. Mulenga, who is now out of prison after the charges against him were dropped, said: "We were always hungry. The meals are not regular and most of the time we would only have one badly prepared meal a day. That is where I really witnessed starvation at its worst because 90 percent of my cell mates did not have relatives that could bring them extra food. If you thought people out here are starving, then you need to visit one of these jails to get a picture of what hunger is really like."
A shortage of basic food commodities afflicting Zimbabwe plus the cash-strapped government's failure to pay suppliers on time has combined to create an acute hunger crisis in Zimbabwe's prisons. But it is a crisis festering on, behind the iron gates of prisons, unnoticed by the media or public. Mulenga, like many others who have been through Zimbabwe's prison system lately, talks of serious hunger stalking the country's overcrowded prisons. The food served in the country's prisons has never been known for its healthy or tasty quality, but Mulenga or the several other former prisoners and prison officials interviewed by this newspaper, said there was hardly any feeding of prisoners taking place these days owing to the shortage of food. With his relatives unaware that he was languishing in remand prison, Mulenga had to learn the prison lingo quick enough to be able to budget for the day's meals. "When the prison wardens say 0-0-1, then you would know that the only meal you are getting that day is supper and if he says 0-1-0 then you are getting lunch only. We would all smile when it was 0-1-1 because at least that would be two meals a day, never mind the quality," he said.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, under whose portfolio the Zimbabwe Prison Service (ZPS) falls, last month said that the government would build more prisons to accommodate Zimbabwe's growing prison population. Chinamasa could not be reached for comment on the issue of hunger in prisons by the time of going to print last night. The ZPS had also not responded to questions on the matter faxed to it yesterday. The country's 42 prisons have capacity to hold 16 000 inmates but they are estimated to be holding close to 30 000 prisoners. But prison officials, who spoke on condition they were not named, said money allocated for prisoners' food fell far below what was required given the skyrocketing cost of food. One senior prison official said: "From our budget allocations, we can only use about $10 000 for food per prisoner per month and with the rising costs of basic commodities, this is hardly enough. We have had to suspend other meals to stretch the budget. We can no longer afford luxuries such as bread or meat. We give them porridge with salt in the morning and after that it will just be sadza and boiled vegetables. The same goes for clothing and blankets. They are all worn out but we can't afford new ones." Human rights campaigners have in the past called on the government to revamp the country's prison system by building more prisons and allocating more funds to its prisons described by opposition Movement for Democratic Change president Morgan Tsvangirai as a "scandal waiting to explode". Tsvangirai spent two weeks in prison after being arrested following the mass anti-government protest called by his party in June.
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 10 August
Mugabe bans cash 'hoarding'
Harare - President Robert Mugabe's government announced on Saturday that it banning the "hoarding" of cash, in an attempt to deal with a desperate shortage of banknotes. The state-controlled daily Herald newspaper quoted finance minister Herbert Murerwa as saying that according to regulations passed under Mugabe's sweeping personal powers, "the practice of hoarding cash would be penalised". It said that the law was to "compel traders and parastatals (state-owned companies) to bank cash not immediately required for the purposes of their businesses." Murerwa said a special unit, the "banking transactions promotion unit," would be set up to enforce the new law, backed by police and the central bank. No further details of the legislation were reported by the Herald, and commercial bank executives said they knew nothing of the new law. Mugabe's presidential powers give him authority to pass almost any legislation for up to six months. The scarcity of banknotes has forced thousands of people to queue outside banks, sometimes for days, to try to withdraw their salaries. Withdrawals are limited to 5 000 Zimbabwe dollars. Armed riot police are regularly called out when frustration boils over into disorder.
Economists say the shortage is a consequence of inflation that in the last six months has effectively doubled the quantity of cash needed by ordinary Zimbabweans for their daily necessities. "It's a threat which the government hopes will make people get rid of their cash," said economist John Robertson. "However, the guys in high places who have caused this and who have the most cash are the ones who will get away with it. They keep the cash because it is a commodity that can be traded at a profit." Reports in the independent press this week said that the central bank had set up a "special facility" to give top government and ruling party officials access to almost unlimited cash. Banking sources who asked not to be named said ministers and ruling party MPs last week drew bundles of about 25 million Zimbabwe dollars from the state-owned Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe. Last week the government announced it would withdraw the current Zimbabwe dollar 500 note - the current highest in circulation - at the end of September and replace it with a new one, and simultaneously introduce a 1 000 dollar note. This week central bank officials said Zimbabwe dollar "travellers' cheques" with a value of up to 100 000 dollars would be issued to ease the cash shortage. Robertson said the new measures fell far short of dealing with the root of the crisis. "The reason why the government has done this is because they don't want to do what they should do, which is increase interest rates to give people an incentive to stop hoarding and keep their money in the bank," he said.
