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Archived News
15th June 2004
Mugabe takes over all land in attempt to rescue farming
New Zimbabwe land shocker
South African court rejects bid to bring suspected mercenaries home
Al-Qaeda and the Zimbabwe nexus
Zimbabwean media bosses in court once more
Cash-hungry Zimbabwe splashes out on fighter jets
Zimbabwe pays P28.1 million loan
Band of brothers
Shock revelations in the DRC
Al-Qaeda and the Zimbabwe nexus
Zimbabwe bans third private newspaper in a year
Arrival of 'Mugabe's banker' prompts calls for more sanctions against regime officials
Zimbabwe High Court dismisses Mugabe poll challenge
Malaysia gave timber to Mugabe for house
England will not play Zimbabwe Tests
Al-Qaeda and the Zimbabwe nexus
Gono dashes to US on 'mission impossible'
Parliamentary committee to investigate Zimbabwe 'bumper harvest' claims
WFP still feeds needy in Zimbabwe, ready to do more
Mugabe's gift: Did Mahatir get cabinet approval?
Zim 70 magistrate 'held'
A nation of "information scavengers"
Zimbabwe's fighter jets spark fears of arms-race
I was tortured, says Mugabe’s consultant
Mugabe gripped by security paranoia
Will end be swift or prolonged?
Why is Malaysia dancing with dictators, asks Kit Siang
Zim inflation rate dips below 450 percent
Zimbabwe steps up onslaught on the media
Moyo burns his fingers
Chinamasa booted out of farm
Mugabe's legacy
Zim total foreign debt balloons
Zimbabwe factions fight over farms
Couple survive bloody attack
Zimbabwe arms deal raises eyebrows
Botswana stuck in the middle of broadcast row
RBZ team mobbed by angry Zimbabweans
IMF ponders closure of its Harare office
The truth according to the ZCU
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From the Daily Telegraph (UK), 9 June
Mugabe takes over all land in attempt to rescue farming
Harare - Zimbabwe's increasingly autocratic government yesterday announced the nationalisation of all land, including millions of acres seized from white farmers and transferred to friends of the regime. John Nkomo, the lands minister, told the official Herald newspaper all title deeds will be declared void and the state will hand out 99-year leases for productive farmland. The government did not intend to "waste time and money" in disputes with farmers whose land had been seized, regardless of what legal documents they held, Mr Nkomo was quoted as saying. "In the end all land shall be state land and there will be no such thing called private land," he said, encouraging all landowners to offer their newly acquired properties to be considered for leases. Mr Nkomo did not say when the nationalisation programme would be imposed, but said a national land board would be set up to supervise the process and ensure the effective use of land. The decision appeared a backhanded admission that Zimbabwe is struggling to feed itself and that the situation is worsening. The opposition has long argued that the government has effectively laid waste to one of Africa's most efficient agricultural industries.
The seizures began when President Robert Mugabe, facing defeat in the 2000 parliamentary election, began the violent eviction of more than 4,000 white farmers and hundreds of thousands of their workers, destroying commercial agriculture and with it the economy. Mr Mugabe promised that white-owned farms were to be given to landless peasants, but many of the most fertile were taken by the elite of his Zanu PF party. Most of the seized land is now fallow as the new "owners" - including most senior members of the armed forces, the judiciary and Mr Mugabe's family have neither skills nor resources to farm, and Zimbabwe has become dependent on food aid and imports to keep the population alive. Yesterday's decision marks an attempt to wrench land from new multiple farm "owners" and quell divisions in Zanu PF before elections next March. Critics of the redistribution programme say much of the best land has been allocated to Mugabe supporters and is under-utilised or lying fallow. Production on many other farms has dropped sharply as the new owners lack financial resources, seed, fertiliser, fuel and farm machinery. Mr Nkomo said the state-issued leases would be sufficient collateral for farmers to secure loans to purchase material and equipment.
Gideon Gono, the governor of the reserve bank, paid a fair price for a farm more than two years ago. He said yesterday: "Wearing my farmer's hat, then I say the devil will be in the detail. We will have to wait and see the legal framework." He said that as "captain of the banking sector", he was sure the commercial banks would be "well disposed" to the leases. Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said: "Nationalisation is an outmoded word and it flies in the face of the constitution. "The government's land policy, if there is any policy, has run into deep problems and they are looking for a way of rescuing the situation." Matumwe Mawere, a black industrialist who bought several farms but lives in South Africa and is wanted by the police for "externalising foreign currency", said: "So it is land today and it will be businesses tomorrow. So yesterday we owned land freehold, which we paid for, and today we are told it will be subject to a lease. We will have to be compensated." Josiah Tungimirai, a former air chief marshal now a Zanu PF MP, also paid for a farm. He said: "It will be fairly done. They will convert my title to a lease. If anyone is unfair about it and becomes my enemy, well I say they will not live for ever." David Coltart, the MDC legal spokesman, said: "This is a new phase in their madness. It's going to make them even more unpopular with black Zimbabweans who have paid good money for land, and are now going to be deprived of their title. This is not Zambia or Mozambique, which had leasehold as a system. Zimbabweans have had title deeds for over 100 years."
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From The Cape Times (SA), 9 June
New Zimbabwe land shocker
By Tony Weaver and Basildon Peta
In what has been described as "the end of the end" for Zimbabwe's wildlife, President Robert Mugabe's government has announced it is to nationalise all wildlife conservancies and productive farm land. In an interview with the state-owned Herald newspaper, the Minister of Special Affairs in the Office of the President in charge of lands, land reform and resettlement, John Nkomo, said the government wanted to abolish all title deed holdings. "In the end all land will be state land and there will be no such thing called private land." Title deeds are to be replaced with 99-year leases for farm land. But, in a move that has sent shockwaves through the community of conservationists, who have been fairly immune to land grabs because of their importance to the economy, leases on nationalised conservancies are to be limited to 25 years. This would open the "lucrative" game sector to "many more people", Nkomo said. Eddie Cross, finance spokesperson for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, told the Cape Times by email "thi s will mark the end of private conservation in Zimbabwe". "The majority of the conservancies are foreign-owned and therefore protected by investment guarantee agreements with foreign governments. French, German, American and British interests are involved, as are several South African investors. These people have bought into these conservancies with certificates of 'no interest' by the state (and have) made huge investments in infrastructure and in wildlife." At stake were hunting and ecotourism revenues of around $50-million (about R300-million) a year, investment inflows of around $6-million (about R36-milion) a year and the "survival of certain species that have virtually been wiped out in other areas". Cross alleged that "indigenous participation", as mentioned by Nkomo, did not mean peasants participating in conservation, but "selected ZanuPF officials and others connected with the Mugabe regime".
Zimbabwe's government has quietly accelerated the seizure of commercial farms, despite assurances by Mugabe that this had ended. At the weekend, the government gazetted 259 more farms for seizure, bringing to 918 the number listed since January for compulsory acquisition. Another 245 farms have been acquired since January. Of a long list of farms gazetted since April, most are in mainly game conservancy areas. Nkomo has advised private landowners to surrender their land immediately. He said the process of acquiring it under the Land Acquisition Act was too involved and no longer necessary in view of the move to nationalise all land. "The state should not be made to waste time and money on acquisitions," he said. The Cape Times spoke to a number of leading Zimbabwean conservationists, several of them involved in the conservancy movement, which protects vast wildlife areas outside the national parks. None was prepared to be named because, as one put it, "the climate of fear here now is all-pervasive - this is the end of the end for Zimbabwe's wildlife". Johnny Rodrigues, outspoken chairperson of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, was the only conservationist prepared to speak on the record. "The period of 25 years is ridiculous. It will take 15 to 25 years just to get the wildlife to recover. The wildlife situation is terrible, it really is disastrous. The army is involved in a lot of the poaching. We are getting reports of (soldiers) using landmines to kill hippos for meat near Binga (on Lake Kariba). There are trophy-hunters coming in with no legal quotas. Three Americans recently shot 38 trophies without proper permits." Rodrigues said he and others suspected wildlife areas had not been earmarked before because of international sensitivity about conservation. "Now the quickest way left to get rich is through wildlife - everyone's saying that's where the money is, let's go the whole hog and take the lot. That's the mood in Zimbabwe: get rich as fast as possible. All the wildlife people need to get together fast, to preserve what we have left before it's too late." Another leading conservationist, a pioneer of the conservancy movement, said: "I don't think I can take it any more. This is the end."
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From AFP, 9 June
South African court rejects bid to bring suspected mercenaries home
Pretoria - A South African court rejected a complaint from the families of 70 suspected mercenaries held in Zimbabwe demanding that President Thabo Mbeki's government take action to bring the men back to South Africa. Justice Bernard Ngoepe of the Pretoria high court dismissed the case, saying there was not enough evidence to force the South African government to seek the extradition of the 70 men, who are accused of plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea. "The application is dismissed," said Ngoepe. The ruling meant that the 70 alleged soldiers of fortune will likely face trial in Zimbabwe, unless President Robert Mugabe's government hands them over to Equatorial Guinea. The families of the men had asked the court to force the South African government to bring the 70 men back home to face trial in South Africa or take measures to prevent them from being extradited to Equatorial Guinea, where they could face the death penalty. During three days of hearings in Pretoria in late May, lawyers for the families argued that the lives of the men from South Africa, Namibia and Angola, who were all travelling on South African passports, were at stake. But the judge disagreed with the families' contention that the South African government was not fulfilling its obligation to protect its nationals. "There is no evidence that the government is refusing to make the intervention requested by the applicants," he ruled. Ngoepe also found that the South African authorities had "the discretion to decide whether to prosecute or not" the suspected mercenaries and should not be forced by the courts to act.
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From Focus (SA), June 2004
Al-Qaeda and the Zimbabwe nexus
R W Johnson ponders the existence of a political triad linking Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qadaffi via Robert Mugabe
On 7 August 1998 al-Qaeda suicide bombers driving trucks loaded with explosives crashed - simultaneously - into the United States Embassies in Nairobi (Kenya) and Dar-Es-Salaam (Tanzania). Between them they killed at least 258 people and injured over 5 000 others. These twin assaults indicated a new level of ambition in al-Qaeda's strategy. Clinton's response - lobbing a few Cruise missiles at suspected al-Qaeda installations in Afghanistan and Sudan - was clearly viewed by Osama Bin Laden as a mere slap on the wrist. What the attacks had shown was that a few suicide bombers using everyday means of transport as a delivery mechanism could achieve complete surprise and inflict thousands of casualties on two or more targets at once by carefully co-ordinated action. With this al-Qaeda had found the weapon for which it had been searching - and which it was to use again with even greater effect on 11 September 2001. On 25 August 1998, just eighteen days after the bombs in Kenya and Tanzania had been detonated, a pipe bomb exploded in the Planet Hollywood restaurant on Cape Town's Waterfront, killing one and wounding 27. The police concluded from the fact that the target had sounded American and that a pipe bomb had been used that this was probably the work of Pagad. But no one was ever apprehended for the atrocity despite the fact that the ANC minister for safety and security, Sydney Mufamadi, had announced that the police were closing in and that an arrest was expected at any moment. Later Mufamadi changed tack, seeming almost to blame the US for the bomb and suggested that it was a predictable reprisal for the Cruise missile attack on Sudan.
