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Archived News
26th April 2005
Mberengwa East Parliamentary Election 2005 Report
Zimbabwe police grill newspaper editor
MDC severs ties with SA government
Central bank governor reprimands banking executives
The needless suffering and terrible death of Emmanuel
How you too can become a cabinet minister
Editor charged over polls
ZESN blasts conduct of poll
In rural Zimbabwe, AIDS still means death
The Weimar Republic revisited
Zim police charge another journalist
Lindela screening
Top police officers accused of looting fund
Forex shortages, debt threaten Zimbabwe recovery
Makoni lobbies for ADB top job
Zimbabwean tennis thrown into turmoil
Gono's resignation turned down by Mugabe
New information boss shields Mugabe from criticism
He shouted against Mugabe
State move to postpone torture case
Now trade unions face Mugabe's wrath
Zimbabwe in the dark
Tourists see Zim game rangers kill elephants for celebrations
Journalists charged over Zaka poll story
Time stands still for the men condemned to Mugabe's prisons
The tourist trap
Being Zimbabwean may cost Makoni the African Development Bank presidency
US envoy to SA sipped for top Africa post
State agents raid NGOs
Fuel shortage piles pressure on urban Zimbabwe
Zim’s political cancer has gone too deep
Plotting the decline of a tyrant
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 20 April
Zimbabwe police grill newspaper editor
Harare - Police on Tuesday questioned the editor of a privately owned Zimbabwe weekly newspaper after it published an article alleging a scandal over ballot boxes and papers from last month's elections, said the newspaper's lawyer. Davison Maruziva, editor of The Standard was summoned to Harare's main police station to answer questions about a story published on April 10 stating that police arrested a district administrator found with seven ballot boxes and ballot papers at his home, said lawyer Linda Cook. "They have not put any charges to him," Cook said. "They have asked him to come back tomorrow morning. They are likely to charge him then." In a lead story headlined "DA held in elections scandal," The Standard claimed the police arrested Nyashadzashe Zindove, the district administrator for Zaka, in southern Zimbabwe after he was found with ballot boxes and ballot papers after the March 31 elections. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change slammed the elections as a "massive fraud", alleging ballot stuffing on polling day and intimidation leading up to vote. President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party won enough seats to secure a two-thirds majority in Parliament that will enable the veteran leader to make changes to the Constitution. The Standard claimed the police also arrested a schoolteacher who was a presiding officer during the polls, after she lost a ballot box in unclear circumstances. Police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena wrote to Maruziva dismissing the story as false and refuting comments attributed to him in the story. "I never talked about the arrest of two people as I am not aware of any such arrests," Bvudzijena said in the letter. "We never talked about ballot papers allegedly found at the DA's residence. In the interests of your readers and reputation of your paper I wish the story to be corrected." Publishing a false story intentionally is an offence under Zimbabwe's tough media laws attracting a two-year jail term or a fine.
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From The Cape Times (SA), 20 April
MDC severs ties with SA government
Contact between the South African government and Zimbabwe's main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has ceased. MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube, who was the main contact between the two, said at the weekend: "I am not available to the South Africans any longer." Paul Themba Nyathi, MDC spokesperson, said: "From his point of view, he acted in good faith, in seriousness, and he discovered he had been used, so one should imagine he is intractably angry. That is what has happened." William Bango, spokesperson for MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai, said: "He is not talking to the South Africans either as far as I know." A senior South African foreign affairs source said the news of the MDC's decision had come as a shock. "We haven't heard anything from them. We've been talking to them and of course they weren't happy with the result of the election and about what the observers had to say. But nothing like this," he said. The ruling Zanu PF won 78 out of 120 elected parliamentary seats at the March 31 election which, together with 30 MPs appointed by President Robert Mugabe, gives it a two-thirds majority allowing it to change the constitution. The MDC won 41 seats, down 16 from 2000 when it came within three seats of winning a parliamentary majority. The opposition claims the results were rigged and that the voters' roll is in a shambles.