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From The Sunday Times (UK), 10 August
Zimbabwe wildlife crisis as elite grabs hunting rights
Jon Swain, Harare
As poachers slaughter more and more wildlife in Zimbabwe, the country’s minister of parks and tourism has almost bankrupted the body responsible for protecting endangered species of game by giving away valuable hunting concessions to family and friends in the ruling elite. Francis Nhema’s action is believed to have netted the individuals as much as £1m. But the parks and wildlife management authority, which he oversees, cannot meet the August wage bill for its 2,400 staff because it was not paid properly for the concessions. Last week banks were refusing to lend it any more money until it came up with a plan for repaying the loans. "But how can it while the minister is giving away the assets?" said an inside source. The knock-on effect of Nhema’s intervention has been disastrous. Zimbabwe boasts more national parks than almost any other country; they cover 14% of the countryside and were once superbly run. However, the impoverishment of the national parks has meant that scouts, the first line of defence against poachers, have been forced to cut back on patrols after running out of fuel for their vehicles and ammunition for their rifles. Rations are said to be in such short supply that some scouts have been ordered to shoot game for the pot whenever they go into the field.
Nhema had a reputation for good management until he began giving away the hunting concessions without going through a tendering process. One of the early beneficiaries of his largesse has been his sister-in-law Tendi Nkomo, the daughter of Joshua Nkomo, the late vice-president. She was awarded the Tuli concession for a token US$750. Another beneficiary is Emmanuel Fundira, the minister’s nephew. He was awarded the concession for Makuti, one of the most prized hunting areas where elephant, lion, buffalo and leopard are the main bag. The Charara concession, estimated to be worth more than £500,000 from hunting fees this season, was parcelled out to a consortium headed by Brigadier Paradzayi Zimondi and General Amoth Chingombe, two powerful army figures. The process started last year. This year it was expanded with Nhema ’s creation of two new safari hunting areas to give away to cronies. One of them, at Sengwa, was created out of an area that had not previously been hunted but was designated as a wildlife research centre. Nhema has also dramatically increased the quotas of animals that are allowed to be shot to what conservationists say are unsustainable levels.
The annual hunting quota for Sengwa, which covers an area of 364 square kilometres, is now 12 elephant, five lion, 25 buffalo and 12 leopard. The sustainable level is put at two elephant, one lion, five buffalo and two leopard. Nhema confirmed that he had directed the allocation of hunting concessions to individual operators, but indicated that it had been on the advice of the parks authority. "If anything has gone wrong in the selection process of beneficiaries, the blame should be placed on the authority, which could have failed to discharge its duties efficiently," he told the state-owned Herald newspaper. Analysts said the changes have turned big game hunting into a new cash cow for the elite, who have already profited hugely from the seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms. However, they added that a rapid decline in the wild animal population from poaching meant the money was in danger of drying up soon. As much as half the country’s game has been slaughtered in the three years since war veterans began land invasions.
The land seizures have turned Zimbabwe from a peaceful and prosperous country into one of turmoil, lawlessness, hunger and poverty. It is estimated that it has lost as many as 3,000 cheetah, which are endangered worldwide, to gangs of illegal settlers who hunt them down with spears and dogs on confiscated white farmland. There are thought to be only 18 Liechtenstein hartebeest, a rare antelope, and the numbers of tsessebi antelope have fallen from 12,000 to 3,000. Several rare black rhino have also been killed for their horns, worth £30,000. Although elephants are not endangered in Zimbabwe, massive poaching of the 80,000- strong population has decimated some herds. A World Wide Fund for Nature survey counted 3,800 elephant carcasses in the Zambezi valley alone in the past four years. One person who has seen the damage at first hand is Sharon Pincott, an Australian conservationist. She works with the 400-plus herd of "presidential elephants" of Hwangwe. Despite their special status these elephants, too, have been poached. "What gruesome sight might I encounter today?" Pincott asks every time she goes into the bush to observe the elephants. "Will it be a severed trunk not long enough to reach the mouth with water?" she writes in Zimbabwe Wildlife magazine. "While I hope for the best I’ve learnt to be prepared for the worst."
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From The Observer (UK), 10 August
'Mugabe says we are being stolen. All we want is better pay'
The brain drain has badly hit Zimbabwe's fragile health service
Andrew Meldrum in Pretoria
Shepherd Mhofu is disgusted. Recently qualified as a doctor, he is doing his residency at Harare's Parirenyatwa hospital. 'I have to perform D and Cs [womb scrapes] on women without anaesthetic. I must tell families of critically ill patients that they must buy intravenous drips and medicines. We must perform surgery without gloves,' said Mhofu, 26, inhaling deeply from a cigarette. 'I see patients suffering and dying needlessly because we are working in an unprofessional environment. The medical school should have trained us to work in medical conditions from 200 years ago.' Mhofu said he is not paid enough to feed his family, let alone buy a car. 'We are paid so little that all of us in the medical profession think about going overseas,' he said. 'I don't want to go, but I want to work in modern conditions. I want to be paid enough to support my family. That means I must go to Britain, or maybe Australia.'