The FBI was more successful, quickly arresting three suspects for the African bombings, Mohamed Saddeck Odeh, Rashed Daoud Al-'Ouhali and Wali al-Hage, the latter having earlier served as personal secretary to Bin Laden himself. All three were flown to the US where they confessed that the kingpin of the operation, Haroun Fazil (26), had rented a villa outside Nairobi where the bomb had been constructed. Fazil had driven a white pick-up truck and guided the lorry laden with explosives, driven by his operatives, to the US Embassy. Straight after the bombing he had taken a flight to his native Comoros Islands. The FBI, finding a record of a phone call made from a Nairobi hotel to the Comoros, asked the help of the Comoros government in tracing the call but clearly Fazil was tipped off for on 22 August he fled to Dubai just as the FBI arrived in the Comoros - where they found incriminating CDs in his family home. What this event drew attention to was the existence of a Muslim network running all the way down the East coast of Africa from the Persian Gulf to Cape Town. South Africa itself has many attractions for Muslim terrorists. Durban, after all, is home to Africa's richest Muslim community and its International Islamic Centre was built thanks to a personal donation by Bin Laden. Moreover, large sums of money can move easily through the Durban Indian community to Mauritius, Nairobi or Cape Town - and, indeed, to its overseas branches in London, Toronto and Sydney. One could be sure of finding, within southern Africa, enough al-Qaeda sympathizers, enough money and enough ways of making sure the two connected to make this region a major front in the terrorist war. Moreover, the region boasts not one but two failed states - the DRC and Zimbabwe - ideal breeding grounds for terrorism. An ironic advantage of this situation, I discovered as I started to delve into the question of terrorist links, was that some members of Mugabe's secret police, the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), were feeling sufficiently disaffected to talk frankly, though of course anonymously, about the subject.
Mugabe's relationship with radical Islam goes back to 1978 when Libya's president Muammar Qadaffi provided arms and training for his Zanla guerrillas in Mozambique and, after Zimbabwean independence, trained 700 policemen for the new government. Mugabe was, however, well aware that Libyan sponsorship of various terrorist groups made friendship with Qadaffi extremely unwise and he kept relations formal and distant. This remained the case even after the Reagan administration's air strike on Tripoli in 1986 in retaliation for several terrorist outrages traceable to Libya. Qadaffi, who had a son killed in the raid and narrowly escaped with his own life, was badly shaken and arrived at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Harare a few months later thirsting for revenge and tried to enlist Mugabe and the NAM in an anti-US crusade. Mugabe, hosting the summit, was carefully unreceptive and Qadaffi stormed out in a huff. Relations between the two men remained cool until 1999. One CIO officer, a man I shall call John, who had followed the relationship from his desk in Harare, told me that what had really changed things was Mugabe's resounding defeat by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the February 2000 constitutional referendum. Mugabe quickly approached Qadaffi: with his regime now under threat and isolated on the world stage Mugabe had far less to lose diplomatically than before. Qadaffi responded positively and the relationship between the two leaders became extremely close. Mugabe became increasingly sensitive to the currents and wishes of the Muslim world, particularly since the Mahathir regime in Malaysia was one of his few other friends. Through John I managed to make contact with 'Walter', a high-ranking CIO officer who had served much of his career in Islamic countries, including Libya. My own presence in Harare was a somewhat delicate matter - I had watched the minister of information, Jonathan Moyo, denounce me on TV and say that I was not welcome in the country - so Walter could hardly be seen talking to me. Accordingly one night I was guided through the Harare suburbs by a car whose driver I never saw to a place where a second car was parked and which in turn led me to the house where I found Walter.
Walter told me that he had not been long in the Middle East before he had realized that Qadaffi's links with terrorism had not ceased after 1986 but had, perforce, merely become more discreet. Qadaffi, still animated by a desire for revenge against America, maintained contact with and sometimes funded a variety of Islamic terrorist groups but tried simultaneously to ensure that the US would have no excuse to repeat the 1986 raid. "I was surprised," Walter said. "Libya was still far more active in training and assistance to terrorist groups than was commonly realized. They sometimes trained such organizations in third countries such as Egypt and Yemen in order not to attract further US attention towards Libya itself. Most of the core Taliban fighters were Libyan-trained, you know. Libya also gave a lot of support and training to the fundamentalist FIS (the Islamic Salvation Front) in Algeria, and Algeria was sometimes used as an external training ground by Libyan instructors, for example in the training of Hamas, most of whose operatives are Libyan-trained. Hamas has very close links to Libya." Lebanese and Iraqi groups had also benefited from Libyan training, as had the PLO, he said. "From what I've seen the Libyans are the best in the world at terrorist techniques". Naturally Qadaffi maintained links with al-Qaeda as well, Walter averred, but he had never come close to exercising the quasi-control over it that he did over some terrorist groups simply through the weight of his patronage. But any Middle East terrorist group which needed help would be likely to beat a path to Qadaffi's door. This was how it came about in September 2000 that Qadaffi asked Mugabe to receive an al-Qaeda contact, Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden's Egyptian deputy. "In a way there'd been a dry run," Walter said. "Mugabe already had close relations with Yasser Arafat and when Arafat visited Mugabe in 1998 he brought with him six Lebanese members of Islamic Djihad, one of the most fanatical anti-Zionist groups. These guys were all men wanted by the Israelis but they stayed on in Harare for two weeks after Arafat left before exiting via Zambia to Libya (a fact later confirmed to me by another ex-CIO operative). Qadaffi learnt all about this from Arafat - the two men are close - and clearly realized that Mugabe might be willing to host wanted Arab terrorists."
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri is one of the world's most wanted men. A former paediatrician, he is regarded as the brains of al-Qaeda - besides his nine aliases the FBI also records that he is known as The Doctor and The Teacher, as befits a man who has been a fundamentalist militant since 1966. Fully one third of al-Qaeda's fighters come from his Al-Djihad movement, including Mohammed Atta, the man who flew the first airliner into the twin towers. But why should Qadaffi want to introduce Zawahiri to Mugabe? "We surmised that what had happened was that Osama had sent Zawahiri to Qadaffi to ask for his help," said Walter. "At the time, of course, we were in the dark but after the September 11 attack everything suddenly made sense. You see, this was exactly a year before 9/11 and al-Qaeda must have been planning that event well over a year ahead. They must have known that one of the things they needed most were safe bases far from the action. Qadaffi could hardly provide anyone with that - he would be an immediate suspect and anyway was eager to keep the Americans off his back. But Zimbabwe would have occurred to him right away - by then he was very close to Mugabe - and because we're not a Muslim country no one would suspect us." The logic was indeed obvious. From al-Qaeda's point of view Zimbabwe would have had many advantages. Once an atrocity on the scale of September 11 took place the US would clearly scan the Muslim world for possible al-Qaeda hideouts. Sudan and Afghanistan were clearly already potential targets, as were African countries with large Muslim populations. But Zimbabwe was not in that category - and it also had, as most African countries don't, the modern communications and banking facilities al-Qaeda needed. It was also conveniently close to Nairobi, Durban and Cape Town - the three centres where Bin Laden already had links. In addition, Walter said, there were small Afghan communities in both Cape Town and Port Elizabeth - they had come there originally as seamen - and there was a lively trade between them and a small number of Bolivians in both places: hashish from the Khyber Pass was brought through Cape Town and traded for cocaine from the Bolivians. These networks were also useful for smuggling personnel or equipment, or laundering money.
To be continued...
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From AFP, 9 June
Zimbabwean media bosses in court once more
By Susan Njanji
Harare - The publisher and three news directors at Zimbabwe's banned independent newspaper, the Daily News, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges of publishing without a licence. The four are facing charges under Zimbabwe's tough media laws, which oblige all news organisations and journalists to be registered by a state commission. Daily News publisher Samuel Nkomo and directors Rachel Kupara, Michael Mattinson and Brian Mutsau appeared relaxed during the court appearance in Harare. The charges stem from the decision by the newspaper bosses to resume publication of the Daily News in October, six weeks after it was shut down. The comeback edition was published a day after a court ruled that the state media commission had erred by denying the paper a licence when it applied for one in September. But the head of the media commission testified on Wednesday that the newspaper editors misinterpreted the court ruling and should have waited before restarting publication of the newspaper, which is fiercely critical of President Robert Mugabe. The court had ordered that the Daily News be granted a licence by November 30. Resuming publication immediately was "the accused's interpretation" of the judgment, said Tafataona Mahoso, chairman of the media commission. "Following the judgment of the 24th of October 2003, it (the paper) should have waited until after the 30th of November," he contended. "In my understanding, the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe was publishing outside the law," said Mahoso.
If convicted, the Daily News bosses could each be fined Z$300 000 or be sentenced to two years in prison. The Daily News was founded in 1999 as an alternative to its main rivals - the state-run Herald and Chronicle dailies, which toe the official line. In February, the Daily News laid off 250 of its 300 full-time staff. The outspoken newspaper's woes started in September 2003 when the Supreme Court ruled that it was operating illegally and should register. The following day, armed police raided the paper's offices and printing presses and shut down the paper that had provided an alternative voice to the government-owned daily papers. Several court rulings have ordered that the paper be allowed to publish again, but it has only sporadically appeared on newsstands. The last edition came out on February 5, the day the Supreme Court upheld the law stipulating that all journalists in the country should be accredited with the media commission. The trial of the four newspaper directors is to continue on Thursday. The Supreme Court has yet to hand down a ruling on a constitutional challenge brought in March by the daily - accused by the government of being a front for Western and opposition interests - against the media laws. Zimbabwe has the worst record on media freedom among the 10 countries of southern Africa, according to the Windhoek-based Media Institute of Southern Africa.
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From Business Day (SA), 10 June
Cash-hungry Zimbabwe splashes out on fighter jets
Harare Correspondent
Harare - Amid chronic fuel, food and currency shortages and a contracting economy, Zimbabwe has secretly placed a 200m order for fighter jets and military vehicles from China, bypassing its own state procurement board. It is not clear where the funds for the acquisitions will come from, as the army's budget allocation is only Z$815bn (about 136m), of which 69% is for pay and the rest for operations. According to defence ministry permanent secretary Trust Maphosa, six of the jets could arrive in Zimbabwe this week. Reports say the aircraft include the FC-1 (Fighter China 1), developed recently to replace the Chengdu F-7, widely criticised by military experts for its inefficiency. With the acquisition, Zimbabwe joins Pakistan as one of China's biggest customers for the FC-1. Apart from the 12 jets, Zimbabwe has ordered 100 military vehicles. Defence and home affairs parliamentary portfolio committee chairman Saviour Kasukuwere has asked why the purchase of military equipment had bypassed the board. He said this lack of accountability could result in the army buying expensive equipment with a short life span. Maphosa said the purchase of Chinese military hardware was necessitated by the arms embargo imposed on Zimbabwe by European and North American countries. Zimbabwe's European-made fleet of military planes and vehicles has been crippled by a critical shortage of spares due to the sanctions. The army and the police have begun to phase out vehicles, planes, and other arms manufactured mostly in Europe. Faced with the stark reality of equipment shortage in the army, Kasukuwere's committee toured defence installations and military barracks last December. After the tour he said Zimbabwe needed to look "elsewhere" for military equipment. Apart from the effects of sanctions, Zimbabwe's arsenal was heavily depleted after its Democratic Republic of Congo military adventure, in which it helped prop the governments of assassinated former president Laurent Kabila and his son and successor Joseph between 1998 and 2002. It was also bogged down in the Mozambican civil war, fighting alongside the Maputo government in its bid to crush Mozambican resistance movement Renamo.
