|
Archived News
24th May 2005
Shumba torture twist
Ex-finance minister in court
Zimbabwe court asks state to speed opposition trial
Worsening maize shortage exposed
RBZ purchase of new vehicles raises eyebrows
Zimbabwe’s Mugabe to meet UN official on food: report
Chinese to take over former white-owned farms
Top trade unionist to head civic coalition
Mugabe admits he needs food aid to rescue Zimbabwe
Mugabe critic hits out at 'criminal' govt
Hundreds arrested as Zim cops 'sweep' city
Armed police descend on flea markets
Crippling street petrol prices
Harare runs dry as fuel crisis reaches unprecedented levels
Pressure group defiantly distributes protest album
Trying to save Zimbabwe’s healers
Election over, Zimbabwe is back to bad old days
Mugabe rejects notorious NGO Bill
Air Zim flies a lone passenger from Dubai
South Africa buys Zimbabwe
Judgment reserved in Registrar General's contempt of court case
Police detain journalist who filmed raid on street vendors
Humanitarian award for archbishop
Lawyers appeal to African Commission over jailed former MP
Zimbabwe wants white farmers back
Mugabe’s crony invades land
'Buy Zimbabwe' campaign planned
Mugabe sacrifices Zimbabwe traders to save the Chinese
Zimbabwe c.bank chief dragged into corruption case
Deadlock delays vote for bank president
Hundreds stranded as transport crisis worsens
Fuel exporting by profiteers speeds Zimbabwe's economic meltdown
White farmers scorn call to return
SA spy waiting to testify in Zim
Former Zim minister 'did not smuggle money out'
Zimbabwe court told official had $500 000 in briefcase
Use less ink - the ANC's wisest advice on Zim election
Harare police arrest thousands in crackdown
Campaign against vendors spark riot in opposition stronghold
Chinese inflict huge blow on struggling Zimbabwean industries
UN to check on Zimbabwe food crisis
Hungry villagers
We apologise Mutasa
Mugabe resuscitates "colonial evils"
Army put on alert as fears of civil unrest mount
Police in Zimbabwe arrest 9,000 traders
Zimbabwe police target minibuses
Destitutes arrested in police clean up
Central bank chief threatens to shut down hotels over forex remittances
Communities report widespread crop failures
Too much indelible ink spoiled Zimbabwe's impeccable election
Top
From SW Radio Africa, 17 May
Shumba torture twist
Human Rights lawyer Gabriel Shumba, who was brutally tortured by Zimbabwean police in 2003, took his case to the African Union Human Rights Commission. In a shocking development, Shumba has learnt that his case could now be heard in Zimbabwe where the Commssion's next sitting is due to take place in November. Shumba, who is suing the government for torture at the African Union Human Rights Commission, got the shock of his life on Monday when he realized the next sitting for the court is in Zimbabwe. Shumba, who was tortured by police in detention. Says the government probably knew this and deliberately sought a postponement of the hearing from April to November. The latest move is aimed at securing a default judgement if he fails to attend. He fled to South Africa with his wife and children after constant harassment and threats to his life by state security agents. A furious Shumba says he is currently writing a letter of protest to the African Union. He is convinced former Attorney General Andrew Chigovera, who is now the special rapporteur on freedom of expression at the AU, probably gave the government inside information on where the next hearing was scheduled for. Asked what he would do if his protest failed, he insisted he would travel to Zimbabwe provided the AU gave guarantees over his safety and that of his lawyer and any journalists that wanted to cover the case. He is amazed the accused in his case, the government, will be providing the court room.
Top
From News24 (SA), 17 May
Ex-finance minister in court
Harare - Lawyers for Zimbabwe's former finance minister asked the high court on Tuesday to throw out the charges against Chris Kuruneri of funneling foreign currency to build a mansion in neighbouring South Africa. Leading the defence team, advocate Julia Wood told the court the state's charge sheet was vaguely drafted and did not disclose any offence. "The charges are mere speculation," Woods told high court judge Susan Mavangira. "The indictment does not say how the offences were committed, where, the dates and what amounts were involved on each of the ocassions." Kuruneri was arrested in April last year at the height of the Zimbabwean government's anti-graft crusade, becoming the highest-level official to face charges for corruption. He has been in remand prison since. The former minister in President Robert Mugabe's "war cabinet" is facing seven counts of breaching Zimbabwe's exchange control laws for allegedly transfering abroad $500,000, £37,000, €30,000 and R1.2m that covered the cost of building an eight-bedroomed mansion in a Cape Town surbub. The court on Tuesday allowed the prosecution to amend two of the charges by inserting the phrase "at some dates to the prosecutor unkown".
But the defence said even with the amended charges the state had failed to disclose an offence. Wood cited among the vague charges the allegation that Kuruneri asked the Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe (CBZ) to transfer R5.2m from his foreign currency account to the account of a South African company in April 2002. The charges effectively implicated Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Gideon Gono and an official with a local commercial bank, the lawyer said. "The state is alleging Dr Gono and Mr Oliver Sigauke were accomplices because they are the people who authorised the transfers," Wood said. Kuruneri appeared in the high court Tuesday dressed in a beige suit and light blue shirt. The former minister denies charges of illegally exporting foreign currency, saying he built the mansion in a plush Cape Town suburb with proceeds from consultancy work he did for foreign companies before he was appointed minister by Mugabe. He is also facing a charge under Zimbabwe's Citizenship Act for holding a Canadian passport in addition to his Zimbabwean diplomatic passport. Zimbabwean law does not allow dual citizenship. The judge will make a ruling Wednesday on the application to have charges against him quashed.
Top
From Reuters, 17 May
Zimbabwe court asks state to speed opposition trial
Harare - A Zimbabwe magistrate urged state prosecutors on Tuesday to press ahead with their treason case against opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, saying she was unhappy with a further 2-1/2 month delay. Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), faces a charge of treason stemming from anti-government protests in June 2003 -- a second case after he was cleared last October of plotting to assassinate President Robert Mugabe. Magistrate Priscilla Chigumba reluctantly granted a prosecution request to remand Tsvangirai on bail until August 2, saying the further delay was too long given that he had already been on remand for nearly two years. A state prosecutor said the Attorney General's office wanted more time to finalise its case. "I am not willing to accede to a long remand ... you (prosecution) have to do justice to the accused as well. He has his rights and he has been on remand since 2003," Chigumba said. But she said she could not overrule the Attorney General unless the defence made a specific application for her to refuse a further remand. Defence lawyer Cris Mhike had asked Chigumba to remand Tsvangirai only until July 18, and said that if the state did not come up with a trial date at the August 2 hearing, the defence would apply for the court to refuse further remand. Tsvangirai faces a treason charge for anti-Mugabe protests his MDC tried to organise in June 2003. Last October he was found not guilty of plotting to assassinate Mugabe and to seize power before 2002 presidential polls. The state later applied to the Supreme Court to contest the acquittal, but the matter has yet to be heard. The MDC suffered a crushing defeat in parliamentary elections in March that the party and some Western governments denounced as unfair.
Top
From The Zimbabwe Standard, 15 May
Worsening maize shortage exposed
By our own staff
Bulawayo - Haulage truck drivers are spending several days queuing for grain at the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) in Bulawayo amid reports that the depot has not been receiving enough maize to cater for the increasing demand, The Standard has discovered. A snap survey conducted by this newspaper last week revealed that truck drivers were spending nights at the depot in the hope of getting maize but to no avail. Truck drivers, who spoke to The Standard on condition of anonymity, said they had spent days at the depot, awaiting their turn. "I spent the whole of Wednesday night in a long queue. The maize is coming in, but in small quantities," said one of the drivers, who refused to be identified for fear of victimisation. The drivers said they come from as far as Gwanda, Esigodini, Mzingwane, Nkayi, Lupane and Plumtree. Sources said the grain delivered to the depot was quickly distributed, leaving the silos empty. The Standard was not able to establish the amount of grain in the GMB silos because personnel at the depot insisted that they needed clearance from their superiors in Harare. The GMB Bulawayo assistant depot manager, a Mrs Malango referred all questions to Harare. The Bulawayo Metropolitan Provincial Governor, Cain Mathema, refused to speak to The Standard saying he was busy. Both Bulawayo Provincial Administrator (PA) Isaac Ndebele and Mathema had not responded to questions faxed to them by the time of going to print. But the World Food Programme (WFP) says it assisted more than a million people in April alone as the food crisis worsens. Four months ago, the organisation provided food assistance to about 900 000 people, mostly children and people living with HIV and AIDS around the country. The WFP said the neediest were children from the dry region of Matabeleland, which is one of the drought-prone areas in the country. WFP spokesperson Makena Walker said Bulawayo, Matabeleland North and South provinces, Masvingo and some parts of Manicaland and the Zambezi Valley, were the worst affected areas. Reports from international aid agencies estimate that about five million people in the country need food aid.
The Minister of Home Affairs and Zanu PF MP for Beitbridge Kembo Mohadi told The Standard that thousands of villagers in his constituency needed food aid. "The drought is still on us and we are making do with the little we have. Beitbridge has always been experiencing droughts, and the government has always been assisting," said Mohadi in a telephone interview. The home affairs minister, however, refused to comment on whether the government would allow Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to start assisting people with food. The government has banned NGOs from distributing food saying they were using it to campaign for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Presently, food distribution to the needy is being handled largely by the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare. Bulawayo City Council is feeding more than 13 000 school children a month and the figure is believed to have risen. Several villagers from Matabeleland region, who spoke to The Standard last week, said they had run out of maize and sorghum. Rodger Siziba of Tsholotsho said the food situation was critical and there was need for urgent food relief from the international donor community. Patrick Ncube of Silobela under Chief Malisa urged the government to ask for help from the international relief agencies.
Meanwhile supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in Zaka district of Masvingo claim that Zanu PF officials, who control the distribution of grain handouts, are denying them food as punishment for voting for the opposition party in the 31 March parliamentary elections. They claimed that their names were deleted from the list of grain beneficiaries, thereby exposing several villagers to starvation. The most affected wards in the constituency are Mushandirapamwe, Muuyu and Masimbaevanhu in Zaka East. The supporters said a Zanu PF councillor and two Zanu PF officials were spearheading the retribution. An affected villager, identified as Makwindi, said he tried to buy maize from the local grain distribution centre but his money was returned allegedly because he was a known opposition supporter in the area. Another victim Jenika Chiringa said Zanu PF officials in charge of grain distribution were victimising her because her son campaigned for the MDC candidate. The villagers said the situation was exacerbated by the fact that there was a critical shortage of maize meal in the country. When it is available, a 10 kg of maize meal sells for about $40 000. Efforts to contact Tinos Rusere, Zaka East MP and losing MDC candidate, Misheck Marava, were fruitless. However, MDC spokesperson Paul Themba-Nyathi said he has been receiving reports of politicisation of food from various parts of the country. Nyathi also added that his party was pressuring the government into ensuring that Zanu PF stops partisan food distribution.