Zimbabwe's brain drain has hit the medical profession particularly hard. More than 80 per cent of doctors, nurses and therapists who graduated from the University of Zimbabwe medical school since independence in 1980 have gone to work abroad, primarily in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, according to recent surveys. The exodus has badly affected the country's crumbling health system. The country has fewer than half the 1,500 doctors needed to staff government hospitals adequately. The University of Zimbabwe is operating with less than 50 per cent of its lecturers. The medical school is so badly affected that the annual intake of new students has been reduced from 120 to 70. 'Even that is not helping,' said one lecturer. 'My department has dropped from 12 lecturers to three. The standards of teaching are dropping too.'
President Robert Mugabe has accused Britain of 'stealing' doctors and nurses from Zimbabwe. 'We have created the environment that allows the upliftment of nurses. That's why even Britain comes in the dead of night to steal our people. They are recruiting pharmacists, doctors and nurses,' he said last year. But Zimbabwean doctors dispute Mugabe's assessment. 'We are not being stolen,' said a bitter Mhofu. 'We are seeking better pay and better standards. No one can blame us for that. The government would rather spend money on the army and on riot-control vehicles and on new Mercedes-Benz. If some of that money were spent on the health system and our salaries, then we could stay here.' Harare paediatrician Greg Powell, chairman of the Child Protection Society, complains the brain drain includes social workers. 'Britain is actively recruiting our social workers to the point where our department of social welfare is about to collapse,' said Powell. 'This means our treatment of Aids orphans is breaking down. We are seeing professional recruitment of our social workers by British agencies. They are offered salaries 20 times greater than what they get here. The result is we have 20 children ready to go to foster homes and it is delayed because there are no social workers to do the reports. British recruiters are directly responsible for that. They are pillaging our human resources.'
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From The Sunday Times (SA), 10 August
Mugabe hitches a ride on soccer and music
Sunday Times Foreign Desk
The Zimbabwean government has taken to exploiting everyday popular activities in the country to shore up Robert Mugabe's dwindling popularity. Soccer matches, beauty pageants, music shows and various cultural events are now all being touted as "government projects" in a desperate bid to revive the president's flagging political profile. Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, Mugabe's propaganda chief, is spearheading efforts to peddle recreational events as official activities. Moyo started his campaign last year when he hijacked the Miss Malaika beauty pageant organised by the Benin-born music promoter Ernest Coovi Adjovi. Using the then-reigning Miss Malaika, Brita Masalethulini of Zimbabwe, the government turned the pageant into a political circus. Moyo led fund-raising efforts for the event, which eventually netted Z$65 million. A Cabinet Action Committee adopted the pageant as a national project, paving the way for the government's involvement. However, it has been recently reported that Moyo and Adjovi, also director of the Kora All Africa Music Awards, now based in Johannesburg, are locked in a legal wrangle over the R69 000 that was used to organise the contest, which was eventually won by an African-American, Morgan Chitty.
Moyo, who recently wrote a song for the national soccer team, has also been trying to use football as a rallying point to drum up support for Mugabe, who now suddenly claims to be a fervent soccer fan. In a recent address to journalists after Zimbabwe's first qualification for the African Cup of Nations finals in Tunisia next year, Mugabe said he loved the game. He also said he often talked about the sport when he met South African President Thabo Mbeki. "I have never played soccer seriously, apart from kicking the ball around in my spare time with friends at school, and I know it is a very enjoyable sport," Mugabe said. "I follow all those moves . . . People must not sit close to me because when you score I also score, and I tell you when that happens while someone is close to my feet they must watch out for I also shoot hard." He said his family knows and often protests about his unchecked fanaticism. "My wife knows and always complains that each time I watch soccer I make a lot of noise because I truly enjoy the game," he said. However, Mugabe's government failed in 2000 to organise an African Cup of Nations finals match after winning the bid to host the game.
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Comment from The Daily News, 9 August
The logic behind scuttling dialogue
By Eldred Masunungure
Last week I argued that Zimbabwe was ripe for dialogue by presenting the logic for dialogue. And yet, it is folly and even reckless to pretend that the case for dialogue is uncontested. In this contribution, I present the logic against dialogue, from the perspective of those who advance this position, at least as I discern it. I still maintain that dialogue is inevitable, primarily, if not only, because the status quo is both untenable and unsustainable. There are real threats to the dialogue process and to date, the loudest and most coherent threats seem to emanate from Zanu PF circles, and there is logic to that.