Meanwhile, several diplomatic missions, including South Africa, are becoming increasingly alarmed at yet another sudden dive in the economy off an already low base. With domestic debt having trebled since February, to $1,1-billion (about R6,8-billion) according to information on the website of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, foreign currency reserves now meet less than 10 percent of demand from the productive sector. Street traders in central Harare said on Tuesday that the black market rate for the dollar was now more than treble the auction rate at the Reserve Bank. One woman, ostensibly selling tomatoes but offering to buy foreign currency, said South African rands were trading at R1 to ZIM$3 100. Inflows of forex from annual tobacco sales which began this month are way down because of a poor quality crop and reduced volumes. Manufacturers of cooking oil, margarine and soap put in for $5-million for inputs and got $300 000 at a recent Reserve Bank auction. Already, cooking oil and soap powder have largely disappeared from supermarket shelves, in addition to sugar and mealie meal which are only rarely available. Relative price stability over the last year has ended, and reductions in inflation have bottomed out and prices are now galloping ahead. No one, least of all consumers, believes the Reserve Bank's figure of less than 130 percent inflation as at the end of February. Private sector economists say it is somewhere between 300 and 400 percent.
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From Zim Online (SA), 20 April
Central bank governor reprimands banking executives
Harare - Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono, who last year forcibly shut down more than seven financial institutions for unethical conduct, last week severely admonished banking executives, accusing them of fuelling the forex black market on the upsurge in the last three months. Banking industry sources told Zim Online that Gono last Friday summoned top executive officers of all the country’s banks and told them to stop dabbling in the illegal foreign currency black market or face stern measures from the central bank possibly including cancellation of their licences if caught. The tense meeting also discussed an impending monetary policy statement by Gono at which the RBZ boss is expected to announce a devaluation of the local currency in a bid to boost the export sector as the country’s six-year old hard cash crisis deepens. "The contentious issue at the meeting was the resurgent foreign currency parallel market. The sentiments from Gono are that banks are fuelling the parallel market, so he was cautioning the executives on ethics and professionalism," said one bank chief executive officer, who spoke anonymously for professional reasons. "We discussed the impending monetary policy and the need to revise the amount on offer at the auction to US$30 million," added the bank official.
Gono could not be reached for comment on the matter while Bankers’ Association of Zimbabwe official said the association does not discuss details of confidential briefings with the central bank boss in the press. But Gono, who had several banks and other financial institutions closed down and their top executives arrested last year for corruption and other unethical conduct including illegal dealings in foreign currency, has in the past publicly accused banks of resorting to the black-market to raise scarce hard cash for clients. Zimbabwe has grappled an acute foreign currency crisis since the International Monetary Fund withdrew balance-of-payments support in 1999. President Robert Mugabe’s chaotic and often violent land redistribution programme only helped worsen matters by destabilising the mainstay agricultural sector which generated a huge chunk of export earnings. A forex auctioning system introduced by Gono last year in a desperate bid to end the black market has failed with both individual and businesses shunning the auction floors where rates are fixed around Z$6 200 to one US dollar compared to the parallel market where the greenback fetches upwards of Z$15 000. In the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans, the foreign currency crisis has manifested itself through shortages of all life supporting commodities such as essential medical drugs, food, fuel and electricity because there is no hard cash to pay foreign suppliers.
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From The Times (UK), 20 April
The needless suffering and terrible death of Emmanuel
Mugabe’s excesses have made life even worse in Aids-torn Zimbabwe
Jan Raath
The last time I saw Emmanuel Chitsere alive, he was struggling to get out of the back door of my pickup truck. His wife, Memory, was trying to get him on his feet. I had to blink away my tears. Chitsere’s feet were painfully swollen. As I left their one-room home in the Mbare township of Harare, I felt optimistic. After a month battling with Zimbabwe’s failing health system, I had won: Chitsere, who had Aids, was in possession of two little envelopes of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). I was not able to stay to ensure his health, though. The next day my lawyer phoned to warn me that police were soon to pick me up on suspicion of "spying" and of "working illegally as a journalist". I stuffed a couple of suitcases with belongings. And overnight, I fled Zimbabwe. Fifteen days later Chitsere, aged 39, was dead. I still don’t know why. He had enough ARVs for six weeks, renewable indefinitely. I found out that he was taken to his rural home soon after I left, because it would be easier to nurse him there. In the end, it made little difference. No bus would take Chitsere in his state, so the family had to hire a taxi. He died in the car, 10km (6 miles) away from his home in Chirumanzu, about 200km south of Harare. He was buried on March 4. A prudent man, he had joined a burial society, so the coffin and pots and plates for cooking for the mourners were paid for. One of his four cattle was slaughtered to feed them.