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From The Daily News (Botswana), 9 June
Zimbabwe pays P28.1 million loan
Gaborone - Zimbabwe has paid the P28.1 million loan it got from Botswana in 2000 as a credit line following problems of fuel shortage. Clifford Maribe, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation told BOPA today that "we got a confirmation from Bank of Botswana and the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning that Zimbabwe has deposited the money in the Botswana Government account." Botswana extended 10 million litres of diesel fuel, five million litres of petrol and five million litres of aviation fuel to Zimbabwe to bail the country out of an acute fuel crisis. The loan was interest free repayable over 24 months. Botswana also gave Mozambique a fuel grant worth almost P1.5million. The Zimbabwean debt was raised by the Auditor General's query seeking clarification from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation whether the loan had been written off. This was so following the ministry's crediting of the National Petroleum Fund from which the loan was drawn by debiting against its 2001/2002 recurrent expenditure with the hope that Zimbabwe would later repay the loan. However, the ministry issued a statement explaining that the loan has not been written off. And that the Zimbabwean government had requested through the Botswana Embassy in Harare that it be provided with a government account where the money to could be deposited. Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper quotes the country's Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono as saying, "we paid for everything that we owed our Botswana brothers. We also paid for all outstanding amounts relating to veterinary drugs that we received from them."
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Comment from ZWNEWS, 9 June
Band of brothers
Last weekend's Sunday Mirror carried an astonishing opinion piece. Titled 'Who is afraid of John Nkomo?', it is an open attack on two ministers by someone extolling the virtues of a third. "It is quite obvious that there is a worm in the Zanu PF fruit," the author warns in Godfather-like tones. "The works and words of the worms reveal who the worms are." Works and words have been revealing all sorts of things lately. Fissure by fissure, crevasse by crevasse, the divisions in Zanu PF are being exposed. The family feuds are spilling onto the streets.
John Nkomo's is merely the latest spat to go public. In the Sunday Mirror, Nkomo's defender accuses Jonathan Moyo - one of the 'worms' - of sending forged letters, purporting to be from Nkomo's ministry, to dispossessed farmers, inviting them back to their land. Moyo is also accused of instigating the recent attack on Nkomo by Joseph Chinotimbo, the security guard turned militant farm-invader. So far, so conspiratorial. But think back a few weeks, when a woman emerged claiming that Moyo was the father of her illegitimate child. The woman was arrested, reportedly on Moyo's orders, and The Herald later claimed that she had been put up to her story by a "senior cabinet minister". Perhaps we now know who the 'senior cabinet minister' was. Interesting, too, that Ibbo Mandaza, who is editor-in-chief of the Mirror newspaper group and who was once very friendly with Moyo, has now taken sides against him. Perhaps he is after Moyo's job. Moyo's colleague, Joseph Made, also comes under attack in the article: for his lies about the size of the harvests this year and last, and his widely-lampooned policy of trying to hide the maize imports this season. But it is not just Nkomo and the Sunday Mirror leader-writer who find Moyo and Made so irritating. Vice-president Msika labelled them "immoral little boys", after he effectively lost the battle for Kondozi to Made, Moyo and Patrick Chinamasa, the third member of the cabal. Moyo's morals were also recently questioned by David Matsanga - the London-based go-between for the recent Sky News interview with Mugabe - who Moyo had ordered deported from Zimbabwe. Moyo's real antagonism was not directed at Matsanga, of course, but at Nathan Shamuyarira, for daring to arrange a televised interview with Mugabe without asking Moyo's permission. And judging from the quiet congratulations given to Roy Bennett, after he recently pushed Chinamasa to the floor in parliament, there are many other Zanu PF MPs, of all ages and ranks, who find Chinamasa, Made and Moyo distinctly unpalatable.
Entertaining as this soap opera is, the real struggle for power is taking place elsewhere. Consider the following chain of events. In January, Zanu PF MP Phillip Chiyangwa is arrested on fraud charges. In March, investigations begin into transactions in the parallel currency market by the Tregers Group, a company linked to Zanu PF. In April, the Joshi brothers - for decades integral components of the Zanu PF financial machinery - flee Harare one step ahead of the police. In the words of the Herald, they were "assisted in their abrupt departure by a top politician who has worked with them over the years." In May, the government begins extradition proceedings in the South African courts against Matumwa Mawere, who now faces currency charges in Zimbabwe. All these events were trumpeted in the state press as successes in the government's anti-corruption drive. And all these events are linked by one name, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who ten days ago had his name suddenly withdrawn from the list of those to be awarded honorary doctorates by the Midlands State University. Once the shoo-in candidate to take over from Mugabe, Mnangagwa is now under investigation by his own party on corruption charges. The putsch against Mnangagwa is increasingly polarising the party on ethnic lines. One the Karanga side are Mnangagwa and retired general Vitalis Zvinavashe. For the Zezurus are the ubiquitous retired civil servant Charles Utete, local government minister Ignatius Chombo, police commissioner Augustine Chihuri, and Constantine Chiwenga, the country's most senior serving general. But who is forcing the pace of the drive against Mnangagwa? Impeccable sources say one should look no further than Mnangagwa's fellow securocrat Sydney Sekeramayi, aided and abetted by another retired general, Solomon Mujuru. One question remains. When and how will Mnangagwa respond to the assault on his position?
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From Finance24, 8 June
Shock revelations in the DRC
Philip de Bruin
Johannesburg - Billy Rautenbach, the disgraced former head of Hyundai South Africa and fugitive millionaire, played a prominent role in the disappearance of millions of rands worth of cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This dramatic allegation - lodged in court documents - was the latest in a string of shock revelations following a report last week that Frans Rootman, a Pretoria businessman and investigator, won a US$20 million (R130 million) claim against the DRC. The latest information indicates that senior government officials in the DRC - among them ministers - are involved in the acquisition of luxury properties in other countries, South Africa included. This issue has set off a process that could see the DRC government fall, said one source. Rootman, the first individual to win a claim lodged in South Africa against another country sued the DRC after having investigated and resolved the issue of the disappearance of large amounts of cobalt. He launched his investigation in 1999 and had been acting on the orders of the DRC's late president, Laurent Desire Kabila. The cobalt had been mined by the DRC's state-controlled mining company, Gecamines. At the time, Rautenbach was chief executive of Gecamines. Rootman had not been compensated for his efforts. In September last year, Judge Willie Hartzenberg awarded Rootman US$12 million. However, with interest and legal costs the claim amounts to US$20 million.
Other developments, however, that have come to light are: In addition to the seizure of a DRC presidential aircraft in October, an investigation is currently being conducted into the ownership of 25 luxury homes, which could also end up being confiscated. These include houses and flats, especially in Sandton. These properties were apparently purchased by senior DRC officials, including ministers, and money used did not come through the usual exchange system. Meanwhile, this week will see a number of DRC-assets being seized - assets in Switzerland and Belgium and possibly in Israel and the US. Already, 33 railway containers belonging to the DRC have been seized. However, the confiscation is on hold pending a court case on the containers. The Reserve Bank and all the commercial banks in South Africa will be part of the investigation into bank accounts belonging to the DRC and its officials in the country. At least two other South African companies have also been successful in independent law suits against the DRC. Frans van Jaarsveld's Identiguard sued for R25 million while Executive Outcomes sued for an unknown amount. Van Jaarsveld said on Monday: ''You would be shocked if you knew what I had in my possession on the DRC. The money that ministers dish out in Zimbabwe is nothing compared to what goes on in the DRC.'' A total 139 tons of cobalt, that Rootman recovered, will be auctioned in Johannesburg later this month.
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From Focus (Helen Suzman Foundation), June 2004
Al-Qaeda and the Zimbabwe nexus
continued from 9 June issue
According to Walter, Zawahiri spent 4 to 5 days in Zimbabwe and met with Mugabe and a number of ministers and top officials. His instructions from Bin Laden were to acquire an al-Qaeda base in Zimbabwe where, far from the scene of action, it could train its militants and plan its military strikes: there are many large, remote farms in Zimbabwe where they could be invisible. He offered large sums of money for Mugabe personally, with more to follow. Zawahiri doubtless already had the September 11 action in mind but would hardly have disclosed any details of that. The al-Qaeda strikes against the US embassies in East Africa could not have left Mugabe in any doubt as to what he was dealing with, nor that he was risking extreme US displeasure - particularly since it must have been obvious that al-Qaeda was planning further large-scale strikes against US targets. Later, Walter said, Zawahiri returned a second time to Zimbabwe, this time staying for two weeks. This return visit and Zawahiri's quick fade into invisibility are perfectly consistent with what one would expect if, as Walter was inclined to believe, al-Qaeda had then proceeded to construct some sort of safe-house base in Zimbabwe. Walter, clearly nervous at every minute he spent in my presence, slipped away into the night as soon as he'd finished.
Mention of remote farms tied in with the fact that the growing Libyan team in Zimbabwe had acquired a number of farms in the Zanu-PF heartland of Mashonaland Central. As more Libyans arrived they moved straight to these farms - so any Arab moving onto these farms would simply be assumed to be a Libyan by any Zimbabwean. So could these farms be used for al-Qaeda purposes too? My CIO contacts had also wondered if these farms were being used for al-Qaeda purposes and had told me that when Qadaffi had passed through Harare en route to the African Union meeting in Durban he had exhorted local Muslim Asians to greater militancy and had even threatened to have Pagad strong-arm men sent up from Cape Town - with whom, it seems, he was already in touch - to knock them into line if necessary. They also reminded me that almost on the eve of 9/11 Mugabe had been Qadaffi's guest in Tripoli for the 32nd anniversary of Libya's "national revolution". In the end I managed to track down the relevant issue of Mugabe's mouthpiece, The Herald.
Saturday, 1 September 2001 had found Mugabe in Tripoli where Qadaffi called on his assembled African allies "to support the hero, president Mugabe, since Zimbabwe is a strategic country". But Qadaffi seems to have remained close enough to al-Qaeda to have a pretty good idea that a major blow was about to be struck against the Americans - this was just ten days before 9/11 - for he openly boasted of Bin Laden's prowess and mocked the US for failing to catch him after the bombing of the US embassies in East Africa:"We no longer wage war with the old weapons. Now they can fight you with electrons and viruses. The crazy world powers that have invested huge amounts of money in weapons of mass destruction have found themselves unable to fight the new strain of rebellion. As a simple example, the USA is unable to fight someone called Osama Bin Laden. He is a tiny man, weighing no more than 50 kg. He has only a Kalashnikov rifle in his hands. He doesn't even wear a military uniform. He wears a jalabiyah (Arab robe) and turban and lives in a cavern, eating stale bread. He has driven the USA crazy, more than the former Soviet Union did. Can you imagine that?"