As reported in the media, church leaders first met the Zanu PF leadership led by President Robert Mugabe and his delegation, comprising Vice-President Joseph Msika, the party national chairman John Nkomo, party spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira and Cabinet Secretary Willard Chiwewe. All these are veterans of the party Zanu PF. Virtually all of them are veterans of the negotiations leading to the Unity Accord of December 1987. Chiwewe was the secretary of the Unity Committee. It is clear from the composition of this delegation that it comprised the Old Guard of the unified ruling party. The significance of this lies in that the Old Guard convinced the party president of the seriousness of the national crisis and of the "profitlessness" of a hard-line and inflexible position; that there is virtue in flexibility. This is no mean achievement given the amadoda sibili orientation of the First Citizen. I don’t think it was easy to convince Mugabe of the righteousness of this course of action. It must have involved considerable secrecy and even stealth on the part of this group, a political coup of some sort. And, as in most coups, there is often a counter-coup, and we may be witnessing a counter-coup in motion, that of convincing the party president of the faultiness of the dialogue process as presently mooted.
This brings us to the new breed of Zanu PF politicians, supposedly led by the party’s legal affairs secretary, Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa. This group comprises the Young Turks of the party, the New Guard. It also contains the bulk of the amadoda sibili, the core of the "War Cabinet". Chinamasa articulated the New Guard’s stance eloquently, though not necessarily convincingly. He did not waste time in dismissing the church initiative, attacking particularly the credibility of the men (there were no women) of cloth. Chinamasa characterised the churchmen as "MDC activists wearing religious collars" and accused them of being in the service of foreign masters. The New Guard is unequivocally opposed to even the "talks about talks" and I think the dismissive stance has a logic of its own. The logic is most likely based on the New Guard’s assessment of the state of the nation and its future, the role of Zanu PF in the overall scheme of things and their own political fortunes within the party and on a national scale. To me, the position of the New Guard is best captured in three words: "tenacity in turmoil" whose Shona version is Rambai Makashinga.
Clearly there is a wide gulf between the Old Guard and the New Guard. Both may be in search of a viable solution to the Zimbabwe crisis (the New Guard sees the crisis more as a challenge), but seem to differ markedly on the definition of the problem, its magnitude, the urgency of solutions to it, the time-frames and may also differ on the prognosis of the future and the party’s role in it. While for the Old Guard, tenacity in turmoil has proved foolhardy, for the New Guard tenacity in turmoil is a virtue, the reasoning being that if we are in darkness, light should surely be around the corner. The darker the darkness, the nearer the light, so, rambai makashinga. Any fair-minded observer would easily acknowledge that the New Guard has invested very heavily politically and emotionally in trying to rescue Zanu PF and building and projecting its positive image both domestically and internationally. And the New Guard is shrewd, cunning, thorough and energetic. It has worked overtime and tirelessly and with a single-minded purpose to salvage the party from collapse. In its estimation, Zanu PF is on the road to irreversible recovery and can certainly weather the storm until the next parliamentary elections in 2005.
The logic, therefore, is to hold on for as long as it takes to the next elections and those elections are to be run under the present constitutional and electoral framework. No more, no less! Elections 2005 has become a fixation; rambai makashinga until 2005. Why throw in the towel to the churchmen when 2005 is so near? Why allow a case of so near and yet so far away? Further, the New Guard seems to believe that the MDC is really not a permanent feature of Zimbabwean politics; that the MDC is nothing but a temporary political aberration that will wither away if Zanu PF remains steadfast, unyielding and unbending combined with an integrated onslaught on the MDC. Come 2005, the MDC will be neutralised, pulverised or paralysed through various concerted and well-co-ordinated efforts to decapitate its leadership while simultaneously scattering the sheep. To the Young Turks, it is argued (to Mugabe of course) that the strategies and tactics used in the 2000 parliamentary elections and sharpened for the 2002 presidential election can further be refined, perfected and deployed for 2005. The challenge is to survive until 2005, even if it means the country wobbling along until then. The Public Order and Security Act and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act can be argued to provide the legal infrastructure for a triumphant Zanu PF.
When the party president recently threw down the gauntlet and exhorted his party supporters to gear themselves for the 2005 elections, this represented a triumph for the New Guard. And the New Guard is gifted with the power of argument. The thrust of the argument is that Zanu PF does not need the MDC, that a solo effort is both possible and desirable. Having worked so hard since the hondo yeminda and the Third Chimurenga, why surrender now? they ask. The dialogue process represents a silent surrender in this perfectly plausible view. Further, the church initiative, or any other initiative for that matter, could easily scuttle the New Guard’s drive for the supremacy of the party. The dialogue process comes at a time when the New Guard has not captured control within the party. The talks then can be regarded as a big ointment in a bigger game plan. So the talks must be scuttled.