Top
From The Zimbabwe Standard, 15 May
RBZ purchase of new vehicles raises eyebrows
By Bertha Shoko
At a time when nearly half of the country's population faces widespread shortages of basic commodities, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has purchased more than 50 new top-of - the range vehicles worth billions of dollars The Standard can reveal. The luxury vehicles, which are presently kept under tight security at the RBZ's burning plant along George Drive in Msasa, are meant for the central bank's top management. The vehicles include expensive models such as Wolfs and Mitsubishi Colts and Peugeot 406s. When The Standard news crew visited the premises, there was heavy security guarding the cars. Said one of the guards, when approached: "This is a no-go area, so please say what you want quickly and go away." The guards threatened the journalists with arrest for "intruding". Critics last week accused RBZ governor Gideon Gono of extravagance at a time when the country needed to preserve the little financial resources available. They said such resources should be channelled towards more pressing issues such as maize imports for starving Zimbabweans.
Economic analyst Peter Robinson said such spending makes a mockery of the bank's objectives in so far as turning around the economy is concerned. Robinson said such extravagance was the underlying cause of inflation and was not expected of Gono, who has been preaching restraint on spending. "This squandering of national resources through buying of individual vehicles makes a mockery of the RBZ's objectives for the economy," he said. Another economic analyst, Daniel Ndlela, said it was wasteful and morally wrong for the RBZ to buy luxury cars at a time when the economy is literally on its knees. "Instead of spending money on posh vehicles for an unproductive staff, at this point what the RBZ should be focusing on is bringing food to the table for Zimbabweans, ensuring petrol and oil is available and power supply is guaranteed. "RBZ put an end to such unproductive expenditure during the 'asset management clampdown' and why is it now doing what it has discouraged in the past?" questioned Ndlela. However Eric Bloch, who is also one of the advisers to the RBZ, said if there was genuine need for the vehicles then it was justified. Gono last week also defended the purchases saying they were meant to give logistical support for new staff employed to fight economic crimes.
Top
From DPA, 18 May
Zimbabwe’s Mugabe to meet UN official on food: report
Harare - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has agreed to meet with the head of the World Food Programme (WFP), state-controlled Herald newspaper reported Wednesday. The Herald quoted Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba as saying the 81-year-old head of state had agreed to a request by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to meet WFP head James Morris when the U.N. official visits southern Africa to assess its emergency food aid needs. Morris was expected in Zimbabwe and several other southern African countries "soon", according to the Herald. The WFP official was last in Zimbabwe two years ago, when the WFP was involved in feeding millions of people in the country. However, last year Mugabe ruled out receiving food aid, claiming the country has recorded a "bumper harvest of 2.4 million tonnes of maize". Mugabe's spokesman told the Herald that the southern African leader was now prepared to accept food aid as long as it did not come with political strings attached. "The president is very clear that whilst Zimbabwe welcomes drought mitigating assistance from other countries of goodwill, it remains firmly opposed to any food handouts that are predicated on political conditionalities," Charamba said. "Equally, the Zimbabwean government is clear that the primary responsibility of ensuring that Zimbabweans are provided with food is its own," he added.
Zimbabwe says it needs to import 1.2 million tonnes of the staple maize in order to make up for shortages. Widespread shortages have become the order of the day in most urban centres, where shops have run out of basic commodities such as maize meal, bread, sugar, cooking oil and milk. The government blames recent poor harvests on drought, but aid agencies and government opponents say the shortages are a direct result of a controversial land reform programme. That programme, launched five years ago, saw most white-owned commercial farms seized for redistribution to new black farmers. The government says just 1.5 million of the country's 11.6 million people are in need of food aid, but aid agencies put the figure much higher. Zimbabwe needs 1.8 million tonnes of food each year to feed people and livestock. While official figures are not yet available, this year's harvest could be as low as 500,000 tonnes.
Top
From Zim Online (SA), 18 May
Chinese to take over former white-owned farms
Harare - The Zimbabwe government is planning to offer former white farms for free to Chinese state-owned firms in a desperate bid to revive the key agricultural sector, Zim Online has learnt. Details of the planned land-for-investment scheme are still sketchy. But sources said Harare, vigorously pursuing a new "look-East" policy after falling out with the West because of its poor human rights record, was looking for a government to government deal. Officials of state-owned agro-firm, China State Farms Agribusiness Corporation (CSFAC), were expected in Harare "soon" for talks with government officials on the modalities of the proposed farming partnership, according to the sources. "Details of the deal are not yet clear as the actual talks are yet to be done. But both Zimbabwe and China seem keen to embark on the deal. The government is desperate to have agriculture back on the tracks," said the source, who spoke on condition he was not named. Intelligence Minister Dydmus Mutasa, ordered by President Robert Mugabe last week to also oversee land reform, has been tasked to repossess all underutilised land and hand it over to the Chinese once the deal is in place. The government is targeting unproductive land owned by blacks apparently because there was no longer enough land in white hands, after close to 90 percent of the former white commercial farmers were stripped off land under the government’s chaotic and often violent land reforms. "There is no longer enough land to grab from white farmers. So what will happen is that Mutasa will have to find land from blacks who are seen to have failed to productively farm. This is the land that will be given to the Chinese," the source said.
Mutasa refused to take questions on the matter accusing Zim Online of seeking to upset relations the government was trying to build with the Chinese. "You seem bent on destroying whatever good the government is doing. You don’t want us to build any relations," Mutasa fumed. It was also not possible to get comment from the Chinese embassy in Harare. This is not the first time that the government has attempted to give land taken from white Zimbabwean farmers to foreigners. At the height of fuel shortages three years ago, the government signed a similar deal with Libya under which Tripoli was to take large swathes of land in exchange for fuel. The deal collapsed as the Libyans preferred cash at that time. Apart from seeking help from the Chinese, the government is also secretly approaching some of the expelled white farmers enticing them to return to the land with promises of compensation for equipment lost during the farm seizures and security from evictions in future. Zimbabwe has since 2002 virtually survived on food handouts from international donors because of severe food shortages after a 60 percent drop in food production because black families resettled by the government on former white-owned farms lack skills and resources.
Top
From Zim Online (SA), 18 May
Top trade unionist to head civic coalition
Harare - Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions secretary general Wellington Chibebe was yesterday elected head of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (CZC), an alliance of more than 40 civic groups campaigning for a negotiated and democratic settlement to Zimbabwe’s crisis. Chibebe’s rise to the helm of the CZC is set to bring a more grassroots level approach to Zimbabwe’s problems different from former chairman Brian Kagoro’s more intellectual approach that focused more on lobbying the international community to pressure President Robert Mugabe to embrace democracy and abandon his controversial policies. The CZC is credited with helping raise in the southern African region the profile of Zimbabwe’s crisis particularly the negative impact of Mugabe’s policies such as his chaotic land reform programme that has largely contributed to food shortages with poor black families the worst affected. The organisation has a representative office in regional powerhouse South Africa but appears to have so far failed to convince President Thabo Mbeki to abandon his quiet diplomacy approach towards Harare. Media Institute of Southern Africa, Zimbabwe Chapter director Rashweat Mukundu was elected Chibebe’s vice, while University of Zimbabwe lecturer, Elizabeth Marunda, came in as spokeswoman of the organisation.
Top
From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 19 May
Mugabe admits he needs food aid to rescue Zimbabwe
By David Blair in Johannesburg
President Robert Mugabe yesterday abandoned his confident forecasts of a bumper harvest in Zimbabwe and confessed that international food aid was needed to avoid famine. Mr Mugabe, who declared last year that Zimbabweans would be "choked" if aid was "foisted" upon them, climbed down and agreed to meet the head of the United Nations World Food Programme. Having previously pledged that his seizure of white-owned farms would make Zimbabwe self-sufficient, Mr Mugabe said he would accept outside help if it came without conditions. Renson Gasela, agriculture spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said the president should "eat humble pie, forget about the claim of a bumper harvest and accept food from whoever can offer help". Last year, Mr Mugabe hailed the "success" of his land seizures, saying they would yield a record maize harvest of 2.4 million tons, more than enough to supply Zimbabwe with its staple food. In fact, this year's harvest was below 600,000 tons. The government has quietly admitted trying to import another 1.2 million tons to meet the annual demand for 1.8 million tons. But imports on this scale are affordable and logistically possible only with international help.
Yet Mr Mugabe still refused to ask for food aid. It took a personal intervention from Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, before he agreed to yesterday's U-turn. George Charamba, the regime's spokesman, said Mr Mugabe had "acceded to the secretary-general's request" to meet James Morris, the WFP's director. Mr Charamba added that food aid would be accepted only if it came without "political conditions". He claimed that the sole cause of the food shortages was a drought that had recently hit Zimbabwe. Critics dismissed this as face-saving. Mr Gasela pointed out that Zimbabwe avoided a drought last year and a desperate shortage of seed, fertiliser and farming equipment prevented a substantial harvest. The shortfall had been caused by the seizure of white-owned farms, Mr Gasela said. "Whatever machinery the commercial farmers had was vandalised after they left," he argued. "You go to those farms today and you find large areas of land are lying fallow. "The way the land issue was handled was the prime cause of the problem. There have always been droughts in Zimbabwe and we have usually been able to handle them. What is different this time? The land issue is the only difference." Mr Mugabe's request for help comes very late. The WFP has already planned its food distribution in southern Africa for 2005, having been assured by Mr Mugabe that Zimbabwe did not need help.
Top
From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 18 May
Mugabe critic hits out at 'criminal' govt
Johannesburg - A fierce critic of President Robert Mugabe, Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube, on Wednesday lashed out at his "criminal" government for refusing to ask for food aid to help at least two million needy Zimbabweans. "The most criminal thing which the Zimbabwe government is doing is that they have not declared that we are in need of food," said Ncube, the archbishop of Bulawayo, at a news conference in Johannesburg. "If the government does not allow food distribution, we are going to die this year, the people are saying," said Ncube, who has been one of the most vocal opponents of Mugabe's policies. His remarks came amid reports in Harare that Mugabe is ready to meet with the head of the United Nations World Food Programme to discuss aid for his country, where food and fuel shortages have worsened in recent weeks along with power and water outages. Ncube estimated that more than two million Zimbabweans are in need of emergency food aid. He reported "gross shortages of basic foodstuffs", saying that people are forced to purchase products such as sugar on the black market at six times the shop price.