This passage - quoted approvingly in The Herald - suggests that Qadaffi had been in recent contact with Bin Laden, was aware of his living conditions in the caves of Afghanistan and also knew that some fiendish new strike, employing unconventional weapons, was about to hit the USA. It seems quite possible that Qadaffi imparted what he knew to Mugabe for he must have realized that any such strike would have major implications for anyone who had been lending assistance to the likes of Zawahiri. When the September 11 strike took place Qadaffi quickly distanced himself from it as publicly as he could, clearly fearing US reprisals. Mugabe himself said nothing - but within the CIO in Harare there was panic. "Those of us who knew about the contacts with Zawahiri were scared stiff," Walter had told me. "We thought this might be the end of everything. We had visions of B-52s over Harare."
to be continued...
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From The Independent (UK), 11 June
Zimbabwe bans third private newspaper in a year
By Basildon Peta, southern Africa correspondent
Another independent national newspaper was shut down by the Zimbabwe government yesterday - the third in less than a year. The banning of the weekly Tribune follows the forced closure of the Daily News and the Daily News on Sunday in September last year. Several provincial newspapers were forced to close in 2002 because they could not afford the hefty deposits that had to be lodged with the state-run Media and Information Commission (MIC) under a new media law. The Tribune had recently been bought by an MP from the ruling Zanu-PF, Kindness Paradza. But the newspaper quickly established a reputation for condemning human rights abuses. Mr Paradza, a former journalist, was suspended from Zanu PF last month. He criticised Zimbabwe's restrictive media laws in his maiden speech in parliament in March. He said the laws, which also prohibit private broadcasting, discouraged investment in the media. The speech was condemned by his party chiefs who accused him of conspiring with Britain against President Robert Mugabe. When Mr Paradza travelled to London to try to establish a market for the newspaper among Britain's large Zimbabwean community, Zanu PF accused him of seeking funding from Britain to undermine the government. He was suspended from the party and is expected to be expelled. Mr Paradza said the banning of the newspaper was a "barbaric act" and vowed to fight it in the courts. He said he had received a letter from the MIC yesterday saying that his newspaper's licence had been revoked for a year. The reason given for the closure was that the Tribune had changed ownership and directors without the MIC's permission. But Mr Paradza said his paper was being targeted for its independent editorial policy. Under the 2002 law, all news organisations and journalists are required to seek licences to operate from the MIC. Scores of Zimbabwean journalists have been refused registration. All foreign correspondents who used to be based in Harare have been expelled. The Tribune was launched on 1 June 2002, publishing a business edition on Thursdays and a general news one on Fridays. The two have since merged into a single weekly.
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From The Times (UK), 11 June
Arrival of 'Mugabe's banker' prompts calls for more sanctions against regime officials
By Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor and Jan Raath in Harare
The British Government was accused yesterday of allowing a senior member of the Zimbabwe regime into Britain on a mission to raise badly needed hard currency for President Mugabe. The arrival of Gideon Gono, the head of Zimbabwe’s Central Bank and a man described as "Mugabe’s banker", prompted Tories and the Zimbabwe opposition to demand that sanctions be tightened against key figures in the regime. Mr Gono, who has made little secret of his travel plans, is on a tour of Britain to persuade the estimated 400,000-strong Zimbabwe community here to use a new government service when they send money to relatives back home. By offering the same exchange rate as the black market, the scheme could inject millions of pounds in hard currency into the Government’s bankrupt coffers. The Foreign Office said yesterday that Britain’s sanctions policy against Zimbabwe was co-ordinated with the European Union and the Commonwealth. Although Mr Gono is forbidden from travelling to the United States, he is not on the list of 95 Zimbabwean officials banned from visiting the European Union. "Gono’s visit to the UK underlines the need for EU targeted sanctions to be expanded to include all individuals who play a leading role in perpetuating the illegitimate rule of Mugabe and his Zanu (PF) Government," said Welshman Ncube, the Secretary-General of the Movement for Democratic Change, the main opposition party. Michael Ancram, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said that Britain should have acted unilaterally to stop Mr Gono from coming to London. "We have always called for the sanctions to cover not just those directly involved in the regime, but also those who support the regime financially, because the regime without financial support would be very severely weakened," he told the BBC.
Late last year Mr Gono was appointed Governor of the Central Bank and achieved what no one has previously been able to do. He persuaded President Mugabe to adopt sensible economic policies.He slashed the Zimbabwe dollar to a quarter of its value and introduced public auctions of foreign currency, rapidly increasing foreign currency inflows. Mr Gono went on to cut money supply, manage interest rates, liberalise gold sales, launch a crackdown on corruption in a rotten financial sector and introduce a mass of other measures that previously would have been considered frankly dangerous under Mr Mugabe’s regime. Mr Gono’s chief accomplishment has been to persuade Mr Mugabe that dictators do not survive in economic collapse and that if he did not abandon the policies of the past 24 years he would be out of State House within months. Mr Mugabe publicly asserts that the economy - still with the world’s highest inflation (500 per cent) and fastest shrinking GDP - is "recovering". Privately Mr Gono tells friends that "the President says I have his full support". His most popular scheme has been to tap into the "diaspora dollar" of hard currency earnings from the 3.5 million Zimbabweans who have fled abroad. Many keep their families back home alive by sending hard currency remittances, which are exchanged at the black market rate. Mr Gono is offering them rates comparable to the black market, and has sucked in US$16 million into state reserves in the past two months. In a regime controlled for the past 24 years solely by the decree of its leader, now aged 80, advice is rarely heeded. Mr Gono is reckoned to have more influence over Mr Mugabe than anyone else. This week, Mr Gono’s image suffered a blow when the South African Sunday Times cited him as the controller of a slush fund in the state-owned Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe that dealt illegally in foreign currency and handed out cash to ruling party bosses, including the Mugabe family.
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From SABC News, 10 June
Zimbabwe High Court dismisses Mugabe poll challenge
Zimbabwe's High Court today dismissed some of the arguments from the main opposition party in its challenge against Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's re-election, but has yet to consider the key petition. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) went to court last year with a two-pronged challenge to Mugabe's controversial victory in March 2002 elections, including arguments that Mugabe's amendment of some electoral laws days before the poll was an abuse of power and unconstitutional. In a ruling released today, High Court Judge Ben Hlatshwayo said he had not been convinced by the legal arguments advanced by the opposition. "I hereby...dismiss with costs the preliminary points raised by the petitioner in that none of them on its own nor all of them collectively suffice at this stage to invalidate the election," he said. Hlatshwayo heard the MDC petition last November, 19 months after it had been filed with the courts. He did not give reasons in his ruling, but court officials said a written judgment would be released once it was ready. Morgan Tsvangirai, a spokesperson for the MDC, - who charges Mugabe won the presidential poll through rigging and a violent campaign against the opposition - said the legal challenge would continue. "Prior to the presidential election, Mr Mugabe used these considerable powers in many material ways with the object of promoting himself as a presidential candidate and placing at a severe disadvantage Mr Tsvangirai...," William Bango said in a statement. The next argument the High Court is to consider is the MDC's major charge that there is "factual evidence of serious and sustainable abuses", including violence, committed by the ruling Zanu (PF) party to get Mugabe re-elected. The High Court has not yet set a date to hear the argument, but one of Tsvangirai's lawyers said that legally a date should be set within the next month. Mugabe, 80 and Zimbabwe's ruler since independence from Britain, says he won the 2002 poll fairly, and that Western observers who condemned the elections as fraudulent were angry that he had beaten their favourite candidate Tsvangirai.
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From Business Day (SA), 11 June
Malaysia gave timber to Mugabe for house
Kuala Lumpur - Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad yesterday confirmed that his country had given Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe timber to build a new mansion, but denied it was a misuse of public assets. Mugabe, denying that taxpayers were footing the bill for the 25-bedroom private mansion in his economically troubled country, said in an interview last month with Britain's Sky News TV that Mahathir arranged for timber to be provided for its construction near the Zimbabwean capital of Harare. "We have had assistance of course, some countries have donated, they have got some timber from Malaysia thanks to my good friend, former Prime Minister Mahathir," Mugabe said. "The Chinese also have donated tiles and so on." Mahathir, who ruled Malaysia for 22 years before retiring last October, and who enjoyed a close personal relationship with Mugabe, said he thought the Zimbabwean leader's claim was true. "We provide timber for a lot of people," Mahathir said. "He wasn't a criminal at that time. He hasn't been put in jail. So what's wrong with giving timber to the leader of a country?" Asked whether the gift could be interpreted as a misuse of public funds, Mahathir said: "No, we give timber to everybody because we want to promote Malaysian timber." Malaysia is rich in tropical forests and is one of the world's largest timber exporters. Opposition leaders and anticorruption activists have expressed shock at Mugabe's claims and urged that Malaysian authorities investigate whether any funds were channelled illegally. Opposition leader Lim Kit Siang demanded that Mahathir's successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, give a full explanation of the matter to parliament. The gift could harm Malaysia's international reputation because it would identify the country "with one of the world's worse leaders", Lim said.
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From The Guardian (UK), 11 June
England will not play Zimbabwe Tests
David Hopps
England's controversial Test series in Zimbabwe will be abandoned as part of a deal hammered out in Dubai yesterday between Zimbabwe cricket officials and International Cricket Council delegates. But the agreement stops short of cancellation, with the expectation remaining that England will fulfil their scheduled one-day series in Zimbabwe in October and reschedule the Test series. Under the Dubai accord - enforced by the ICC president Ehsan Mani, with backing from Australia, India and South Africa - Zimbabwe's Test series this year against England and Pakistan will be scrapped. But their Test status has not been suspended and their series against Bangladesh in January will go ahead. Mani's sub-committee addressed the issue of racism, insisting that the Zimbabwe Cricket Union submits itself to an independent investigation that will consider allegations of racism made by the 15 white players whose walk-out plunged Zimbabwe's cricket into crisis. The proposals must be ratified by an ICC executive board meeting at Lord's at the end of this month, but this appears to be a formality. The England and Wales Cricket Board, sidelined while Australia, South Africa and India cobbled together a solution, responded cagily last night, a spokesman saying: "It is too early for the ECB to take a definitive position on this because it is merely a recommendation which will go before the ICC executive board. David Morgan, as ECB chairman, will take a full part in the debate." The department for culture, media and sport offered clearer support: "Postponement of the Test series is the right outcome," said a spokesman. "Our position remains unchanged. It is a matter for the ECB to decide whether the rest of the scheduled tour should take place or not."