Eldred Masunungure is head of the Political and Administrative Studies Department at the University of Zimbabwe
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 10 August
Travellers' cheques fail to solve cash crisis
By Caiphas Chimhete
Several banks in Harare had, by late afternoon yesterday, not received their allocation of the local travellers' cheques from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) by the close of business yesterday, two days after they were supposed to be in circulation, as the cash squeeze continued, The Standard has established. Only three banks - Barclays Bank of Zimbabwe Limited, Standard Chartered Bank and Royal Bank - were issuing the RBZ travellers cheques by closure of financial business yesterday. The three commercial banks were issuing travellers' cheques of $100 000 only, an amount that many Zimbabweans said they did not have in their bank accounts. "We started with a higher denomination so that we do not clog our system. If we had started with a $20 000 cheque, the situation was likely to go out of control as more people were going to queue," said a front desk official with Barclays Bank's head office in Harare.
The government last week announced the introduction of local travellers' cheques in denominations of $100 000, $50 000, $20 000, $5 000 and $1 000 that would be accepted locally as payment for goods and services in an effort to eliminate the cash shortages. However, there were no customers at most of the bank counters where the cheques were available because people did not have the huge amounts of $100 000 in their bank accounts, defeating the whole idea of introducing cheques in place of cash. An official with Zimbank said they had received the travellers' cheques but had not started issuing them because they were still working on modalities. Other commercial banks such as Kingdom, Stanbic and Century had not received the travellers' cheques from the RBZ by the time they closed business yesterday.
With the travellers' cheques, an account holder can use them to buy goods and services from supermarkets and other retail outlets in Zimbabwe. However, the failure by the RBZ to release enough travellers' cheques of lower denominations meant that those who wanted to travel during this Heroes' and Defence Forces' Day holidays, were unable to do so due to the cash shortage. Long and winding queues were evident in almost all the banking halls in Harare yesterday as people tried to withdraw money for use during the holidays. Most banks continued to limit withdrawals to only $10 000 and many automated teller machines (ATMs) were not working because they did not have cash. As the bank notes shortage persists, the government has engaged a German firm, Geisecke and Devrient (G&D), to print the $1 000 note that is expected to be available in the country next month.
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Comment from Business Day (SA), 11 August
Weird economy is consuming itself
By Dianna Games
A friend in Zimbabwe, normally astute in his economic observation, had me wondering recently when he asserted that business in the country was actually booming. He said the South African press had created unnecessary gloom and doom about the economic situation across the Limpopo, and challenged me to update myself on the situation. I took him up on it. During a trip to Harare last week I saw what he was on about. There was indeed a sense of greater normalcy about the city's everyday life than I had expected. The streets were full of people, cars and buses, imported goods were flying off the shelves, basic foodstuffs appeared to be available, the stock exchange was on an extended bull run, new houses were going up in upmarket suburbs and four major companies reported results well ahead of inflation. But, of course, you just need to scratch below the surface to see a rather different picture. This is an economy feeding off itself, that will soon cave in on a hollowed out centre. While cars clog the streets, the regular petrol stations are deserted, with the whole fuel industry having "gone private" and migrated to backyard caches, roadside tankers and smalls adverts in newspapers, with prices determined by the desperation of the buyer. On the pavements outside banks the throngs are actually lengthy queues of people, often patrolled by riot police, waiting for the paltry sums of precious cash they are allowed to withdraw from their accounts. The shops might be full, but they are rapidly turning ordinary Zimbabweans into paupers with prices few can really afford.
The 400% inflation rate is fuelling the stock market, the spending spree in the retail and housing sectors, and the quick fortunes being made by local entrepreneurs exploiting shortages. Of course, these include many senior government officials and top ruling-party politicians who have used their positions to enter the money-trading business on the side, capitalise on the foreign exchange shortage and become instant millionaires. In the past fortnight alone, the value of one US dollar on the black market has nearly doubled to more than Z6000. Local currency, too, has become tradeable with banks offering up to 30% commissions on the value of cash sold back to them. In the weird world of the Zimbabwe economy, an IPO is known among cynics not as an initial public offering but as an "individual profit opportunity". The banknote shortage is about more than a lack of foreign currency to print money. It is the culmination of a series of interlocking distortions propping up the economy. It has been a rude wake-up call for many Zimbabweans, a reminder of this rather Alice in Wonderland-like environment in which they function.