He said that Mugabe had ensured that fuel supplies were available in the run-up to the March 31 elections that his ruling Zanu PF party won, but that the situation since has become "disastrous". "Such a hypocritical government," Ncube lamented. "They tried to see to it that there was as much fuel as possible before the elections because the journalists were there, but soon after the elections, the cars were waiting bumper to bumper." Ncube, who is due to travel to Scotland later this week where he has been nominated to receive the Robert Burns humanitarian award, accused the government of waging a campaign of revenge against regions, such as Bulawayo, that elected opposition lawmakers to Parliament. "There is a kind of revenge," he said, citing as an example a township - where a Zanu PF lawmaker lost her seat - that was subjected to power cuts. "Trucks of food are going to those places where the government has got support, while the people of Bulawayo are not given any sugar and any mealie meal," he said, referring to cornmeal, the national staple food. Zimbabwe's economy has been in a tailspin over the past five years, due mostly to a collapse in agriculture production caused by successive droughts and the seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to landless blacks.
Top
From Sapa, 19 May
Hundreds arrested as Zim cops 'sweep' city
Harare - Police in Zimbabwe have arrested up to 550 people in the capital Harare in a massive operation aimed at ridding the city streets of unlicensed vendors and touts, a state-controlled newspaper said on Thursday. Large quantities of goods were confiscated in the raids on Wednesday and more than 60 vehicles impounded in the operation, codenamed Restore Order, the newspaper said. "This is a massive and extensive operation and we would like to urge the public to fully co-operate with the police during this time," police spokesperson Oliver Mandipaka said. "We will continue monitoring all the movements until there is order and sanity in the streets," he said.Some of the arrested will pay fines while others will be brought to court to face various charges, the newspaper reported. Among those detained were homeless people, who police say make the streets unsafe. "These are the very same people who commit crimes and we will deal with them in accordance with the law. They must go where they belong," a senior police officer told the paper. "No one in Zimbabwe comes from nowhere. Everybody belongs somewhere."
Top
From The Daily Mirror, 19 May
Armed police descend on flea markets
Daily Mirror reporter
Armed police yesterday swooped on flea markets around Harare’s Central Business District, confiscating goods running into millions of dollars and assaulted people in the process. When The Daily Mirror news crew visited a flea market at the corner of Angwa Street and Speke Avenue, police could be seen arbitrarily beating market operators and passers-by. Trunks and boxes containing an assortment of goods, among them pairs of shoes and clothes, were loaded into police trucks and taken to Harare Central Police Station. Some of the flea market operators say they lost money in the process. From a distance, some affected traders watched haplessly as their goods were being taken away. Flea market operators expressed fear that they would not get back their goods, saying it would be difficult to identify given that they were mixed during the raids. The police would at intervals charge at the operators, forcing them to flee in different directions, with the unlucky ones being assaulted. In separate interviews with this newspaper, operators said the police advanced no reason for the swoop. When contacted for comment, police spokesperson Whisper Bondayi said: "Why don’t you contact (Oliver) Mandipaka? He is the one who can comment on that issue, but it has to do with cleaning up of the city." Efforts to get a comment from Mandipaka were in vain last night. One trader, a retrenchee, said police pounced on the market at around 4 pm and ordered everyone to carry his or her goods to a waiting truck. The trader, who refused to be named for fear of retribution, said: "The move by the police to raid flea markets without warning was very bad and uncalled for, to say the least. "I am a retrenchee and some of those affected are widows and single mothers trying to earn an honesty living in these harsh economic times. Do the police want us to be thieves or murderers? Do they want widows to turn to prostitution?" he questioned. He said he had invested his entire retrenchment package into the business and wondered how he would pick up the pieces.
Top
From The Daily Mirror, 19 May
Crippling street petrol prices
Farirai Machivenyika
Black market petrol prices have skyrocketed to a whooping $40 000 a litre at some spots in Harare in the past few days as unscrupulous fuel dealers make a killing from the acute shortage of the vital commodity. A visit to one such spot a taxi rank near the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (Noczim) headquarters in Harare The Daily Mirror last night witnessed black market fuel traders selling five litres at $200 000. The official pump price of petrol is $3 600 a litre. Last month, the price of petrol on the black market shot up to $18 000 per litre in Harare and Bulawayo when the shortage of the precious liquid took root. When The Daily Mirror visited a spot along Leopold Takawira Street, outlawed emergency taxi operators plying the City-Avondale route had abandoned ferrying commuters and were draining petrol to resell on the lucrative parallel market. When this reporter posed as a prospective buyer, a tout said he was willing to budge and sell a litre of petrol to him for $17 000 only if a he bought in "bulk," but insisted that the going price was $40 000. "Ndokupayi five litres ne $200 000 here blaz? (Do you want five litres for $200 000, my brother?)," he asked. He added that they were mostly dealing in petrol since it sold faster than diesel. Other touts stationed about 100 metres away from the scene of the black market could be seen making gestures to motorists in a bid to lure them. The fuel shortages have persisted despite assurances by central bank boss Gideon Gono early this month that they would end "soon." The governor attributed the shortages to lack of resources which, he said, he had been "overstretched" during the March 31 general elections. Meanwhile, commuters were stranded last night as the transport blues intensified in the city due to fuel shortages. Some operators capitalised on the situation by hiking charges well above the gazetted fares. Commuters travelling from Harare to Norton are being forced to pay $10 000 up from $6 000 while those going to Warren Park were paying $3 000 up from $2 000. Glen View commuters now pay $3 000, while the Tafara route costs $7 000 up from $2 000.
Top
From Zim Online (SA), 19 May
Harare runs dry as fuel crisis reaches unprecedented levels
Harare - Harare was virtually dry of fuel yesterday as importers refrained from placing new orders with suppliers until Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor, Gideon Gono, announces his monetary policy review statement today. Fuel industry sources said importers are hoping that Gono will devalue the local dollar to attract more hard cash into the official market which they could tap to pay foreign suppliers. A devaluation, coupled with a hiking of the pump price by the government, would ensure profitability for fuel importers. Alternatively, oil firms want Gono to revive a foreign currency support facility for fuel importers that was abandoned last year amid allegations of gross abuse of the facility. "It is difficult for private players to bring in fuel at the moment. We will be forced to sell at a loss because of the exchange rates," said a senior executive with one Harare-based fuel firm, who did not want to be named. He added: "For example, let’s say one imports petrol from South Africa where the pump price is about five rand or more, which multiplies to about Z$5 000 at the official exchange rate, they will have to sell the petrol here at not more than $4 000, which is a huge loss." An official of local garage chain, Exor, said the firm’s garages had last received petrol supplies a week ago. "All our garages have no petrol and there are no indications that the situation will improve immediately," he said.
In a survey of garages in and near Harare central business district, Zim Online could find no petrol at nearly every filing station while only a handful of garages in the city’s outer suburbs were selling diesel yesterday. Most of the illegal fuel black-market traders, who usually provide a lifeline for stranded motorists, also did not have petrol. The few illegal fuel traders who had the commodity were charging 10 times more than the official pump price, as Zimbabwe’s five-year fuel crisis reached unprecedented levels. One of the fuel black-marketers operating along Leopold Takawira street in central Harare offered to sell a five-litre gallon of petrol to our news crew at $150 000, which translates to $30 000 a litre. The official pump price for a litre of petrol is between $3 400 and $3 700. Energy Minister Mike Nyambuya refused to disclose measures his department was taking to ensure fuel supplies to the country. yambuya, a former soldier, would only say: "The government is working out solutions to the fuel problem and it will be resolved soon." Zimbabwe has grappled severe fuel shortages for the last five years because the country has no hard cash to pay suppliers. Essential medical drugs, electricity, food and chemicals to treat drinking water for city dwellers are among the vital commodities in critical short supply in the country because of the lack of hard cash to pay for imports.
Top
From Zim Online (SA), 18 May
Pressure group defiantly distributes protest album
Harare - Zimbabwean civic groups have begun distributing an album of protest music calling for a new and democratic constitution in open defiance of police orders not to release the music to the public. The police earlier last week banned the civic group coalition, National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), from launching or distributing the music album until the government’s Censorship Board had listened to it and determined whether it should be released to the public. But NCA chairman Lovemore Madhuku yesterday said his group had last weekend distributed copies of the album for free to operators of rural and urban public transport buses to play to passengers. "The police have not succeeded and cannot succeed in preventing the distribution of this musical album," Madhuku said in a statement to the Press. Apart from calling for democratic and constitutional reforms some of the music on the album also castigates police brutality against political opponents of the government. Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena could not be reached yesterday for comment on the matter. The government has resorted to the 1967 Censorship and Entertainment Act to ban music and literature it considers too critical of its rule. Four newspapers including the country’s largest circulating non-government-owned daily, the Daily News, remain off the streets after they were banned by the state as part of a vicious clampdown on divergent voices and dissension in the last two years. Madhuku said: "it is a shame that the citizens of Zimbabwe continue to be denied their right to freedom of expression through colonial and undemocratic pieces of legislation such as the Censorship and Entertainment Control Act of 1967."
Top
From BBC News, 19 May
Trying to save Zimbabwe’s healers
By Steve Vickers
Harare - Although the value of African traditional medicine is becoming increasingly respected around the world, there are fears that the level of knowledge of the art is dwindling on the continent. Africa is endowed with a host of herbs and plants that, properly used, can treat a huge range of ailments. As more and more Africans adopt urban lifestyles, the interest and enthusiasm for traditional medicine seems to be declining, and many now prefer the pills of Western medicine. I accompanied Ambuya Jessie Muzhange, an expert herbalist, to a bushy area on the outskirts of Harare. Digging for roots and searching for different plants that have medicinal properties is an arduous task, requiring a great deal of skill. Ambuya Muzhange, in her 70s, picked out leaves, branches and roots that most of us would not have even noticed were there. Eight of her children are still alive, and only one of them has a reasonable level of knowledge of traditional medicine. The art is passed on by walking in the bush with an expert on an almost daily basis, and most of her children live in the cities and are too busy for this.