There is no indication that the ECB intends to press for an abandonment of the one-day series. The ZCU countered allegations of racism yesterday with "an integration plan" which promised to give equal cricketing opportunities to all, and they will present this plan again to the executive board at Lord's. But the ICC sub-committee warned Zimbabwe that it believed the disaffected players were entitled to use the ICC disputes resolution procedure to take up their grievances. It emphasised that the ZCU was expected to resolve its differences with the players in the interests of Zimbabwe cricket, even though many had agreed contracts elsewhere and were considering emigration. The Dubai committee has also recommended that Zimbabwe is allowed to compete in the Champions Trophy in England in September; that India and South Africa undertake A-team tours of Zimbabwe in the next two months to assist development; and that Australia, South Africa and India offer promising Zimbabwean players places on their development courses. Mani said: "The measures strike a balance between protecting the sport in Zimbabwe while assuring that issues arising from the dispute are transparently addressed. I've been assured by the ZCU that it will take back the players without any conditions and the ICC remains hopeful that they can resolve their differences."
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From Focus (Helen Suzman Foundation), June 2004
Al-Qaeda and the Zimbabwe nexus
continued from 10 June issue
The printing of Qadaffi's 1 September 2001 speech in The Herald had caught the eye of several MDC members. "When September 11 occurred I went back and looked at it again," one of them told me. "Then we noticed an Afghan we call Mr Moosa." Moosa, who was in the motor trade, had got into a trifling dispute with a florist near his premises over parking spaces. Amazingly, the CIO immediately materialized and warned off the florist: Mr Moosa was, they said, a very important person and under the government's protection. The same happened when some of Moosa's workers threatened a strike. Again the CIO arrived in force to warn the workers that they had better not dream of upsetting a person enjoying president Mugabe's protection. "We managed to get through to a person in the ministry of foreign affairs," my MDC contact told me. "He confirmed that Moosa was a special case and that 'we're looking after him'. For us that was virtual confirmation that he was effectively the Afghan - and thus, at that time, the Taliban -ambassador, perhaps even the al-Qaeda ambassador. He clearly has a hot-line to Mugabe which in turn means they have an on-going deal." They then discovered that Moosa's office did no actual business."It was just a front company, providing a phone, fax, e-mail, a bank account and it took delivery of containers. There couldn't be an open Taliban embassy here, so they had this disguised one instead."
One of the MDC activists deputed to watch Moosa was 'Richard', who works out every morning in a Harare gym. In early September 2001 Richard noticed that Moosa and two Afghan companions had begun to frequent the same gym. On 12 September 2001, the day after the attack on the twin towers, he walked across the gym to where Moosa's party were exercising and asked them what they thought of the previous day's events. "They were vehemently anti-American and clearly pro-Taliban," Richard told me. "They said the Americans had got exactly what they deserved. They seemed to be bursting with a mixture of elation and bitterness. To be frank I think they blurted out more than they meant to because they disappeared from the gym for a few days after that. "Then in the week following they reappeared, this time with eight other Afghans. These guys looked tired, as if they'd been travelling, which I guess they had," Richard reported. "One of them was wearing a Tamil Tiger T-shirt. My immediate guess was that these were escaping Taliban or al-Qaeda. I've had military training myself and these men were fighters. If you're a fighter you've got to stay fit, even if you're stressed and travelling. That's why I think they were at the gym. They only came that once and then disappeared." At this I went back to another CIO source who put out feelers among his former colleagues in the CIO. One of them, he confirmed to me a few days later, had told him that in mid-September he had been asked to produce ten false passports for the same number of Libyans. These were delivered on 20 September. When I queried whether the recipients were genuinely Libyans it became clear that all that was really known was that they had previously been travelling on Libyan passports. The tie-up between these ten passports and the eleven men seen by Richard at the gym hardly needs emphasis, particularly since Richard must have seen them in the week of 12 to 19 September - as they waited for their new passports, with which they could then leave Zimbabwe with fresh identities.
One also has to remember that Zimbabwean military involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo had given Mugabe and the top Zanu PF elite control over several diamond mines there, including a joint venture with Al Shanfari's Oryx Group in the Senga Senga mine. According to a confidential study prepared by Kroll Associates in 2002, "Al Shanfari and Oryx launder diamonds for several Lebanese traders linked to al-Qaeda". Thus here too there was a direct - and profitable - relationship between Mugabe and al-Qaeda, providing, incidentally, a route through which payment for other services could also be made. In fact al-Qaeda involvement with blood diamonds goes back some way before 9/11. Two al-Qaeda operatives named by the Washington Post (3 November 2001) as having been involved in the DRC since the mid-1990s are Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed. Ghailani, a Tanzanian, was also the man who bought the truck used in the truck-bombing of the US embassy in Dar-Es-Salaam in 1998 while Fazul turns out to be one of the many aliases used by Haroun Fazil, the mastermind behind the Nairobi embassy bombing. Thus both the key architects of the East African embassy bombings emerged from an al-Qaeda network active in southern Africa for some years before that, one which will have had many points of contact with the ruling Zimbabwean elite. This throws a new light on Zawahiri's alleged visits to Zimbabwe prior to 9/11 - he was clearly travelling to an area in which he already had operatives and at least a rudimentary infrastructure. This would certainly have increased the likelihood that al-Qaeda would have wanted to use Zimbabwe for the transit-and-laundering role we have seen.
Another straw in the wind was the revelation that closed circuit TV cameras within the Planet Hollywood restaurant in Cape Town had recorded the image of a known al-Qaeda suspect lolling against the restaurant's bar a month before the bomb-blast there. The police, who identified the man as a Moroccan based in Zimbabwe, strangely refused to act on this information. It is tempting to link this attitude with Pretoria's rapid volte face on the issue of 9/11. By January 2002 ANC pressure on ex-president Mandela had forced him publicly to recant his previous condemnation of Bin Laden, while deputy president Zuma announced that the ANC no longer saw 9/11 as a terrorist act but as a blow in a wider struggle against imperialism. He simultaneously denounced Britain and America for their war on the Taliban which, he said, was aimed "against innocent Afghan civilians". Given president Mbeki's support for president Mugabe it is possible that Pretoria was not keen to see a line of enquiry opened up in the Planet Hollywood affair which led back to the presence of al-Qaeda activists in Zimbabwe. In Harare again in late 2003 I was struck by the US embassy posters offering a $2 million reward for Haroun Fazil. Quite clearly, the FBI believe either that he may be in Zimbabwe or that there may be people there who know him. I decided that this merited a visit to Zimbabwean CID headquarters in the vast police camp adjacent to Mugabe's presidential palace. I eventually found the office I was looking for, with a Wanted poster of Fazil from Interpol - and a CID poster showing a copy of Fazil's passport. For, it emerges, Fazil travelled to Nairobi to carry out the bombings which were to kill and maim thousands from Harare, on a Zimbabwean passport. The possibility that Zimbabwe may have provided some sort of support base for both the East African and 9/11 atrocities - perhaps even for the Planet Hollywood bombing too - is perhaps not surprising. Mugabe has, after all, not scrupled to use terror against his own people. The real question is whether South Africa's NIA has taken note of what is happening and whether president Mbeki, in the strong support he has lent Mugabe, has realized the full implications of what he is doing.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 11 June
Gono dashes to US on 'mission impossible'
Dumisani Muleya
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono is in Washington for meetings with International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank officials to prevent Harare's expulsion from the Bretton Woods institutions. Official sources said Gono left for the US capital on Tuesday for critical meetings on Zimbabwe's arrears which will determine whether or not this country can remain an IMF member. An IMF external relations department officer confirmed yesterday that Gono was in Washington and had met deputy managing director Takatoshi Kato on Wednesday. He was due to continue with meetings yesterday and today. While his hurried visit to the US may succeed in retaining links to the IMF, observers say no money is likely to be forthcoming for balance-of-payments support.
There has been confusion about Gono's movements as his officials laid down a smokescreen. Some reports this week claim he was headed for the United Kingdom to join the RBZ's Homelink money transfer roadshow which started in the US two weeks ago. Others said he was in South Africa for meetings with that country's monetary authorities. One official said he had travelled to Kampala for the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa summit. Staff in Gono's office and RBZ public relations personnel added to the confusion by claiming they were not aware of his whereabouts. The Homelink crew, led by tourism executive Herbert Nkala, has been struggling to convince Zimbabweans abroad to send their money home through official channels to alleviate a biting foreign currency crunch. While some people in the diaspora gave the team a receptive hearing, others greeted it with angry protests, accusing it of trying to raise funds to prop up President Robert Mugabe's regime. A scheduled meeting with congregants at a London church on Sunday has been cancelled after opposition to it mounted, reports say. There have also been protests outside Zimbabwe House.
While Gono had been reported as due to attend some of the British roadshow meetings in cities such as Leeds and Birmingham, official sources said he would be in Washington for anything up to two weeks. The IMF's executive board will closely examine the progress made on policies and payments when it considers the Article IV consultation report and the issue of Zimbabwe's overdue payments early next month. An IMF delegation was in Zimbabwe between March 17-31 for its annual Article IV consultation. It produced a report, which stated "Zimbabwe's economy has experienced a sharp deterioration in the last five years, while real GDP has declined by about 30%, and is still contracting". The sources said one of Gono's three deputies, Charity Dhliwayo, who deals with bank licensing, supervision and surveillance, exchange control and anti-money laundering, was in South Africa for talks with monetary authorities there. Former Finance ministry permanent secretary Nick Ncube, one of the deputies responsible for national development and economic research, is acting governor.
Gono's mission is largely to prevent the country's expulsion from the IMF which gave Zimbabwe a chance to put its house in order last December after the new governor came in. The RBZ chief will try to restore suspended balance-of-payments support. At the end of February Zimbabwe owed the IMF Special Drawing Rights US$290 million. The country, currently reeling from a deep economic and foreign currency crisis, has committed itself to make US$1,5 million quarterly payments to the IMF. Zimbabwe was last December spared dismissal after the appointment of Gono to spearhead economic recovery. But the country's voting rights were suspended due to non-payment of loans. Gono's is virtually a "mission impossible" in the US because of Zimbabwe's poor international image. Apart from the negative report by the IMF team that recently visited Harare, Zimbabwe was last week rated as one of the worst investment destinations in Africa by the World Economic Forum. An IMF report on sub-Saharan Africa says Zimbabwe's economy was destroyed by "mismanagement and poor governance". Government this week announced the nationalisation of all farmland, a move bound to make Gono's mission doubly difficult.
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From VOA News, 10 June
Parliamentary committee to investigate Zimbabwe 'bumper harvest' claims
The Agriculture Committee in the Zimbabwean Parliament is to look at food stocks in the country in a bid to verify or disprove the government's claims that the country will harvest enough grain this year and won't need any help in feeding the population. The committee, made up of members of the ruling Zanu PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, will among other things look at the quantities of seed and fertilizer sold at the beginning of the growing season last year, weather conditions and the physical stocks held by the government Grain Marketing Board. The investigation is the result of a motion introduced in parliament by opposition lawmaker Renson Gasela, who is a member of the Agriculture Committee. "We will obviously go out in the field, in the depots to see physically whether grain is coming in and check on the stock sheets of GMB to see whether the quantities they say have been reporting are actually being received, and what they are actually holding in stock at the moment," he said. The parliament approved the investigation on a day that the opposition party had a majority of members in the house.