The boom boast is unsustainable. Outside of the profiteers, desperate poverty is consuming the people. The government is without a plan. Domestic debt spirals as it borrows madly to prop up a malfunctioning land programme and keep restive public servants at bay. While the basis of most of the new capitalists' wealth will disappear with the hoped-for return to normality, an intriguing and compelling irony is emerging from the chaos. The very ruling party stalwarts that are currently skinning the masses could actually be turning into one of the major forces for change. Zanu PF heavyweights who used their often dubious gains to buy companies that are now doing nicely, including a number listed on the soaring stock exchange, are actually starting to hanker for a return to international acceptance and long-term sustainability as any sensible businessman would. The government's diminishing capacity to dispense patronage and largesse has the sometime faithful looking beyond the current mess to a new order in which their acquisitions and wealth will really mean something. It is no longer just the opposition that is pushing for change.
Dianna Games is director of Africa @ Work, a conferencing and publishing company focusing on Africa
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 10 August
Tractor scandal
By Henry Makiwa
President Robert Mugabe, who initiated a tractor scheme to benefit tobacco growers early this year, has helped himself to one of the biggest tractors available under the scheme, The Standard has established. It has also emerged that top officials in the ruling Zanu PF party and government might have hijacked the tractor scheme, initially meant to benefit mostly the newly resettled small-scale tobacco growers. Mugabe launched the ambitious Tobacco Growers Trust (TGT) mechanisation programme in April in an effort to empower the newly resettled and small-scale tobacco growers, and those already growing the crop, by providing cheaper tractors to produce next year's crop. Most of the first batch of the imported tractors that have arrived into the country since April have been allocated in questionable circumstances to TGT employees, Cabinet ministers, judges, service chiefs and workers in President Mugabe's office.
Investigations by The Standard show that among the beneficiaries of the cheap but powerful tractors from India, France and Brazil - besides Mugabe - have been Agriculture Minister Joseph Made, Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, Judge President Paddington Garwe, Zimbabwe Defence Forces chief Vitalis Zvinavashe, Science and Technology Minister Olivia Muchena, Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa and Deputy Minister Shuvai Mahofa, among others. According to documents in possession of The Standard, the list of beneficiaries of the TGT mechanisation scheme reads like the "who's who" in Zanu PF and includes government officials like the Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede, Airforce Commander Perence Shiri, Made's permanent secretary Ngoni Masoka, top Zanu PF legislators Eddison Zvobgo, Kenneth Manyonda and Nobbie Dzinzi, former Finance minister, Simba Makoni and University of Zimbabwe lecturer and Hondo YeMinda apologist, Sheunesu Mupepereki.
Though The Standard's investigations could not establish whether all those who received the tractors were indeed tobacco growers, disgruntled new farmers last week alleged that the allocations were fraught with underhand and sometimes corrupt tendencies. It was, however, established that some of the beneficiaries, including President Mugabe, do not grow the golden leaf which accounts for a substantial part of Zimbabwe's foreign currency earnings, although this was given as a prerequisite for one to qualify for the scheme. Thomas Nherera, TGT vice-chairman, who together with his boss Wilfanos Mashingaidze, were responsible for the allocation of some of the tractors, dismissed the allegations of looting as "trivial". "All this cheap talk happens wherever there is business. Yes, we gave the President (Mugabe) a tractor, in the full glare of the public on April 4. We gave him even though he does not grow tobacco because he is our President," Nherera said. "But Made runs a tobacco farm in Headlands while Garwe and Chidyausiku are tobacco growers of note. In fact, everyone who has received the tractors has a tobacco growers' identity number," said Nherera.
He said of the 741 tractors that were expected to be imported, only 224 have arrived due to the country's shortage of foreign currency. Said Nherera: "The simple thing is that the demand for these tractors far outweighs the need. So any allegations levelled against us are baseless, unless if it is a petty argument that we should not give tractors to high profile government and ruling party officials even though they are tobacco growers." Nherera, according to documents in our possession, awarded himself a 100-horsepower SAME Silver 100.6 tractor, one of the most powerful machines available under the scheme. Other tractor models available under the mechanisation programme are the French-built Renaults and the Indian-made Mahindras. Pindie Nyandoro, managing director of Stanbic Bank who also benefited from the scheme, admitted to The Standard that she was awarded a tractor even though she does not grow tobacco. Nyandoro said she had acquired the tractor on behalf of her nephews fuelling suspicion that other "big wigs" in commerce and industry might have used their influence to attain the cheap farming equipment.
Beneficiaries of the tractors pay a government-subsidised sum of between $1 and $2 million instead of the more than $30 million they would cost if purchased at the going market price from their local assemblers. Under the mechanisation programme, TGT was allowed to retain 20% of tobacco export earnings to buy chemicals, fertilisers and tractors for growers and new farmers of the crop. Many of the new tobacco farmers, resettled on commercial farms but without the implements, had registered their names for the tractors and were surprised to find out that they had already been snapped by the "chefs". "The whole scheme stinks of massive corruption. First of all, the identity of people who have benefited has been kept a top secret and yet the programme, as was said by President Mugabe when he launched it, was supposed to be transparent," said a new farmer, who refused to be named.