"I've helped people with so many different diseases - backaches, nosebleeds, fertility problems, STDs, cancer, and even men who can't perform well in bed," said Ambuya Muzhange. "With Aids-related ailments, if someone comes in the early stages I can help them." "Most of my children find traditional medicine confusing, because it can be very difficult to distinguish the plants and to know their different uses." Many Zimbabweans do appreciate the benefits of traditional medicine, particularly as it is far cheaper than visiting the doctor. But there is no sign of medical schools incorporating the traditional approach to the Western-style medicine that they teach. "The problem with traditional medicine is that there are no prescribed dosages," said Obey Mawire, a final year medical student in Harare. "We don't know all of the side-effects, and it needs purification, but there could be new discoveries if we incorporate traditional with modern medicine. But I don't see a situation where I'll be using traditional medicine when I become a general practitioner."
But in the Western world, there is a growing interest in traditional medicine from Africa and the Far East. As well as being a psychotherapist, Geraldine Kocroft is a fully-fledged traditional healer or n'anga. She is currently working on a book documenting the benefits of traditional medicine. "It's absolutely priceless, it really works, and God has given it to us, but unfortunately I feel it's a slowly dying art," she said. "We're losing certain aspects of it, although we might gain some more." Another reason for the decline is that it can be a secretive art, and knowledge is often not passed between herbalists and traditional healers. "People tend not to want to share, sometimes they feel that they've been exploited." A high level of skill is certainly needed to use the traditional medicines that the continent has been blessed with. Who knows what remedies are yet to be discovered, if the dying art can be kept alive?
Traditional Zimbabwean remedies for common ailments:
Coughs and colds: Take leaves from a guava tree and rub them by hand to bring out the juices. Put in boiling water and add lemon peel for flavour. Leave to stand for 30-40 minutes. Drink half a glass of the warm mixture three to four times a day, 30 minutes before food. Continue taking for one week, by which time the cough or cold should have gone.
Nosebleeds: Take dry elephant dung from the bush. If a nosebleed begins or if you feel one is about to start, burn a teaspoon-sized piece of the dung. Inhale the smoke, taking deep breaths.
Ear infection: Take three or four grains of fresh maize and pound them. Put the crushed maize on a clean cloth or handkerchief, tie it, and squeeze hard until juice comes out. Put two drops of the juice in the infected ear.
Top
From The New York Times, 20 May
Election over, Zimbabwe is back to bad old days
By Michael Wines
Bulawayo - In the weeks before parliamentary elections last March, the leaders of this threadbare nation threw open the national larder, wooing voters with stocks of normally scarce gasoline and maize and a flood of freshly printed money. It must have worked: The ruling Zanu PF party was installed for another five years. But Zimbabwe's Potemkin prosperity has evaporated since the vote, swiftly replaced by penury and mounting signs of economic collapse. Here in Zimbabwe's second largest city, lines of cars stretch half a kilometer at fuel-parched service stations, and drivers spend the night in their back seats lest they lose their place. Milk, cooking oil and most of all maize, the nation's corn staple, are a distant memory. At one city-center grocery, much-prized Colgate toothpaste is kept in a locked case. Zimbabwe's currency, which traded on the black market at 120 to the dollar in April 2002, went for 6,200 to the dollar last December, 12,000 last April 1 and 17,000 in early May. By mid-May, a single American dollar brought as much as 25,000 Zimbabwean dollars - and the rate continues to climb. [Zimbabwe's government had steadfastly maintained an official exchange rate of about 6,100 Zimbabwe dollars per American dollar until Thursday, when the nation's reserve bank announced a 45 percent devaluation. But the new exchange rate - 9,000 per American dollar - remains nearly two-thirds less than the black market rate, and business managers here say it is unlikely to have more than a brief impact on the economy.]
"It's running out of control," one Bulawayo manufacturer said. "When you're going down a path of destruction, you can keep putting patches on the tires - patch, patch, patch - but eventually, the tire is going to burst," he said. "We're going down that path." Of course, people regularly say that about Zimbabwe's economy, a chewing-gum and baling-wire affair long plagued by 70 percent unemployment, triple-digit inflation and a currency that no foreign creditor will accept. Prosperity has been receding since the late 1990s, when the government's attacks on international creditors and its seizure of commercial farms triggered a cascade of economic backlashes. Past economic plunges have provoked food riots, gasoline line protests and government crackdowns. This one is similar: The government has sent police to quell mobs outside groceries and gas stations, and begun a roundup of street merchants who were dealing too openly in black-market goods and selling currency at illicit rates. Yet, some say that the current crisis, perhaps the worst since the economy began foundering, may mark a turning point. Zimbabwe's main economic problems - capital flight, a dire shortage of foreign exchange with which to buy imports, and turbocharged inflation - are now so severe that they are eroding what remains of the industrial and agricultural base.
Manufacturing has slowed to a trickle, hamstrung by shortages of fuel and imported components. Businesses have been driven into barter and the black market, fueling inflation. Appeals for government help are mostly fruitless: The government is all but broke. One persistent critic, a former government economist named John Robertson, said the government apparently exhausted its reserves on a feel-good campaign before the parliamentary elections, and is now paying the price. "The scarcities now are coming from manufacturers who can't deliver enough to retailers to fill their shelves," Robertson said in Harare, the capital. Initially, the problem was that manufacturers could not get enough supplies to make their products. But "now that there are more critical shortages in things like fuel," he said, "it's almost academic whether they can get the material, because they can't deliver the products anyway. The end result of the shortages is that prices are rising." In Harare this week, rumors that a shipment of sugar had arrived created a line of shoppers nearly a kilometer long outside one suburban supermarket. Yet the problem, said Robertson, was not a shortage of sugar but one of the imported polyethylene bags that hold it. Coca-Cola is being rationed because the gas that provides carbonation is in short supply, and the local bottler cannot find foreign currency to buy the imported syrup that makes a Coke a Coke. Virtually any product made of steel is in a parlous state because most rolled steel is imported from South Africa, and South African steel mills are demanding cash up front from their Zimbabwe customers.
"It's what I call a chain-link economy," said a Bulawayo maker of a basic steel commodity. "Company A manufactures parts for Company B, and Company B manufactures a part for Company C, and so on until company F makes the finished product. "What's happening is that the links are falling apart. And when one link breaks, the whole chain doesn't work." Reduced to a television-screen crawl, this is Zimbabwe's major problem: It has run out of foreign currency. Over the last five years, Zimbabwe's parceling out of 5,000 commercial farms among squatters and peasants has decimated agricultural exports, an economic mainstay. When commercial farming collapsed, so did the businesses that supported it, from tractor sales - the nation needs 50,000, and has fewer than 400 working ones - to irrigation suppliers. That only deepened the farming woes and the export tailspin: Zimbabwe tobacco production is down two-thirds in five years, and the quality, once world-renowned, is so poor that buyers are scarce. Falling exports made foreign currency dear, causing exchange rates to rocket. But the government has generally refused to revalue its currency, choosing instead to print more money; Zimbabwe's money supply rose 226 percent in 2004. The result has been hyperinflation and a thriving black market in both money and goods. Hyperinflation and the artificial exchange rate, in turn, have crippled gold mining, Zimbabwe's other big exporter. Production fell 18 percent in the first quarter of 2005. Starved for foreign currency to import crucial supplies, the government now requires all businesses to sell it 25 percent of their foreign income at the official exchange rate of 9,000 Zimbabwe dollars per American dollar.
Top
From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 19 May
Mugabe rejects notorious NGO Bill
President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has refused to sign a controversial new law that would have barred foreign rights groups from operating in the country, a newspaper said on Thursday. The NGO Bill, which also outlawed local groups from receiving outside funds, was passed by Parliament last year after marathon debate and fierce opposition resistance. The Bill had to be signed by the president before it became law. "The NGO Bill was sent to the president for assent and he did not do so because of one or two issues he wanted to be addressed," Minister of Social Welfare Nicholas Goche told the state-controlled Herald newspaper. The minister did not say what the issues were. The proposed law, which drew widespread criticism from rights groups around the world, barred the registration of foreign NGOs if their work was purely for the promotion and protection of human rights. Several human rights groups in Zimbabwe have since 2000 been chronicling alleged abuses by Mugabe's government. Critics said the law would be used to shut down perceived opponents, just as a controversial press law passed in 2002 was used to shut down four independent newspapers critical of the government. Parliament is set to resume next month, with Mugabe's Zanu PF holding a majority of 78 seats to 41 for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
Meanwhile, United Nations envoy Joaquim Chissano arrived in Zimbabwe for talks with Mugabe on Thursday as the country plunged deeper into economic crisis, with mass arrests of black-market traders, long lines for gasoline and stampedes for scarce food like sugar. Chissano, the former president of Mozambique, is due to hold discussions with Mugabe on proposed UN reforms, according to Zimbabwe state radio. However, the meeting is also expected to touch on growing food shortages in Zimbabwe, which used to be the bread basket of Southern Africa. With an estimated five million Zimbabweans now acknowledged to be in urgent need of food aid, World Food Programme chief James Morris is due to visit the country next week. Before March 31 parliamentary elections, Mugabe insisted that the country had a "bumper harvest" of maize and would be self-sufficient in food. But shortly after the poll - won by the ruling Zanu PF party with a huge majority amid allegations of the use of food as a political weapon to secure votes -- the government said it would have to import 1,2-million tonnes of maize.
Reports from the western city of Bulawayo said two women with babies on their backs were injured on Wednesday when hundreds of shoppers stampeded for a limited supply of sugar, not seen in stores for many weeks. Long lines also formed for bread, wheat flour and maize meal, the staple diet of Zimbabwe's 11,6-million people. At a Harare filling station owned by a government minister, motorists who had waited two days for gasoline, sleeping in their cars, were disappointed when stocks ran out after preference was given to a last-minute "VIP" line of limousines and off-road vehicles, and uniformed soldiers in private cars. The resulting near-riot caused gridlock on a major arterial road. Drivers of fuel-starved minibuses, which form the backbone of the capital's public transport system, were outraged but backed down in the face of threats by troops. Ever since 1998 food riots, which killed seven people, uniformed security force members have claimed preference in lines for all scarce staples. Police said 800 street vendors, including sellers of black-market fuel, were rounded up on Wednesday in a blitz on downtown Harare.
Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono was scheduled to make a two-hour statement on economic policy later on Thursday. State radio said devaluation from the present official rate of Z$6 200 to the dollar is expected to feature prominently. Gasoline, officially Z$3 420 per litre, is selling on the black market for up to Z$20 000 and a large price hike is expected. Luxon Zembe, president of the Zimbabwe National Chambers of Commerce, led business leaders urging the government to introduce "a more realistic exchange rate to make exports earning vital foreign currency more competitive". In a reference to the country's growing isolation, Zembe also called for "more measures to address international relations in order to attract investment and lines of credit". Gono is known to want restored links with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), while Mugabe favours a "look East" policy, replacing Western trade links with an attempt to capture China's growing prosperity. Zimbabwe's economic crisis has escalated since 1998 to 2000, when Mugabe forfeited World Bank and IMF support over chronic financial mismanagement, lost a constitutional referendum, and began seizing 5 000 white-owned farms.