For the past three years, millions of Zimbabweans have relied on food aid from international donors because of successive droughts and land reform that put most of the country's commercial farms out of production. This year, the government announced that it will not need food aid because enough grain is going to be harvested. United Nations relief agency teams who were in the country to assess this year's harvest were forced to withdraw after the government recalled its officials who were in the field with them. But the UN officials said they had finished most of their work, and they told VOA last week that Zimbabwe's current harvest will be lower than last year's, which was the worst in a decade. The UN investigators estimated Zimbabwe will need more than a million tons of grain donated this year. The Grain Marketing Board has since admitted that it is now importing maize, which Mr. Gasela says raises questions about whether Zimbabwe is going to have a record harvest, as the government claims. The opposition party is accusing the government of fudging the figures for political reasons.
"The government is fudging the figures because they want to prove that land reform has been successful when it has been quite a disaster," said Renson Gasela. "Secondly and most importantly is that there is an election. During the past three years, government lost control completely as far as the feeding of the people is concerned. NGOs feed people impartially. Whoever needs food is the person who is fed. Under the circumstances of an election if government is not in control of food, they will lose." Mr. Gasela is charging that the government is trying to end food distribution in Zimbabwe by impartial non-governmental organizations, so that the ruling party can use food as a weapon during next year's parliamentary election campaign. Mr. Gasela says the results of his committee's investigation should be ready around September.
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From SABC News, 11 June
WFP still feeds needy in Zimbabwe, ready to do more
The World Food Programme is continuing to feed vulnerable groups in Zimbabwe despite government claims of bumper harvest, and is ready to broaden its activities in the country if asked to, the UN body has said. Zimbabwean officials last month abruptly cancelled food and crop assessment missions by the WFP and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). A week later, Zimbabwe told international donors it would not require emergency food aid following a bumper harvest - a statement greeted with scepticism by many analysts and Zimbabwe commercial farming groups. Mike Huggins, the WFP spokesperson, said late yesterday that the Zimbabwe government had asked the organisation to continue feeding around 650 000 vulnerable people, such as orphans of HIV/Aids victims and the elderly. The WFP normally feeds far more in the country - around 4.5 million up to April this year - as Zimbabwe grapples with its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980. "The WFP is ready to assist in a broader distribution of food should it be required but an assessment of people's food needs would have to be carried out prior to any appeal being launched. This can take months," Huggins told Reuters. James Morris, the WFP executive director, will be able to get some idea of the food situation when he visits the country next week as part of a regional tour. It is not clear whether he will meet government officials during the trip, the WFP said.
President Robert Mugabe has said Zimbabwe will produce a bumper 2.3 million tonnes of maize this year but international aid organisations have estimated it could still face a shortfall of up to 900 000 tonnes on national demand of 1.8 million tonnes. Although some critics blame food insecurity on Zimbabwe's seizure of white owned farms, analysts say inflation has hit poor urban dwellers particularly hard. "Unemployment is nearly 70% and inflation has hovered around 600% for a year and clearly people have lost a lot of their purchasing power and in turn their ability to access food from local markets," Huggins said. Food shortages have eased in rural communities over recent weeks as people harvest the maize crop, the USAid-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network said last month. It added that larger foreign currency reserves than last year have boosted Zimbabwe's ability to buy grain from abroad. Mugabe said last month that Zimbabwe would "never" need to import food, but publicly available data from South Africa shows the Zimbabwe has imported 24 000 tonnes of maize across the Limpopo since April on top of 413 657 tonnes last year. Mugabe's critics say he may reject offers of "emergency" aid in the run up to next year's parliamentary elections in a bid to show his country is not mired in crisis.
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From Malaysiakini, 11 June
Mugabe's gift: Did Mahatir get cabinet approval?
An anti-corruption watchdog today asked if former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad obtained cabinet approval before ‘gifting’ Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe with timber for his lavish 25-bedroom mansion. "If it was a gift from the government and the people of Malaysia, did he (Mahathir) get cabinet approval?" asked Kuala Lumpur Society for Transparency and Integrity president Tunku Abdul Aziz and his deputy, Param Cumaraswamy, in a statement. "And why was the gift not disclosed to Malaysian taxpayers?" They were reacting to Mahathir’s admission yesterday that Malaysian timber had been shipped to Zimbabwe for the construction of his close ally’s mansion in Harare. The former premier described it as a usual practice in promoting Malaysian timber. "Yes, we did give Zimbabwe timber, but what's wrong with that?" he was quoted as saying in New Straits Times. However, Abdul Aziz and Param asked if promoting Malaysian timber included using public funds to help a leader, perceived to be amongst the most corrupt in Africa, realise his dream of building a palatial home in a country ravaged by poverty neglect and corruption. "Mahathir’s response as reported in the media today is cavalier and smacks of total disregard for public opinion, to say the least," they said.
The matter came to light when Mugabe told Britain's Sky News that the Malaysian and Chinese governments were providing partial funding for the US$9 million mansion. Mugabe said he received timber from Mahathir and roofing materials from the Chinese government to build his ‘retirement’ home, which comes with two lakes. The mansion - which looks like a medium-sized hotel - offers more than three acres of accommodation, mostly on three floors, including two-storey reception rooms, an office suite, and two dozen bedrooms with adjoining bathrooms and spas. Mugabe, who has been in power for 23 years, is widely expected to step down as leader of his ruling Zanu PF at the annual party congress in December or after his 80th birthday next February. His total salary since Mugabe came to power has been no more than US$1 million. However, last year, he increased his annual salary by 1,000 per cent to US$42,000. Malaysia’s parliamentary Opposition Leader and DAP chairperson Lim Kit Siang called for a probe to check if Malaysia had ‘secretly and unlawfully’ funded the mansion. Describing Mugabe ’s disclosure as ‘shocking’, Lim said there was no "moral and political" reason for Malaysia to provide funds to a leader of bad repute. "We know Mugabe is a good friend of Mahathir... (But) there was no parliamentary approval to fund this rotten and corruptible regime," he added. Responding to this, Deputy Foreign Minister Joseph Salang Gandum said later that the government would check on the claim.
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From News24 (SA), 10 June
Zim 70 magistrate 'held'
Kodzevu Sithole
Harare - The magistrate who has to decide the fate of the 70 alleged mercenaries being held in Zimbabwe got a taste on Thursday of the unpredictable nature of the country's security forces. He was "held" for a while by prison personnel when he and two state prosecutors arrived at the maximum-security prison. Witnesses report that magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe and the two state prosecutors, Lawrence Phiri and Stephen Musona, were searched before they entered Chikurubi Prison, and their entry was then obstructed "on higher orders". Court proceedings were delayed by three hours. During the hearing, it was determined the state had until June 24 to set a date for the trial. Guvamombe said this was the last time he would postpone the case. The men, who are charged with planning a coup in Equatorial Guinea, were arrested on March 7 and have been held in Harare since then. An attempt in Pretoria High Court to have the men extradited to South Africa and have the hearing take place there failed this week. The incident with Guvamombe at court on Thursday spurred several questions, although he is seen as being well disposed towards the Zimbabwean government. Judges and magistrates often have been threatened in the past or withdrawn from cases if the government felt they didn't have the state's best interests at heart. Jonathan Samkange, the men's legal representative, said the men's families would be able to visit them on Friday.
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From IPS, 11 June
A nation of "information scavengers"
Wilson Johwa
Bulawayo - It's time for mid-week prayers at the Methodist Church in Main Street. But, spiritual affairs may be the least important matter on the minds of those present. Instead, a lot of time appears to be taken up by more worldly concerns, especially the pursuit of the latest information. Ears prick up, for instance, when someone mentions that the price of maize meal (the national staple food) has gone up, even though there's been no mention of this in the newspaper. And, interest heightens when someone else whispers the reason why a prominent businessman linked to the ruling party cannot get bail three months after his arrest for "externalizing" foreign currency. (The term "externalizing" refers to the process of circumventing the Zimbabwe Central Bank when converting Zimbabwe dollars into foreign currency. Officials have made going through the bank mandatory for conversions - this in a bid to stem the foreign currency shortages resulting from falling exports and economic mismanagement.) It is the same everywhere. Across Zimbabwe at bars, during social events and at funerals, people huddle together to make crude political jokes, commiserate over economic woes - and exchange the latest news, collected from various sources. The forced closure of the only independent daily newspaper, The Daily News, nine months ago and the state's subsequent dominance of the media have given rise to less formal ways of passing on and receiving information. In a list of 166 countries that are rated by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders for respect of press freedom, Zimbabwe occupies the 141st slot. The organisation has also described President Robert Mugabe as a "predator of press freedom". In addition, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo was awarded the British-based Index on Censorship's Golden Raspberry Award for "service to censorship" last year, for his role in pushing through restrictive press laws in Zimbabwe. This week, another independent newspaper, the weekly Tribune, was shut down by the government-appointed licensing authority, for allegedly being improperly licensed.
All of this has prompted Zimbabweans to become "information scavengers" says media watcher Andrew Moyse: "They seek information even if it's second-hand from wherever they can find it, particularly the independent weeklies and from their radios if they are near them." However, Moyse - who works as Project Coordinator at the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe - says this handful of weeklies doesn't have the capacity to "rebut the daily tidal wave of propaganda emanating from the government-controlled media." (The monitoring project scrutinises the local media for conformity to international standards of press freedom and professionalism.) Ironically - and even as they try to source news elsewhere - Zimbabweans have also been buying more state-controlled newspapers than they did in the past. Zimpapers, the government-controlled publishing company that owns the country's only two daily newspapers and three weeklies, is forecasting pre-tax profits of about 300,000 U.S. dollars this year, a four-fold increase over last year's profits. "Indications are that profits will surge during the second half of the year," group Chief Executive Justin Mutasa told shareholders during the company's 77th annual general meeting earlier this month. Relishing the prospect of a captive market, Zimpapers has set new circulation targets for its newspapers. Sales of the country's biggest daily are projected to reach 120,000 copies by the end of the year, up from the current 95,000. But, Moyse cautions that as much as readers may buy newspapers from the Zimpapers stable, this is not to say that they accept their content. Banning The Daily News, while using the government-controlled media as "messengers of a crude propaganda campaign" for the ruling party and government, has created an extreme cynicism among ordinary Zimbabweans, he says. "They are increasingly forced to rely on the government media for any information, but consciously and subconsciously take account of the bias contained in these media. Their content is deeply distrusted and is far from being accepted at face value." He says this is giving rise to a word-of-mouth culture in which information emanating from personal experiences is exchanged - along with news supplied by those who are still able to access electronic and foreign media sources, which often "tend to corroborate the news the public gleans from unofficial sources."
In a country with unemployment of over 70 percent, satellite television is available only to the wealthy few. Radio broadcasts from the British Broadcasting Corporation, Voice of America and particularly the British-based SW Radio Africa, run by exiled Zimbabweans, appear to be growing in popularity - but only among those with short wave receivers. Until recently, cyberspace offered some respite from the state's media offerings. However, it has now become the latest target of the government's censorship drive. The state telecommunications monopoly, TelOne, has asked internet service providers (ISPs) to sign commercial contracts which ask them to spy on the e-mails of their clients for " "objectionable, obscene (and) unauthorized" content. ISPs are treading cautiously. "We are discussing with TelOne," says the Chairman of the Zimbabwe Internet Service Providers Association, Shadreck Nkala. "At the moment we haven't reached a stage of signing (the contract)." Nonetheless, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change says its weekly information bulletins - sent by e-mail - are already being blocked, because the government seems to have acquired the technology to do so, possibly from China. "We have reason to believe that our e-mail communication is being tampered with," says party official Nkanyiso Maqeda. Instead of MDC e-mails, subscribers and supporters are receiving blank messages telling them that selected mails have been barred for carrying "sensitive information."