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From The Guardian (UK), 11 August
Short denied responsibility to Zimbabwe
Mark Lobel
Clare Short informed the Zimbabwean government in 1997 that the election of a Labour government "without links to former colonial interests" meant Britain no longer had "special responsibility to meet the cost of land purchases", according to documents obtained by the Guardian. However, ministers maintained conditional support for the regime's land reform programme and distanced themselves from campaigner Peter Tatchell's attempt to arrest Robert Mugabe for human rights abuses. In a letter to Zimbabwe's minister of agriculture, Kumbirai Kangai, Ms Short said: "We do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the cost of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests." The then international development secretary's letter did offer qualified support for land reform, stating: "We do recognise the very real issues you face over land reform... we would be prepared to support a programme of land reform that was part of a poverty eradication strategy, but not on any other basis."
Despite the increasingly violent nature of Mr Mugabe's land redistribution programme, the government continued to offer conditional support. A 1998 draft message from Tony Blair to the Zimbabwean president, also obtained by the Guardian, states: "My government recognises that the present pattern of land ownership needs to be fundamentally changed. We remain willing to assist with a land reform programme which is transparent and fair and has the support and participation of beneficiaries and stakeholders." But this insistence on the support of stakeholders, such as white landowners, infuriated Mr Mugabe. At the Commonwealth summit in 1999 he said: "The Conservatives were more mature. This government is inexperienced. I am not the only Commonwealth leader who believes that," he said. Bilateral relations deteriorated further when the human rights activist Peter Tatchell ambushed Mr Mugabe's limousine and tried to perform a citizen's arrest when he visited London for talks with the then Foreign Office minister, Peter Hain.
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From ZWNEWS, 11 August
Kadoma MP dies
Austin Mupandawana, MDC MP for Kadoma Central, died on Saturday afternoon in Harare. He was 50, and had been ill since being detained by police in March this year. Mupandawana was arrested along with 27 party activists after leading his constituents in a demonstration during the two-day mass stay. He was finally granted bail a month later, after having been charged with involvement with what the police called "mysterious explosions" in Kadoma which coincided with the stay away. During his time in police custody at Kadoma police station, he and three other MDC members were assaulted and tortured, and were denied medical treatment. His death brings to two the number of opposition parliamentary seats left vacant, after the resignation of Harare Central MP Mike Auret due to ill health. He leaves his wife Constance and six children.
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From BBC News, 11 August
Mugabe urges critics to 'repent'
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has demanded that his political opponents repent before they can expect to hold talks with the government on tackling the country's crisis. "Those who would go together with our enemies abroad cannot at the same time want to march alongside us as our partners," Mr Mugabe said on Monday. "No, we say no to them, they must first repent," he told a Heroes Day rally in Harare, called to honour those who fought and died in the struggle for independence. Mr Mugabe's defiant tone is a setback for efforts to re-start negotiations between the Zimbabwean Government and the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), according to the BBC's Ishbel Matheson in South Africa. Talks between President Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party and the MDC, headed by Morgan Tsvangirai, were reported to have taken place but ended in deadlock last year. The MDC dismissed as irrelevant President Mugabe's call. MDC Secretary-General Welshman Ncube said Mr Mugabe was the one who should seek forgiveness for the deaths of 3,000 opposition supporters.
Zimbabwe is currently in the grip of an economic and political crisis, and correspondents say many Zimbabweans have little to celebrate as they mark Heroes Day - the annual remembrance of the liberation from white rule in 1980. Half of Zimbabwe's population currently face severe food shortages, inflation stands at 360% and unemployment is high as the country spirals into an ever deepening economic crisis. Fuel supplies are also erratic as President Mugabe's government faces a shortage of bank notes and foreign exchange to import essential commodities, such as oil. The celebrations also take place at a time when talks between Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party and Morgan Tsvangirai Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are regarded as crucial to getting the country back on the right track. On Sunday, Mr Tsvangirai said the MDC was willing to take what he called "risky measures" to open talks with President Mugabe's government. Mr Tsvangirai did not specify what the risks were, but some MDC followers feel that offering to negotiate with Mr Mugabe now might alienate hard-line opponents of Zanu PF. The MDC has always maintained that it would not halt its legal challenge to Mr Mugabe's re-election in 2002 which it regards as fraudulent.