Top
From The Daily Mirror, 20 May
Air Zim flies a lone passenger from Dubai
Shame Makoshori
National airline, Air Zimbabwe, on Wednesday shattered aviation records history by cruising more than 6 000 km between Dubai and Harare with one passenger, highly placed sources said yesterday. This is understood to have courted the ire of senior government officials who have since questioned the logic of the trip and subsequently the introduction of dozens of new routes without having aggressively marketed the initiatives.This newspaper was told that to break even, the 205-seater Boeing 737 airliner that took off from the Harare International Airport on its inaugural flight to Dubai on Monday needs 60 percent of passenger capacity. This translates to about 120 passengers. However, the impeccable sources revealed yesterday that Air Zimbabwe chief executive officer Tendai Mahachi gave the nod for the plane to take off with only 49 passengers on board. "This means we never recovered even 10 percent of the costs of flying the aircraft. What is happening at this airline is a clear example of mediocre planning while at the same time claiming to be turning the airline’s fortunes around. "The world over, the procedure is that before a flight is launched, it is preceded by extensive marketing to appraise the market. In this case, industry was not approached, the tourism industry was not approached and even in Dubai the market was not aware that a new flight was coming in."
When the plane reportedly returned home with only one passenger, the source, an aviation expert, said, "We have made aviation history. Since 1903 when the first flight took off, no international aircraft has cruised such long distances as this with one passenger aboard." He said the airline ignored government advice to carry the media and other stakeholders on the inaugural flight, saying that all seats had been sold. The source urged the responsible ministry to take action after concerns were raised that the recent opening up of extra routes by Air Zimbabwe had been badly coordinated. Air Zimbabwe has been struggling to settle its debts in the past few years and at one time last year it was suspended from the international clearing system for failing to settle a $40 million debt. Efforts to get a comment from Mahachi were fruitless yesterday, while Transport and Communications Permanent Secretary Karikoga Kaseke was reportedly in South Africa when The Daily Mirror called his office. Petroleum procurer, BP Shell Marketing also threatened to block fuel supplies to the airline and a plethora of other debts have either been taken over by government or remain unsettled. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) this year chipped in with a $1.1 trillion facility to boost the company’s turnaround strategies while government chipped in with two MA60 airliners from China. Vice-President Joyce Mujuru, who is in charge of parastatals, has warned them not to rely on government handouts, but work towards growing business.
Top
Comment from The Zimbabwean, 20 May
South Africa buys Zimbabwe
By Wilf Mbanga
London - While President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa’s overt support for President Robert Mugabe and his tyrannical, corrupt regime in Zimbabwe merely serves to make Mugabe more intransigent, it is having a profound effect on the fundamental fabric of the nation. While the world is confused by all the politicking - endlessly debating Mbeki’s possible motives and employing futile isolationist tactics against the Mugabe regime - a quiet, but significant, transfer of ownership is taking place under our very noses. A few week’s ago this newspaper highlighted the inroads being made into Zimbabwe’s economy by the Chinese. This is insignificant when compared with the systematic cherry-picking that has been taking place over the past few years as Zimbabwean companies collapse under the weight of government’s economic mismanagement and corruption. The good-natured, neighbourly ‘rescue ’ operations have been carried out in line with accepted good business practice all over the world. But the result has been, nonetheless, a transfer of ownership of the lion’s share of a once-vibrant, resilient and diverse manufacturing industry to South African business interests. In the past five years, Zimbabwe’s economy has been in an ever-increasing tailspin, which has rendered it wide open to predatory cherry-picking. Weakened by price controls, forex shortages and insane economic policies, Zimbabwean business has been easy prey for the South Africans.
South African business is adept and aggressive and has been making notable inroads into the African continent ever since the end of apartheid. Just last week the news broke that a South African bank has come to the rescue of Zimbabwe’s fuel woes by providing foreign exchange for importation of precious commodity. This week it is alleged that ZESA is paying the South African power utility Eskom for electricity in gold bars. Land, mines, shareholding in financial institutions, ivory and tobacco are just a few of the innovative ways in which the Government of Zimbabwe has paid its foreign debts recently. Why not gold bars? As a prominent Zimbabwean businessman told The Zimbabwean: "South Africa could soon get the whole of Zimbabwe at a bargain price if the economic collapse continues, because our weakened state absolutely prohibits us from defending our much-trumpeted sovereignty. "This could take the form of a Southern African Federation that leaves each federal state with its own governor. This would bring us under the South African Reserve Bank and the Rand would sweep aside the useless Zimbabwe dollar. It would be rather like West Germany's rescue of East Germany and it would probably cause South Africa rather less indigestion that West Germany is suffering now!" he suggested.
Top
From Zim Online (SA), 20 May
Judgment reserved in Registrar General's contempt of court case
Harare - A High Court judge yesterday reserved judgment in a contempt of court case against Zimbabwe Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede for ignoring court orders to surrender ballot papers used in the 2002 presidential election to opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai wants the ballot papers and other voting material to support a challenge at the High Court against President Robert Mugabe’s controversial victory in that poll. The opposition leader says an examination of the ballots will show that Mugabe cheated him of victory in a poll hailed by some African countries but condemned by Zimbabwean civic groups, the European Union (EU), United States (US) and Southern African Development Community parliamentarians as having been neither free nor fair. But Mudede has for the past two years refused to hand over the ballot papers and other voting materials despite several court orders to do so forcing Tsvangirai’s lawyers to appeal to the High Court to find the registrar in contempt of court and to imprison him for five years. Papers submitted to court by Tsvangirai’s lawyers read in part, "it is respectfully submitted that the respondent’s failure to comply with the Order of this Honourable Court constitutes contempt of Court, for which . . . respondent (Mudede) must personally be committed to gaol and for which a fine must be imposed on him in his official capacity." The US, EU, Australia, Canada, Switzerland and New Zealand imposed targeted sanctions against Mugabe and his top lieutenants to punish them for allegedly stealing the 2002 ballot and for the failure to uphold the rule of law, human and property rights. Mugabe in power since Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain 25 years ago - insists he won fairly and says Western governments are targeting him for victimisation to punish him for seizing land from white farmers for redistribution to landless blacks.
Top
From CPJ, (US), 19 May
Police detain journalist who filmed raid on street vendors
New York - Zimbabwean security forces yesterday detained a freelance journalist filming police as they cleared Harare’s central business district of street vendors, according to a lawyer for the press freedom group MISA-Zimbabwe. The journalist, Frank Chikowore, was being held without charge today. "It’s outrageous that Zimbabwean authorities would lock up someone who was simply filming the activities of police in a public place," said Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. "We demand the immediate and unconditional release of Frank Chikowore and an end to this kind of abuse." MISA-Zimbabwe legal officer Wilbert Mandinde, who is seeking Chikowore’s release, said police gave no explanation for the arrest. He told CPJ that Chikowore had a government license to practice journalism, as required by Zimbabwe’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), and that he had been detained because he was filming police "harassing innocent people." Chikowore had just finished another assignment when he came upon the police sweep and began filming, MISA-Zimbabwe spokesman Nyasha Nyakunu said. Mandinde, who met with Chikowore, said the journalist has a swollen left foot after being manhandled by police. MISA-Zimbabwe reported that police confiscated Chikowore’s video camera and two notebooks. A crackdown on the independent press in Zimbabwe that started in 2002 has included the detainment, harassment, and forced exiled of dozens of journalists, as well as the closure of four newspapers.
Top
From BBC News, 21 May
Humanitarian award for archbishop
A Zimbabwean archbishop has received a humanitarian award in memory of Scottish poet Robert Burns. Archbishop Pius Ncube dedicated the Robert Burns International Humanitarian Award to Zimbabweans who are persecuted in their country. He has been critical of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's regime. He was given the award ahead of the McCartney sisters, who have campaigned for justice since their brother Robert was murdered in Belfast in January. Others shortlisted were Romeo Dallaire, who led the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda; businessman and philanthropist Tom Hunter; and Glasgow minister John Miller, who worked with poor people in the Castlemilk area of the city. Archbishop Ncube said on Friday: "I feel from the bottom of my heart that I don't deserve this award but I accept it on behalf of those in Zimbabwe whose suffering is unabated and whose struggle continues." His criticism of the Zimbabwean government has prompted death threats from the Zimbabwean security service. The church leader was presented with the honour at a gala concert at Culzean Castle, Ayrshire.
Top
From Zim Online (SA), 21 May
Lawyers appeal to African Commission over jailed former MP
Harare - The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZIHR) has appealed to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights to help pressure authorities in Harare to stop tormenting and ill treating jailed opposition activist and former parliamentarian, Roy Bennett. In a letter to the commission filed on Wednesday this week, the ZLHR said Bennett, detained at the notorious Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison, just outside Harare, was being held in deplorable conditions that could lead to serious health problems for him in future. "The continued detention of Roy Bennett under such deplorable conditions will likely lead to serious health problems," the ZLHR’s letter to the commission reads in part. "We call upon the authorities to take the necessary administrative and other measures as provided for in international instruments to ensure that our places of detention and prisons comply with minimal standards and norms." Bennett was jailed for 12 months last year after ruling Zanu PF party parliamentarians used their majority in the House to vote for his imprisonment after he violently shoved Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa during debate. Prison authorities have targeted Bennett, who is white, for particular ill-treatment, the ZLHR said.
According to the lawyers group, Bennett was transferred under unclear circumstances from a rural prison in Mutoko, more than 100 km north-east of Harare, and brought to a prison congested with murderers, rapists and other hard-core criminals. The ZLHR said on the day of his arrival at Chikurubi, Bennett was made to sit in the scorching sun for two hours without explanation or justification. He was also made to sleep on the cold floor without blankets before some inmates out of sympathy donated blankets to him. Other prisoners have however to be careful not to fraternise with Bennett in the presence of prison guards who harass and punish anyone suspected of being friendly to the former legislator. Bennett told the human rights lawyers group that at one time, prison guards poked him in the eye without provocation and that they routinely subject him to all sorts of humiliating, inhuman and degrading treatment. He has not been given a change of prison garb for weeks on end and is being denied clean water to wash forcing him to wash in toilet basins using water meant for flushing the toilet. Bennett, whose Charleswood Estate farm in Chimanimani district was forcibly seized by the government despite court orders on the state not to take over the property, has also been denied food for days on end. As result, Bennett has lost 27 kg and the ZLHR warned that his physical and emotional condition might deteriorate further if no immediate measures are taken to stop prison authorities from continuing harassing and victimising him. Zimbabwe Prison Service Commissioner Paradzai Zimondi could not be reached for comment on the matter.