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From The Sunday Times (SA), 13 June
Zimbabwe's fighter jets spark fears of arms-race
Sunday Times Foreign Desk
Zimbabwe's order for more than 240-million worth of jet fighters from China flies in the face of a request by South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma that the country stop selling arms in sub-Saharan Africa. According to a semi-official US defence intelligence publication, Dlamini-Zuma made the request, during a meeting of the China-South Africa bilateral forum, to head off a possible arms race on the subcontinent. Military sources in Harare say that Zimbabwe will acquire 12 FC-1s as replacements for the Chengdu F-7s, currently based in Gweru. The FC-1, a lightweight multipurpose fighter based on Russia's MiG-33, will provide a credible answer to the challenge posed by the 28 JAS-39 Gripen multi-role fighters that the SA government has ordered from Saab, the Swedish arms manufacturer. According to Armed Forces Journal International, published in Virginia, US, Dlamini-Zuma's request was at least partly aimed at protecting the interests of SA's state-owned arms industries. But her request also "reveals that South Africa has observed a growing pattern of Chinese arms sales" in its own backyard, and provided "evidence of its serious concern about the matter". Yesterday Foreign Affairs spokes man Ronnie Mamoepa said he could not recall Dlamini-Zuma making such a request. He referred further queries to his department's Asian Affairs desk, which did not answer calls. The Zimbabwean fighter jet order also defies a 1998 appeal by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that defence expenditure in Southern Africa be frozen for 10 years at 1.5% of countries' GDP. Figures compiled for the SA Institute of International Affairs show that, if anything, Annan's plea has been answered with a full-scale arms race between Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa and other countries in the region. The South African government says it spends only 1.5% of GDP on arms. According to the institute's figures, however, only Zambia and Swaziland have adhered to the 1.5% limit. Zimbabwe (3.4% ), Namibia (3.6% ) and South Africa (1.7% ), it says, have committed themselves to expensive military upgrades.
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 13 June
I was tortured, says Mugabe’s consultant
By Henry Makiwa in Surrey, UK
London - President Mugabe’s British-based public relations consultant, David Nyekorach-Matsanga, says he was tortured by security personnel in Harare last month and is contemplating cutting ties with the regime. The Ugandan-born Matsanga - who has propped up Mugabe’s image internationally since his controversial "re-election" in 2002 - told The Standard members of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) assaulted and tortured him at Harare International Airport before bundling him out of the country for bringing Britain’s Sky News to shoot documentaries. Matsanga fell out with some elements in Mugabe’s government when he flew into Harare with a Sky News TV crew to shoot an interview with the President and make documentaries on the country’s land reforms. The productions, according to Matsanga, were meant to dispel the negative international news coverage of events in Zimbabwe since Mugabe began the chaotic and bloody seizures of white-owned commercial farms in February 2000. Though Mugabe had agreed to the interviews, Matsanga said his "starry-eyed Information Minister" Jonathan Moyo was against the idea insisting that nothing good could ever come out from "the colonial media". "Mugabe knows that I was unjustly tortured by his secret police who not only assaulted me but stole my £645 gold wrist watch, my flight tickets as well as the cash that was on me - US$173 and £1700," Matsanga said in an interview in Surrey on Friday. I have done so much work for Mugabe and his government and for free. The least Mugabe can do for me is to publicly apologise for the treatment I got and reprimand his Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo who instigated my assault and gleefully celebrated my humiliation in the Zimbabwean State-controlled Press."
Last year, Matsanga - an academic on conflict resolution who insisted on being addressed as "Dr." throughout the interview - wrote and published a book entitled Why I Support Mugabe widely seen as a PR stunt for the President which was distributed for free in Britain. In addition to this, Matsanga has through his African Strategies PR company, been at the helm of an intensive drive to restore international recognition of Mugabe following Zimbabwe’s flawed 2002 polls. He has also written numerous articles commending Mugabe as a "great leader" and was at the fore of lobbying for the support of African leaders within the African Union and the British Labour Party to legitimise Mugabe’s regime. "Unlike Ari Ben-Menashe (Mugabe’ s Israeli-born Canadian-based PR consultant) I was never paid a cent by Mugabe. I was doing all my work voluntarily for the good of Zimbabwe and its people," said Matsanga. "But now I see why everyone calls Zimbabwe a pariah State because Mugabe allows all this repression to happen under his nose and never says a thing, let alone move a finger," he added. So bitter is Matsanga that he is contemplating cutting ties with the Mugabe’s government. Matsanga alleges that Moyo harbours immense political ambitions of succeeding Mugabe as President. "I am convinced, from what I have gathered within Zanu PF (Mugabe’s ruling party), that Moyo is heading a traitor clique of ambitious and overzealous individuals who want to put a total blackout on Zimbabwe from the international world in order to acquire power," Matsanga said. "With such elements, Zimbabwe is fast hurtling towards a point of no return and I no longer want to be part of that," he said.
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From The Sunday Times (SA), 13 June
Mugabe gripped by security paranoia
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's paranoia is said to be mounting, with senior officials of his ruling Zanu PF party now subjected to thorough searches before entering meetings. Senior Zanu PF members were shocked last week to be painstakingly searched before they entered the party's politburo meeting - a break from tradition. A Zanu PF source said the searches were sparked by Mugabe's growing paranoia. According to party insiders, the move was an indication of the siege mentality gripping Mugabe, who apparently fears that people could bring charms and weapons into meetings. Mugabe has said that his lieutenants were approaching traditional healers for good-luck charms to help them become president after his retirement in 2008. The succession battle is said to have reached fever pitch as Zanu PF bigwigs jostle for supremacy. Mugabe's security fears run so deep that the area around his controversial mansion in Harare's affluent suburb of Borrowdale is a protected area. Chancellor Avenue, which passes between State House and Zimbabwe House, where Mugabe sometimes lives, is closed each day from 6pm to 6am. Armed soldiers guarding the area have been accused of shooting at passers-by. And when Mugabe sweeps through the streets in his motorcade, people usually freeze because they fear his bodyguards might shoot them. Mugabe has even enacted a law that prohibits people from making "obscene gestures" or movements that could be interpreted as a security threat to him when he is driving by.
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From Business Day (SA), 11 June
Will end be swift or prolonged?
Jonathan Katzenellenbogen
Movement towards a political accord in Zimbabwe has stalled, with growing dangers to the country and the region as a whole. The reasons for the impasse are President Robert Mugabe's current confidence in his omnipotence and the lack of external pressure on him and his party. With the opposition curbed, SA sticking to quiet diplomacy, and the Group of Eight (G-8) not about to ask Pretoria to toughen its stance, Mugabe may have good reason to simply stay and wait. Mugabe says he does not see any point in talks, and President Thabo Mbeki is evidently unable to convince him he should. While Mugabe may say he will retire when his current term ends in 2008, his words are not convincing. According to one plan, he should be out of office by now. But staying in power is the Mugabe endgame. The best solution would be talks leading to an even playing field ahead of a free and fair presidential election. That, however, is not the most likely scenario. Clearly this would take internal and external pressure to achieve and that's not about to happen. A prolonged government of national unity under Zanu PF is also not a just or a practical solution. A possible boycott of next March's parliamentary elections by the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), does not offer a solution in itself. Mass action can ratchet up the pressure, but will have to be different from last year's "final push". The main uncertainty is at what stage security forces would switch their loyalty. Whether this would be through a palace or a military coup or refusal to carry out orders by the police is an open question. As the options for peaceful democratic change narrow, the likelihood of a palace or a military coup could be rising. That would have serious consequences regionally, as would any mass violence. The Zimbabwe saga has entered its endgame. But how drawn-out will it be, and will it end in violence or negotiation?
Reading Mugabe's mind on whether or not he will negotiate and retire consumes hours of fruitless speculation. He has evidently made his promises, or Mbeki would not have been so convinced last year in June that a settlement was a year away or that talks were in the offing. Mugabe, however, feigns interest in a settlement when there is pressure on him to do so, and then changes tack when he sees it abating. There is no chance that SA will follow the lead of the European Union and the US, and push for the international isolation of Zimbabwe. Zanu PF recently won a by-election, albeit in all probability neither freely nor fairly, in an MDC stronghold. It is now within two seats of winning a two-thirds majority which would allow the party to change the constitution at will. And pending changes in the electoral act will all but ensure Zanu PF does obtain its two-thirds majority in parliamentary elections scheduled for March. These changes will make it all but impossible for the opposition to campaign as they will not have access to the voters' roll, and putting up posters will be a tortuous process. Mugabe has another option, which could cripple the MDC. With his control over the judiciary, the Zimbabwean leader is probably well-positioned to call the timing of Morgan Tsvangirai's verdict and sentence for treason, for which the ultimate penalty is death. Should he wish to do so, he could jail Tsvangirai during an election campaign and he can always trade clemency for something he may want from the international community. The current anticorruption campaign may be more about political intimidation to exclude possible successors than a clean-up. But the very process is intimidating the business community into not giving donations to the opposition. Dissenters, doubters, and even those who dare to tell the truth do not survive long in Mugabe's cabinet. Zimbabwe recently ordered the United Nations (UN) to halt its crop assessment mission, and stated that a bumper harvest was expected. The crop forecast, the halting of the UN's food assessment mission and a deal for the government to import grain will allow Zanu PF to use food as a political weapon.
As the crop forecast and the expanding economy prove ephemeral, the economic contraction will worsen and with that new pressures might arise on Mugabe and he could again show a willingness to talk. And as the economy contracts, so the avenues for patronage also contract. The loyalty of a diminishing number can be bought as the Zimbabwean currency declines in worth. Zimbabwe is headed towards dangerous times. Where does this leave SA? After Mugabe's rejection of talks earlier this month, Pretoria insisted it was sticking to its policy as it said there was no alternative. Pretoria may well have lost control of events. The policy of the regional power not to exercise pressure has left it a bystander that can be cunningly played by Mugabe. Now the message to Mugabe should be: take a deal while you can. Should SA wish to show real interest, it needs to ensure there are enough dedicated diplomatic resources, as it did in the Great Lakes region. The G-8 gave SA and the region a mandate to fix the problem. Although they have failed to do so, the mandate remains open, but with a price. With the US and the UK building support for the interim government in Iraq and the war on terror, Zimbabwe is a worry but not a high priority. Zimbabwe is, at this stage, simply not important enough for the G-8 to exercise pressure on SA as the main regional power. However, the deteriorating situation will mean a loss of South African diplomatic prestige. After all, the regional power is acting like a regional minnow.