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From SABC News, 11 August
Botswana denies planning to topple Mugabe
Botswana has denied involvement in alleged plans to topple the government of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's President. Reports of such a plan proliferated since the visit to Botswana last month of George W. Bush, the US President. "We are outraged by these statements of vilification," Mompati Merafhe, the Botswana Foreign Minister, said of the allegations, speaking in Maputo, at the fourth meeting of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Organ on Defence, Security and Politics. The text of his speech was released by the Botswana government today. "This is a matter of serious concern to our government. We are being accused of working with the Americans and British to bring about a forceful regime change in a friendly SADC member state, our friendly neighbour Zimbabwe," Merafhe said. "It is alleged a US military base in Botswana will be used to launch such military attack."
There have been press reports alleging meetings in Botswana between Walter Kansteiner, a US assistant secretary of state for Africa, and Jack Straw, British foreign secretary, to hatch the plan. Kansteiner was in Gaborone in May to open a US trade office, but, said Merafhe: "Jack Straw has never been to Botswana." The only visit on record of a British government minister this year is that in April of parliamentary under Baroness Valerie Amo, a secretary for foreign affairs and minister for Africa, who said there was increasing frustration in Africa over the failure to resolve the situation in Zimbabwe. Merafhe said that even if the Americans and the British were planning action to topple Mugabe, it would not be mounted from Botswana. "Botswana would never allow itself to be used for such treacherous activities," he said.
Since the Bush visit, Botswana has had to repeatedly deny any links between the US and a military air base about 100km north-west of Gaborone. Thebephatshwa base was opened in August 1995, by Merafhe, who was then Commander of the Botswana Defence Force (BDF). Speculation that it had been funded by the US surfaced immediately. "The US does not own any military base in Botswana. Thebephatshwa air base is wholly owned by the government of Botswana," he said. "It was constructed during my term as Commander of the BDF, with our own resources, without any assistance from the US or any other country." The US and Botswana cooperate in training of police to combat terror, disaster training and officer training for the BDF. The US has also provided military equipment to Botswana, though not on a scale that would promote conflict.
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From The Daily News, 11 August
Bishop held hostage
By Fanuel Jongwe, Staff Reporter
The controversial head of the Anglican Church, Bishop Nolbert Kunonga, was yesterday briefly held hostage by parishioners of St Philip's Anglican Church in Harare's New Tafara suburb, who accused him of snubbing them and protecting church leaders who are alleged to be abusing funds. Kunonga had attended a service at the church to conduct a confirmation service. Angry parishioners confronted him after the service, accusing him of dragging his feet on an investigation into the circumstances in which more than $300 000 was allegedly withdrawn from the church's account. The money was allegedly withdrawn by a pastor and a church warden (names supplied), who failed to account for the funds.
The drama, part of which was witnessed by this reporter, began when the church council invited Kunonga into the vestry after the service. The council wanted to quiz the bishop on the circumstances under which part of the money raised for the extension of the church building early this year went missing. Witnesses told the Daily News that Kunonga responded by advising the council officials to "follow the right channels" on the matter. But emotional church members argued that they had submitted their grievances through the relevant channels, but had not received a response from him. They vowed not to let him leave the vestry until he had addressed the issue of the missing funds. "What other channels? We have followed all the channels!" shouted a member of the Mothers' Union, who refused to disclose her name. "You are our Father, we have done everything in terms of the rules of the church, but there has been no answer. Where else do you want us to go?" she added.
Kunonga insisted that the angry congregation should approach him through the church's archdeacon and refused to accept a petition signed by 120 parishioners. A group of women in the church office broke into song and dance, insisting: "Tinoda kutaura nemi, Baba. (We want to have an audience with you, Father.)" As tempers flared, Kunonga's wife, Agnes, who had stood nearby throughout the drama, asked members of the Mothers' Union, who had formed a human barricade at the door, to make way for her. The women obliged. Kunonga then slipped out of the church with his wife and the couple drove off in their Mazda 626 car. As Kunonga drove out off the church yard, angry parishioners shouted after him, accusing him of promoting corruption. Several church members nearly resorted to fisticuffs after Kunonga's departure, as they accused two of their colleagues of trying to protect the bishop and the church officials who are accused of embezzlement.
One group held an impromptu court, surrounding a man they said had tried to rescue Kunonga from the angry parishioners, while another church member challenged colleagues to a fight outside the church. "What we have done is the right thing," Emmanuel Mutinhiri, a former church secretary, said afterwards. "We have the right to talk to the bishop when we have problems and he should not ignore us. Even at home, when a father tries to run away from problems, his own children can block his way." A visibly angry Francis Makombe, the chairman of the parish's ward 12, added: "By not acting on this clear case of abuse of church funds, the bishop is protecting thieves and we will not accept that." It was not possible to secure comment from Kunonga on the incident before going to press last night. His telephone was being answered by an answering machine.
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