Top
From The Times (UK), 21 May
Zimbabwe wants white farmers back
By Our Foreign Staff
The head of Zimbabwe’s central bank has suggested that white farmers be allowed back on the land taken from them and distributed among supporters of the Mugabe regime. More than three quarters of Zimbabwe’s 4,500 white farmers have been driven off their land in the past five years. But with the country facing famine, Gideon Gono, governor of the central bank and a key adviser to President Mugabe, declared that white farmers were needed to boost production. Mr Gono said that although some of the new black farmers were doing well on their farms he was disappointed at the performance of others, and suggested that the Government allow some of the white farmers to resume operations. "Horticulture remains a strategic agricultural area in the country’s economy, not only in terms of contribution to national productivity but also in terms of employment creation and foreign currency generation," he said in a lengthy policy statement. "In order to ensure maximum productivity levels, there is great scope for promoting and supporting joint ventures between the new farmers with progressive-minded former operators . . . as well as other new investors so as to hasten the skills transfer cycle." The new investors or former white farmers would be given special dispensation and guarantees of uninterrupted productive tenure of five to ten years, backed by government protection from any disruptions on the farms, he added.
The Zimbabwe economy has shrunk by more than 30 per cent in the past six years as agriculture, hit by drought and disruption of commercial farming, withered away. The land seizures resulted in a catastrophic drop in output, with tobacco, once the main foreign currency earner, down 70 per cent. Before the recent parliamentary elections Mr Mugabe insisted that the country had a "bumper harvest" of maize and would be self-sufficient in food. But shortly after the poll, won by the ruling Zanu PF party with a huge majority amid allegations of ballot-rigging and the use of food as a political weapon, the Government said that it would have to import 1.2 million tons of maize. This week Mr Mugabe agreed to meet James Morris, head of the UN’s World Food Programme, to discuss maize imports. Joaquim Chissano, the retired Mozambican president and special representative of Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, has arrived in Harare for talks with Mr Mugabe. There have been reports of food riots in Zimbabwe. In Bulawayo two women with babies on their backs were injured on Wednesday when hundreds of shoppers stampeded for a limited supply of sugar, which has not been seen in stores for many weeks. Long queues also formed for bread, wheat flour and maize meal, the staple diet of Zimbabwe’s people.
Top
From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 20 May
Mugabe’s crony invades land
Godwin Gandu
Harare - The newly appointed Deputy Information Minister in Zimbabwe, Bright Matongo, and a group of 15 war veterans have violated a court order and invaded farmland, the first such incident since the March parliamentary elections. Tom Beattie has had his possessions thrown out of his farmhouse and has been given an ultimatum to completely vacate the land by the weekend. The Mail & Guardian is in possession of a government notice dated August 31 2004 in which the Administrative Court of Zimbabwe issued a "notice of withdrawal" by the minister of lands, agriculture and rural resettlement to interests in "Tom Beattie family farms". Beattie claims he has already voluntarily allocated a "sizeable portion" of his land for resettlement purposes. "The new deputy information minister is causing all the trouble here," Beattie fumed. "They don’t have proper letters and I’m wondering why this is happening to me. Matonga doesn’t even belong to this district; he is not even an MP of this area. A lot of land is lying idle, nobody is doing anything on the farms, why can’t they go to the underutilised farms instead of disrupting farming operations here," he said.
He summoned the police, who temporarily restored order on the farm on Tuesday, but Matonga and the war vets returned the next day and forcibly removed workers from the workshop where they were processing and packaging produce. Beattie is seeking a high court order to stop the "illegal eviction" and to compel the police to remove the war veterans from his Chigwel farm in Chegutu in the prime commercial farmland in Mashonaland west, about 100km outside Harare. Chigwel estate employs 1 200 labourers and exports, among other things, oranges to the Middle East, Russia and Europe, raking more than $1-million a year. Beattie, who has been on the property since 1983, donates generously to community projects and has a framed letter from President Robert Mugabe prominently displayed in his office. "On behalf of my wife and family, and indeed my own behalf, I wish to express my heartfelt thanks and appreciation to you for a handsome gift of three beasts and two sheep given to us during our wedding ceremony. The gift would certainly constitute part of the founding herd of our family’s future livestock," the letter reads and is signed off as "Yours Sincerely RG Mugabe President of the Republic of Zimbabwe".
When the M&G visited the farm this week, several of the farm workers were wearing Zanu PF T-shirts. Senzeni Zuze (24) has lived and worked on the property for the past six years. "We are not opposed to the land reform programme but what is happening is unfair," she said. "There are a lot of farm around the area that the ministers could have, but we are wondering why they are focusing on this one. We are shocked the land reforms are still continuing, we are sick and tired of violence," she said. In September 2002, Matongo was allocated the 607ha Mpandaguta farm in Banket in the same province. The previous owners, Vincent and Monica Shultz had run a successful horticulture business. They exported flowers generating millions in foreign currency. "You go to Mpandaguta now, there is nothing on the ground. But he wants to come here and do the same," Beattie protested. "I will take this matter up with the provincial governor Nelson Samkange." Matonga could not be reached for comment.
Top
From The Financial Gazette, 20 May
'Buy Zimbabwe' campaign planned
Harare - The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has proposed a major campaign to promote Zimbabwean products ahead of imported goods, in a bid to save scarce foreign currency and create jobs. The proposed "Buy Zimbabwe" campaign, RBZ governor Gideon Gono said yesterday, is designed to allow Zimbabwean brands to reclaim market share that has been lost to foreign products due to strong import demand in recent years. "An aggressive import substitution drive, spearheaded through aggressive marketing and promotion of local brands with significant local content in terms of manufacturing and packaging effort, would go a long way in positively restructuring the economy's consumption patterns," Gono said. Decreased output from local industry due to rising production costs has seen imported goods dominating shop shelves, but Gono said this development was weighing on Zimbabwe's foreign currency reserves and crowding out local brands. Import substitution, the replacement of imported goods with local product, would reverse that trend by encouraging "growth from within" as local businesses receive more contracts, creating more jobs and boosting incomes. The replacement of a dollar's worth of imports with local products, according to yesterday's report, is as effective in generating national economic growth and expansion as the creation of one dollar's worth of exports from the economy. "It cannot be over-emphasised that any policy that encourages consumption of locally produced commodities will increase industrial capacity utilisation significantly towards the targeted 100 percent mark," Gono said in a supplement to the main monetary policy statement he delivered yesterday.
The aim of the "Buy Zimbabwe" crusade would be to build preference and shape aggregate consumption patterns in support of the country's balance of payments position, the governor said. Gono has also come out sharply in criticism of the flood of cheap, low quality imports. "Of late, it has been noted with concern that the recent influx of mainly clothes and consumer goods into Zimbabwe has brought with it a variety of substandard goods, thereby short-changing the unsuspecting local consumers who rushed for such products." The planned "Truly Zimbabwean" campaign would be modelled along the "Proudly South African" campaign in South Africa, a strategy that economists there say has contributed to economic growth and job creation. The US, in fact, has legislation that compels federal, state and local governments to buy certain goods from American industries. Selected products will qualify to trade under the "Truly Zimbabwean" logo. The products will be required to fulfil set standards of product quality and price competitiveness and have a local input content certified by either the RBZ of a specifically appointed body. According to the RBZ, the major drivers of import demand are luxury consumer items such as toiletries, soft drinks and foodstuffs. Other major contributors are luxury motor vehicles, foreign education and foreign construction materials.
Top
From Zim Online (SA), 21 May
Mugabe sacrifices Zimbabwe traders to save the Chinese
Harare - President Robert Mugabe has ordered the demolition of thousands of flea market stalls in Harare to protect Chinese-owned clothing retail shops that have sprouted in the capital and across the country, Zim Online learnt yesterday. Sources said Mugabe decided to sacrifice the livelihoods of millions of Zimbabweans, who depend on selling mostly second-hand clothing at the stalls, following a plea by the Chinese shop owners that the flea markets were taking away a huge chunk of their business. The Chinese, who sell cheap quality clothing, footwear and electrical gadgets imported from their home country, approached Mugabe through second Vice President Joyce Mujuru who they met last month, according to sources. The Asian retailers, who have set up shop in Harare and other cities in larger numbers since the government began its look-East policy five years ago, are said to have told Mujuru that their businesses faced collapse because of an influx of flea markets selling cheaper goods mostly imported from neighbouring South Africa. "A delegation from the Chinese embassy asked for protection from Mujuru last month and it was only last week that we began to see action against flea market traders," a senior government official said. He insisted on not being named for fear of victimisation. The official added: "The President (Mugabe) himself pledged to protect the Chinese shop owners after Mujuru informed him of their problems and he approved the on-going operation to close down flea markets."
Industry and International Trade Minister Obert Mpofu refused to take questions on the matter when ZimOnline telephoned him yesterday. "I am not going to talk about that," was all Mpofu would say. But police in Harare yesterday stepped up the blitz against flea market traders, raiding several stalls and confiscating billions of dollars worth of goods. Charges by Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono, when he announced his monetary policy review statement for the first quarter on Thursday, that flea market traders were also helping fuel the illegal foreign currency black market have only helped worsen the situation for the traders, police sources said. According to the sources the anti-flea market operation code-named "Operation Restore Order" will now be extended in the coming weeks to other cities across the country. Mugabe is vigorously pursuing greater ties with China and Asia after falling out with the West over his failure to uphold democracy, the rule of law, human and property rights. Apart from heavily investing in the clothing retail sub-sector, the Chinese have also won major contracts in the construction industry and in the aviation sector where they have supplied fighter and passenger planes to the Air Force of Zimbabwe and the country’s passenger airline, Air Zimbabwe. Harare is also understood to be negotiating a deal with Beijing under which state-owned Chinese agro-firms will be offered former white-owned farms in exchange for heavy investment to revive Zimbabwe’s collapsed agricultural sector.