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From Malaysiakini, 12 June
Why is Malaysia dancing with dictators, asks Kit Siang
What Malaysians want is a full explanation from the government over former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad's timber gift to President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, not evasive answers, Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang said today. "There is no need for heroics," said Lim, in reaction to Mahathir's recent assertion that he was prepared to be prosecuted if, in presenting the timber, found to have abused his power as prime minister. The appropriate response, the DAP leader said, is for the former leader to reveal the cost of all gifts given to Mugabe, and whether they were done with full knowledge and approval of parliament. Yesterday, when clarifiying his earlier admission that the timber gift was indeed given to Mugabe, Mahathir had said that the wood was valued at less than RM100,000. He was responding to Mugabe's disclosure last month that Malaysia and China had funded his RM34.6 million mansion near Harare. Malaysia provided sawn timber for wall panelling, while China funded roofing materials for the 79-year-old leader's 25-bedroom retirement home. Mahathir claimed that the timber gift was made before Mugabe was labelled a 'dictator'. "When we gave gifts, we gave them to legitimate leaders. We couldn’t foresee what would happen to these leaders or what they would do after the gifts had been presented to them," Mahathir had said. Lim, who is MP for Ipoh Timor, said Mahathir is attempting to evade from the real issue. "There could be no doubt that when Mahathir gave the gift to Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president was already universally recognised as a corrupt dictator," Lim said, adding that Mugabe have been well-censured since the 1990s for condoning corruption and protecting corrupt cronies. "The question to ask is why Malaysia under Mahathir had not kept an arm's length to disassociate Malaysia from Mugabe's corrupt and dictatorial ways."
Human rights group Aliran, in chastising Mahathir's claim that the timber gift was "usual practice" from one leader to another, added that it was "odd" that cabinet ministers have expressed ignorance of the act. "Ministers are in the dark, cabinet knows nothing about it and parliament is none the wiser. We are talking about the country's wealth and assets," said its president P Ramakrishnan. "Can it be just given away by an individual without sanction from the government? It is not private wealth to be donated as and when one is inclined to do so. Ramakrishnan also chastised Mahathir's explanation that the gift could 'promote' Malaysian timber. "It is more like exporting our timber without valid permit for the construction of an private palatial mansion that does not accrue any benefit for the timber industry." "Mahathir is accountable for his action. He must come clean by providing the facts and figures to justify why a someone like Mugabe, who is regarded as a tyrant and despotic dictator, deserves this 'gift' from Malaysia." When the issue was first picked up by the media, government leaders, including deputy prime minister Najib Abdul Razak, said they were in the dark over the issue. Following Mahathir's admission however, Najib said there was nothing wrong about the former prime minister's action: "I am sure it was done with the best of intentions because we want to build linkages with the African countries. There is nothing illegal. The matter shouldn't be made a major issue," Najib had said.
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From AFP, 12 June
Zim inflation rate dips below 450 percent
Harare - Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate slowed slightly to 448,8 percent in May from 505 percent the previous month, officials figures showed on Saturday. Despite the drop in the rate cited by the state news agency ZIANA, inflation in Zimbabwe remains among the highest in the world. Zimbabwe's inflation peaked in November last year to hit 619,5 percent having leapt 94 percentage points from the previous month making it the single largest jump since the economy began its slide some three years ago. The government in November last year predicted that the southern African country's inflation rate would hit 700 percent in the first three months of this year before climbing down. But the central bank, in a five-year monetary policy statement released six months ago and aimed at pulling the economy back from the brink, vowed that the rate would drop to below 200 percent by December. Zimbabwe has in recent years been in the throes of political, economic and social instability. Average annual inflation has been on a upward trend since 2000 when it stood at 55,9 percent, rising to 71 percent a year later. Two years later it had surpassed 600 percent. The country has also been plagued by severe food shortages, caused partly by drought as well as the controversial land redistribution programme dispossessing white farmers. Government has this year said it has enough food to feed its people, but early this month a state-owned grain marketer was quoted in the media as saying that Zimbabwe was importing food.
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From Business Day (SA), 14 June
Zimbabwe steps up onslaught on the media
Weekly plans court challenge to closure for not notifying state body of ownership and title changes
The closure of another independent newspaper in Zimbabwe comes as the latest blow in a campaign by President Robert Mugabe's ruling party to reshape the media landscape ahead of crucial elections early next year. The Tribune, owned by a ruling party MP who has criticised Zimbabwe's media laws, was closed last week Thursday, days after the government moved to tighten control of the internet. The government said the one-year closure of the weekly paper launched two years ago was decided after its publisher failed to notify the state-appointed media commission of changes in its ownership structure and title. The Tribune plans to challenge the decision in court. Publisher Kindness Paradza said the closure signalled "the death of press freedom in Zimbabwe. This is the worst assault on press freedom in modern Zimbabwe". "Our belief is that there is a hidden hand behind all this," he said. The media commission was not "only unreasonable but barbaric in an independent and democratic Zimbabwe".
The Tribune's closure came months after the closures of the critical Daily News and its sister paper, the Daily News on Sunday. Zimbabwe's media laws, adopted soon after Mugabe was re-elected in 2002, require all news organisations to register with the state-appointed commission to be allowed to work. Nearly 20 journalists and other media staff have been arrested since 2002, some more than once, allegedly for violating media laws. The closures, which have left hundreds jobless, are seen as an attempt to silence the free press ahead of parliamentary elections only eight months away. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change said: "The ongoing closure of objective channels of information by the ruling authorities dilutes people's capacity to make informed choices at the ballot box." In an editorial published on Friday, despite the ban, the Tribune said: "We see the move ... as one designed to ensure that no credible voice will be around come voting next year." The ruling Zanu PF is gearing up for the March 2005 elections, hoping to secure a two-thirds parliamentary majority so it can change the constitution.
Brian Kagoro of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a rights lobby group, said Zanu PF's onslaught on the media was part of its bid to create a one-party state. "This control of the media is not only to silence dissent but to create a particular citizen, who is docile, compliant and uncritical," said Kagoro. "You will have the officialisation of puppetry or parrotry so that everybody sings one song and there will be only one choir master." Andrew Moyse, head of independent agency the Media Monitoring Project, said: "The latest development demonstrated that the laws had no intention of regulating the media, but (instead) controlling it and switching off those media the government is most afraid of and cannot control directly. There is no light at the end of the tunnel." The government has asked internet service providers to sign contracts compelling them to monitor, report and block "malicious messages" and other material deemed in violation of law. With the high cost of telephone calls, the internet is the cheapest mode of communication, used widely by opposition members in exile and economic refugees to send messages home. The Windhoek-based Media Institute of Southern Africa says Zimbabwe has the worst mediafreedom record of the 10 southern African countries. Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders ranks Zimbabwe 141 out of 166 countries on its press freedom index.
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 12 June
Moyo burns his fingers
Dumisani Muleya
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s propaganda chief Jonathan Moyo was stopped in his tracks by the old guard of the ruling Zanu PF when he tried to elbow his way into the top echelons of political power. Their move came as Moyo began openly to make a power play ahead of the party’s critical congress scheduled for December. The congress comes at a time when Mugabe has indicated he will step down as president of Zimbabwe when his present term expires. Moyo has of late been making open attempts to build a power base for himself in his rural home in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland North province. In the process he has found himself in conflict with powerful rivals within the party. Moyo recently clashed with Zimbabwean Vice-President Joseph Msika over the government’s seizure of a farm, Kondozi. Although Moyo managed to hold on to the farm, Msika warned that he would not be defeated by "little immoral boys". The high-profile clash, which was widely interpreted as evidence of a scramble for power, has deepened the divisions within the faction-ridden Zanu PF.
Moyo threw fuel on the fire three weeks ago when he launched a thinly veiled attack on Zanu PF spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira. In the state-owned daily The Herald Moyo criticised Mugabe’s interview with British Sky News. He said those who still believed that it was better to promote Zimbabwe’s interests through the "colonial and imperialist" media houses rather than on the "national media" were "outdated". This was seen as a broadside against Shamuyarira, who had facilitated the interview without Moyo’s approval. In his outburst, Moyo also suggested that Mugabe had wasted time answering questions from "British intelligence operatives masquerading as journalists" that were either "very crude or very stupid". This was seen as an unwitting attack on Mugabe, and it further infuriated Zanu PF leaders. Shamuyarira, the president’s confidant and a former journalist, apparently thinks that if he is allowed to speak to the global media, Mugabe could be useful in fighting negative publicity about Zimbabwe. By contrast, Moyo seems to think that exposing Mugabe to long interviews with "hostile" media organisations can only worsen the situation, especially at a time when the president seems to be losing his grasp on many issues. As shown over the past three years, Moyo’s strategy has been to ring-fence Mugabe and control the free flow of information. Following hard on the heels of the government’s enforcement of its repressive media laws, which resulted in the banning of the Daily News and other papers in January, new measures are planned to gag Internet and e-mail communication. The government is targeting Internet service providers, who could soon be forced to divulge the source of any e-mail deemed objectionable, unauthorised or obscene. The new regulations mean that Internet service providers will have to sign a contract agreeing to cooperate with the authorities in tracing the sources of "offensive" e-mails. It forbids the service providers to undertake any "anti-national activities". But most of the Internet firms have vowed to resist the official censorship drive.
The clash between Moyo and Shamuyarira sparked a series of events that appears to have led to Moyo’s isolation. It is understood that the attack on Shamuyarira forced Zanu PF chairperson John Nkomo to complain in his weekly column in the party newspaper mouthpiece, The Voice, of lack of discipline and insubordination. Moyo was seen as the target. Matters came to a head last week when Nkomo was openly slammed in The Herald by war veterans over the current tussles over land and farms. War veteran leader Joseph Chinotimba attacked Nkomo over the issue. Angered by the rising trend of attacks on senior party officials, Zanu PF bigwigs closed ranks and confronted Moyo during the politburo meeting. Insiders say Shamuyarira tabled the issue before luminaries such as Msika, while retired General Solomon Mujuru - widely seen as the Zanu PF king-maker - led the assault on Moyo and other "undisciplined cadres". Zanu PF sources say the attack in the politburo has left Moyo weakened and isolated. After the politburo meeting, Nkomo wrote another column that insisted that "party members need to respect hierarchy". Moyo’s situation was worsened by Mugabe’s statement, last week, that party officials who have been unprocedurally nominated as Zanu PF candidates for next year’s general election will be rejected. Moyo is one of those. His supporters in Matabeleland North recently claimed he had been nominated by "consensus" in a move seen as an attempt to help him avoid internal primary elections. Zanu PF big shots are said to be plotting to block Moyo in the primaries to ensure that he remains a powerless appointed MP. However, observers say that, despite the setbacks, Moyo is not finished yet, as Mugabe still needs his services as a spin doctor.
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From The Financial Gazette, 10 June
Chinamasa booted out of farm
Felix Njini
Combative Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa has been booted out of the lush Rockland Farm in Mashonaland East which he controversially seized in 2002 under the government’s land reform programme. Impeccable government sources who did not want to be named confirmed yesterday that the minister had been shown the door and told "to stick to his one farm in Manicaland province". Chinamasa confirmed that he had ceded ownership of |