Top
From Reuters, 20 May
Zimbabwe c.bank chief dragged into corruption case
Harare - Zimbabwe's central bank chief, Gideon Gono, has been dragged into a legal case in which former Finance Minister Chris Kuruneri is charged with breaking the country's foreign exchange laws. State witness Lorenzo Bruttomesso, a South African, told the Harare High Court on Friday that Gono had approved the transfer to South Africa of 5.2 million rand for Kuruneri during Gono's tenure as head of a local commercial bank. Bruttomesso represented a client who sold shares in a South African property investment company to Kuruneri. Kuruneri, who on Thursday was convicted on his own plea of using a foreign passport without authority, denies charges of illegally taking foreign currency out of the country. "I had to ensure that the source of funds had to be derived from legitimate means and that the funds transfer to South Africa had to comply with applicable laws in Zimbabwe," Bruttomesso said. "He (Gono) assured me that these were legitimate funds and that there was no problem in transferring the funds," Bruttomesso said. Gono was chief executive of local Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe at the time of the 2002 transaction. Kuruneri was arrested in 2004 and has been in custody since. His arrest followed a drive by Mugabe last year to stamp out rampant corruption. Critics say the effort targeted mainly bankers and others in private businesses, while only a handful of ruling party officials were hauled to court. Zimbabwe is battling acute foreign currency shortages as it grapples with a deep economic crisis blamed by critics on government mismanagement. Gono is one of several witnesses lined up by state prosecutors. The trial continues.
Top
From Business Day (SA), 20 May
Deadlock delays vote for bank president
Abuja - Voting for the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB) has been postponed until July after the deadlock over voting for the two final candidates remaining in the six-man race continued yesterday. Rwandan Finance Minister Donald Kabureka and Olabisi Ogunjobi, a senior official of the AfDB, are the two remaining candidates in a race that originally had candidates running from Zimbabwe (for the Southern African Development Community (SADC)), Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana and Gabon. The Egyptian candidate pulled out before voting began. Voting reached deadlock on Wednesday night after the mandated five rounds. The majority of African votes went to the Nigerian candidate and the non-African votes backed Kabureka. The successful candidate has to have 50,1% of the African (regional) vote and 50,1% of the overall vote. The vote will now be held in Tunis, where the bank is headquartered, in July. In the interim, current AfDB president Omar Kabbaj will stay in the job. Meanwhile, SADC candidate Simba Makoni said yesterday he was most disappointed about losing the vote. "This ended up being an election among five candidates and one country," he said, referring to the shadow Zimbabwe’s government’s political and economic record threw over his campaign. Makoni said he believed that the politics of his country rather than his suitability for the job had been taken into account.
Top
From Sapa, 21 May
Hundreds stranded as transport crisis worsens
Harare - Thousands of Zimbabwean commuters were stranded in Harare on Saturday as fuel shortages worsened, state radio reported. "Thousands of residents are being forced to walk for more than 10km to various destinations because of the critical shortage of public transport," the radio said. Some city residents were getting up at 4am in order to get to their workplaces for 9am, the private Daily Mirror said. Drivers of commuter buses - the most popular form of transport - were said to be spending long hours queueing for scarce fuel instead of ferrying passengers. Reports said army buses had been drafted in to transport some commuters home. Fuel shortages have worsened in the weeks following parliamentary elections at the end of March, which were won by President Robert Mugabe's party. Petrol is officially sold at ZIM$3 600 per litre but on the black market it fetches up to ZIM$40 000 a litre, reports said. In a bid to address the transport problems, Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo said that extra "Freedom Trains" - a low-cost state-sponsored service - would be introduced on three city routes. "We will review the situation with time. We want to ensure that all commuters are carried to work in time and are home in time," Chombo told the state-controlled Herald newspaper. The state-run ZUPCO bus company was making frantic efforts to buy more buses to meet demand, the paper said.
Top
From The Sunday Independent (SA), 22 May
Fuel exporting by profiteers speeds Zimbabwe's economic meltdown
By Charles Rukuni
Bulawayo - Zimbabwe is exporting fuel to Botswana and South Africa, which is helping to further cripple its badly battered economy. Fuel exports are part of a plethora of survival strategies and illegal deals that comprise the burgeoning parallel market in Bulawayo. They rely on government bungling and the inept management of the economy. A few individuals have become exceedingly wealthy in the process. It is now widely accepted around the world that Zimbabwe, once hailed as the bread basket of Africa, has become a basket case. This was illustrated this week in a pie shop in Robert Mugabe Way where a meat pie sells for Z$15 000. "That's what I paid for my house and it wasn't so long ago," said a customer who was buying a pie for lunch. Z$15 000 would indeed have bought a modest house less than a decade ago. However, at the present rate of inflation, a pie will probably cost more than Z$20 000 by the end of this year. The latest data from the government's central statistics office showed that a Zimbabwean family of two parents and three children needed Z$2,3 million for basic food and non-food items. Basic food items cost Z$816 200 several months ago. Inflation is now at 127 percent. With the minimum wage still at Z$800 000 a month, even those with jobs now rank with the poor. Only 30 percent of the available workforce is officially employed.
Luxon Zembe, the president of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, said most of the country was in survival mode. This has led many Zimbabweans to develop survival strategies that were often detrimental to the economy and would make any turn-around programme even more difficult. "We have developed a new breed of speculators ready to pounce whenever the government bungles," Zembe said. The government certainly has bungled on the fuel front, pegging prices at the pump at between Z$3 450 and Z$3 950 a litre. This in a country where the thriving parallel market exchange rate is now up to Z$3 200 to the South African rand and where a Botswana pula fetches up to Z$4 300. So, fuel bought at roughly R1 a litre in Zimbabwe can readily sell in South Africa for R4 or more. The rand or pula for which the re-exported fuel is sold comes back into Zimbabwe to be exchanged on the parallel market. One result has been a recurring shortage of fuel. This is also experienced in maize meal, sugar and cooking oil, on which price controls have also been applied. "They simply don't work," Zembe said. Economist and business consultant Eric Bloch agrees with Zembe. Bloch pointed out that petrol and diesel now had to be sold at less than their landed prices. "To make any money at all, local suppliers will have to sell fuel at no less than Z$7 500 a litre," he said. On Thursday, Gideon Gono, the governor of Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank, again promised to tackle these problems. He announced the widely expected devaluation of the local currency by 31 percent, still a far cry from the parallel-market rate. "Gono certainly seems to be trying to keep the ship afloat. The trouble is that the government is continuing to drill holes in the hull," Bloch said.
Top
From The Sunday Times (UK), 22 May
White farmers scorn call to return
Christina Lamb
White farmers in Zimbabwe have dismissed as "madness" and "completely divorced from reality" an invitation by the governor of the country’s central bank to go back to their land. The offer, made by Gideon Gono in a televised speech on Friday night, was widely seen as a government acknowledgement that its land reform policy had failed. Last week President Robert Mugabe finally admitted the country needs food after months of refusing supplies, though he blamed drought for shortages that have left half the population hungry. "In order to ensure maximum productivity levels, there is great scope in the country for promoting and supporting joint ventures between the new farmers with progressive-minded former operators," said Gono in the three-hour broadcast, during which he announced a 31% devaluation of the Zimbabwean dollar. He added that skilled whites and other new investors would be given guarantees of uninterrupted tenure of five to 10 years, backed by government force to prevent any disruption on the farms. Only about 300 of 4,500 white farmers remain on their farms after a five-year campaign to take their land that has seen 15 farmers killed and thousands of farm workers beaten and evicted. Far from being distributed among landless peasants, many of the farms have ended up in the hands of Mugabe’s relatives and cronies.
Gono’s suggestion that the evicted farmers could return as managers in partnership with the new occupiers was ridiculed by those white farmers still in Zimbabwe. "It would be madness to go back while there’s no law and order," said Ian Kay, who was badly beaten when his tobacco farm in Marondera was invaded. "Even if they were serious, it’s not as if people can just take up where they left off. The farms have been looted, vandalised, and the equipment sold off." Food production has plummeted since the white farmers’ expulsion as farms have deteriorated into wasteland.More than 5m people are on the verge of starvation, according to the World Food Programme. Many of those evicted have set up in neighbouring countries. "The government seems to think they can beat us, kill us, trash our houses, attack our women, then expect us to waltz back in to help them out when they make a hash of things," said another white farmer. "Gono is living in a dream if he thinks farmers are going to go back without security of tenure," said David Coltart, legal affairs spokesman for the opposition. Even Mugabe, who boasted last year of a "bumper harvest" and said the country would "choke" on international food aid, has admitted his government would accept food from the United Nations if it came without conditions.
Top
From The Star (SA), 20 May
SA spy waiting to testify in Zim
The South African spy held in Zimbabwe is physically healthy and it is hoped he will be released when he has finished testifying in court against the last of the Zimbabwean officials he allegedly recruited. It is understood that the spy's two adult sons recently visited him in prison in Harare and reported that he was being properly cared for. He is a member of the SA Secret Services and was arrested at Victoria Falls in December after a Zimbabwean official lured him across the border with Zambia. The Zimbabwean government has not charged the man. Zimbabwe's national director of public prosecutions, Joseph Musakwa, was recently quoted in the Zimbabwean media as saying he was only being held as a witness against the officials he allegedly recruited to provide information. Three of them, including the previous consul-general in Johannesburg Godfrey Dzvairo, have already been convicted and sentenced to prison. But the case against John Karidza, the head of security of Zanu PF, is dragging on because of complications.
Top
From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 22 May
Former Zim minister 'did not smuggle money out'
A second prosecution witness on Saturday denied that Zimbabwe's former finance minister Chris Kuruneri smuggled out funds to buy a mansion in South Africa and flouted the country's tough foreign-exchange laws. Christopher Hayman of Cape Town, South Africa, told the High Court in Harare that Kuruneri invested in various properties in South Africa with proceeds from consultancy work he did outside Zimbabwe before he was appointed Cabinet minister. Hayman, a property developer, said he helped Kuruneri to open a bank account in South Africa and invest in various properties through Choice Decisions, a company of which Kuruneri was director. "Dr Kuruneri said these were free funds earned even before he came to Zimbabwe," Hayman said under cross-examination by defence lawyer Jonathan Samkange. "I was led to believe the funds came from a source outside Zimbabwe and until it is proved otherwise I will continue to work on that presumption." He said he met Kuruneri in April 2002 and that the former minister appointed him to manage his investments in South Africa.
Kuruneri faces seven counts of breaching Zimbabwe's exchange-control laws by allegedly transferring $500 000, £37 000, €30 000 and R1,2-million to buy and renovate an eight-bedroom mansion. The former minister has denied the charge, saying the house was bought and rebuilt by a South African investment company of which he was director. He said he bought shares in Choice Decisions 113 and invested in the other properties with proceeds from consultancy work he did outside Zimbabwe. A South African lawyer, Lorenzo Aldo Dominico Bruttamesso, testifying in the high-profile trial on Friday, said Kuruneri moved money legally from his account in Harare to buy shares in a property in Cape Town. Bruttamesso represented Dunmow Limited, a South African company that sold shares for a house in Cape Town three years ago to Choice Decisions 113. Samkange said Kuruneri had life savings in Spain, which he moved to South Africa after he was included on the list of Zimbabwean politicians placed under targeted sanctions by the European Union and the United States. "It is these funds that the accused invested in South Africa," the lawyer said.
Judge Susan Mavangira on Thursday convicted Kuruneri of breaching the country's citizenship laws after he confessed to holding a Canadian passport in addition to a Zimbabwean diplomatic passport. Zimbabwean law does not allow dual citizenship. The judge is due to sentence Kuruneri for flouting citizenship laws at the end of his trial. Kuruneri was arrested in April last year at the height of the Zimbabwean government's anti-graft crusade, becoming the senior-most official to face charges of corruption. He has been in remand prison since. The trial is to continue on Monday with further testimony from prosecution witnesses.
Top
From SABC News, 21 May
Zimbabwe court told official had $500 000 in briefcase
Chris Kuruneri, Zimbabwe's former finance minister, turned up in Cape Town in 2002 with around $500 000 in a briefcase and used it to buy property and a car, a Harare High Court heard today. Kuruneri is on trial for illegally taking foreign currency outside Zimbabwe a charge he has denied in a case which has drawn in Gideon Gono, the central bank chief. Jonathan Samkange, the defence lawyer, said the funds were Kuruneri's savings which were "couriered" to South Africa from overseas to beat an asset freeze on officials by the United States and European Union over alleged human rights abuses. Christopher Haeyman, the South African real estate manager and a state witness, said he met Kuruneri with the foreign currency in a briefcase in Cape Town and was assured that the funds were acquired legally, although he was unaware of their origins. Haeymen then helped the former Zimbabwe finance minister to open an account with Standard Bank in Cape Town to enable him to buy two properties and a Mercedes Benz vehicle. "He had a large sum of foreign currency I would presume it was more than $500 000 but I was not present when he arrived in South Africa so I would not know the origin of the funds," Haeymen said. Court papers show the amount as $582,611.99. Samkange said the money came from consultancy services done by Kuruneri when he worked outside Zimbabwe and was not subject to the country's exchange control laws, which require central bank approval for the transfer of more than $1 000.
"Kuruneri will tell this court that he made urgent arrangements to have those funds transferred to South Africa which was the safest destination, and were invested into properties which need less day to day management," he said. Another state witness yesterday told the court that Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono approved the transfer of R5.2 million (around $798 000 at current rate) for Kuruneri from Zimbabwe to South Africa in 2002 during Gono's tenure as head of a local commercial bank. Gono is expected to testify as a state witness in the case against Kuruneri, in custody since being arrested in April 2004 under a drive by Mugabe to stamp out corruption. Critics say the effort targeted mainly bankers and others in private business, while only a handful of ruling party officials were hauled into court. The US and the EU have imposed travel sanctions and an asset freeze on Mugabe and his top officials, including Kuruneri, over alleged human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. The southern African nation is battling acute foreign currency shortages as it grapples with a deep economic crisis blamed by critics on government mismanagement.
Top
From The Sunday Independent, 22 May
Use less ink - the ANC's wisest advice on Zim election
By Christelle Terreblanche
In a startling recommendation on how to improve its future polls, parliament's observer mission to Zimbabwe's recent election has cautioned the country to use indelible ink more economically. Even more baffling is the fact that it is one of only two recommendations, indicating that the predominantly ANC team could find almost no fault with the controversial 2005 election which gave the ruling Zanu PF a two-thirds majority. The two recommendations are contained in a 60-page report that has been given to the speaker but is yet to be published and debated by parliament. The Sunday Independent obtained a copy of the report. In it, the MPs point a finger at Britain for "biased" international views of Zimbabwe and also state that they could not find evidence of intimidation prior to the election. The final report is far from unanimous as the mission leader, ANC chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe, said from the outset that no minority views would be included in the final report. After only two days in Harare, the Independent Democrats representative, Vincent Gore, pulled out in protest. Other opposition parties later broke ranks when their views could not be accommodated by the 12 ANC members.
From its daily reports attached to the main report, it appears the MPs were able to verify one one case of intimidation. While listing several allegations almost daily, it states in each case that it could not be verified. It is not clear from the report whether they tried, what methodology they used and whether in fact the allegations were refuted. It could also find "no verifiable evidence" of the allegations about "food for votes" and the use of traditional leaders to influence voters, nor of the fact that not all parties had equal access to the media. Apart from "a more economic use of indelible ink", the only other recommendation to Zimbabwe was "to reduce the number of people turned away on voting day, political parties should also play a role to ensure voters are registered correctly". This was after the conclusion by ANC MPs that "there were correct voters' rolls at the stations". It is generally accepted that the gerrymandering of constituencies shortly before the election and the shambled voters role made it extremely difficult for opposition parties to ensure their supporters were registered correctly.
In fact, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, the largest independent group that observed the elections, found that 10 percent of voters nationwide were turned away. "In several constituencies the difference between the winner and the loser was less than the number of voters turned away," it said in a report published this week by the SA Institute for International Affairs. It was listed as one of "13 Dimensions of Unfairness" in the election, which the network found had violated nearly all the Southern African Development Community (SADC) principles. The parliamentary mission, however, concluded that the elections were "executed efficiently", that the process was "legitimate and credible" and "in line with the laws of the land and, by and large, were consistent with the SADC Principles and Guidelines. "The mission accordingly concluded that the 2005 Zimbabwe parliamentary elections represented the will of the people of Zimbabwe," the report states before getting into its recommendations. "Having concluded the elections process, the country needs to work on rebuilding regional and international confidence through continued focus on electoral reforms and economic revival policies," it said before listing the two recommendations. The Democratic Alliance, the Freedom Front and the Independent Democrats have rejected the polls as being neither free nor fair. The baffling reference to indelible ink seems to be based on observations by the team on election day. In an annexure of the voting it stated under "other" conclusions that: "During polling, those who have voted dip a finger into the indelible ink. This spoils the polling station, particularly the floors."
Zimbabwe has the fastest shrinking economy in the world and its currency was devalued this week by more than 30 percent, but it is not clear how saving on election ink could alleviate the problem. On the other hand, the reference to the need for rebuilding confidence seems to stem clearly from the mission's adopted context for its work. Listing the objectives of the observer mission, it states: "A further circumstance characterising the current political environment in regard to Zimbabwe was the hostile international, regional and local media environment, which is grossly biased, prejudiced and partisan against the government." Taking its cue from President Robert Mugabe, who fought the election on an anti-British ticket, the ANC report goes on to point the finger at Zimbabwe's former colonial master, Britain. "The question, therefore, is why is the international community so focused on Zimbabwe's internal problems when similar situations exist in other countries in the world," it asks. "It appears that the role played by the UK government in general, and the plight of white Zimbabweans in particular ... should provide part of the answer."
Top
From Business Day (SA), 23 May
Harare police arrest thousands in crackdown
Paramilitary units armed with batons, riot shields and tear gas patrolled main roads in Harare today as police warned they would not tolerate protests against their crackdown on street trading - the only livelihood for thousands of poor township dwellers. Police Chief Superintendent Oliver Mandipaka said 9 653 people were arrested in the five-day blitz on street vendors, flea market stalls and other informal businesses. He said people were preparing to demonstrate but that police were ready and commuter minibuses were prevented from entering the city center. Angry demonstrators clashed with police over the weekend in the most serious unrest since President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF won a landslide victory in March 31 parliamentary general election, widely condemned by Western governments for alleged rigging and intimidation. Mugabe, 81, has been in power since independence in 1980. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, accused Mugabe of trying to provoke conditions for declaring a State of Emergency, which would give him unlimited powers of detention, seizure and censorship. Mandipaka said operators of informal businesses had been fined for operating without city council licenses or possessing scarce staple items such as maize meal, sugar and gasoline intended for resale on the black market. "Police will leave no stone unturned in their endeavor to flush out economic saboteurs," said Mandipaka.
In Harare's Mbare township police had seized 36 metric tons of sugar. Ten filling station attendants had been arrested with 30,000 liters of gasoline. In a policy statement Thursday, Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono blamed speculators for a new surge of hyperinflation, after last year's fall from 622 to 123%. He announced a 45% devaluation to 9 000 Zimbabwe dollars to the US dollar. Tsvangirai accused Mugabe of ordering the crackdown in response to pressure from newly arrived Chinese businessmen to stop secondhand dealers undercutting their cheap imports. "The country has been mortgaged to the Chinese," Tsvangirai said in a statement. "How can we violently remove Zimbabweans from our flea markets to make way for the Chinese? The majority of Zimbabweans depend on informal trade to feed, clothe and educate their families." Under Mugabe's "Look East" policy, the country has recently acquired airliners and jet fighters from Beijing, rejecting calls to make up with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Links were severed in 1998 over chronic budget indiscipline. Crackdowns also were launched in the cities of Gweru and Bulawayo, strongholds of Tsvangirai's MDC. After seven years of unprecedented economic decline leaving 80 percent of the work force unemployed, 4 million of Zimbabwe's 16 million people have emigrated. Agriculture, once the mainstay, has been hard hit by seizure of 5 000 white-owned farms following Mugabe's defeat in a February 2000 constitutional referendum. Farming leaders and economists at the weekend scorned a suggestion by Gono that "progressive" former owners might be prepared to return under short-term agreements, to teach new occupants how to grow specialist crops for export.
Top
From Zim Online (SA), 23 May
Campaign against vendors spark riot in opposition stronghold
Chitungwiza A police officer was seriously injured in riots which broke out in the opposition stronghold of St Mary's suburb in Chitungwiza town, 30 km south of the capital at the weekend after residents protested against the ongoing campaign against informal traders. Another eleven police officers were also hurt in the skirmishes as the police fired teargas canisters to disperse angry mobs protesting against the raids which began last week in what the police said was a clean-up exercise against criminals. A bus belonging to state-owned transport company Zimbabwe United Passenger Company had all its windows smashed before it was overturned by the angry mob angered by the government crackdown against the informal traders. According to eyewitnesses, violence erupted when police officers stormed Chigovanyika Shopping Centre in the suburb and started demolishing stalls. The police also confiscated vegetables and second-hand clothing from the vendors. "They were taking our goods and we had to beat them up," said Thomas Nyakudya, one of the vendors at Chigowanyika. "We were using stones and anything we had because this is our only source of living they have destroyed. |