I hired Emmanuel Chitsere in 2001 as a night guard, not out of fear of burglars, but as a first defence against Zimbabwe’s secret police, who tend to burst into the homes of journalists at 2am. We got on well from the outset. He was an avid reader of newspapers, and we laughed at the latest anti-Mugabe jokes. He did chores for me, such as gardening, without being asked. Occasionally I would find him sleeping on the job. He always denied it, but I didn’t mind. His presence was reassuring. My landlord, Andy Moyse, phoned me in Cape Town two days after Chitsere’s death and told me of it. After shock came anger. There was no excuse for him to have died. His demise had been brought about through ignorance, confusion or superstition. But at the same time, I felt relief. If Chitsere had recovered, I would probably have had to provide ARVs for the rest of his life. And from where I am now, 1,500km away, I could not guarantee that. I also had to think of the living. There is a strong chance that Memory, in her twenties, is HIV-positive. Without Emmanuel, her only source of income is selling tomatoes at the bus terminus.
Aids in Zimbabwe today brushes you personally every day. The country has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world: one adult in four carries the virus. Life expectancy has collapsed to 38 years because of Aids. Seventy per cent of patients in hospital are being treated for the virus. In the 1980s I was news editor of a domestic news agency to a generation of young black journalists. Nearly all are dead. I have found myself driving the hearse for one of my office messengers. In my pickup, I took the dead members of his family to the cemetery, women mourners keening about me. Over my time in Zimbabwe, I learnt that for all but a tiny minority, early death is certain for Zimbabweans with Aids. About 10,000 have access to ARVs but it kills 200,000 each year. ARVs are unaffordable for ordinary Zimbabweans. The price is doubled by the import duty that the Government charges. Even donated anti-Aids drugs are charged duty.
Last year Chitsere sickened. First it was flu, then a sore throat, then a cough that wouldn’t go away. With Vitamin C, extra food and aspirin he recovered temporarily. I said nothing. How do you say to someone, "Excuse me, I think you should see a doctor about a virus that will probably kill you"? I returned from holiday in January to hear that he had been off work most of the time I was away. I was told that he was in St Theresa’s, a Roman Catholic mission hospital at Chirumanzu. The phone never worked. On the morning of January 22 I was about to drive to Chirumanzu when Chitsere turned up on my doorstep. "I have come for my duty," he said. He had shrunk to half his size in just over a month. His head was swollen. But the spell in hospital seemed to have cheered him up. I phoned an Aids-prevention charity, the Centre, which provides a low-cost diet of nutritious basic foodstuffs and herbs to boost the immune system. The Centre also issues ARVs as a last resort. It agreed to see him immediately. I told Chitsere that I would take him to someone who would help him. I did not mention Aids, but I’ m sure he knew. When I dropped him at the gate he didn’t even turn to wave as I drove off. I’m sure he knew that he was about to face someone who would try to force him to confront his condition. He did go in, I found out the next day. Fortune, the counsellor, told me: "He just said, ‘But I can’t have Aids’."
Two weeks later Chitsere came back, escorted by his son, Simbarashe. He was desperately sick. Diarrhoea had shrunk him even more dramatically in a fortnight. His mouth was raw with thrush; his lips stiffly pouted to ease the burning that breathing caused. He couldn’t eat; he was vomiting. He mumbled obsessively about money and that he could not pay his debts. I discovered later that after his counselling session he had gone for an HIV test at a municipal hospital for sexually transmitted diseases and it had turned out positive. Too frightened to tell anyone, he did nothing. Then I launched the campaign to get him on ARVs. You cannot get them without a prescription, and the doctor cannot issue one without a CD4 count, a measure of the cells that manufacture the body’s immune-defence system. None of the depleted state laboratories can do CD4 counts. Unless you are one of the 10,000 on the state ARV programme, you have to go to a private laboratory. They charge 1.2 million Zimbabwe dollars (about £75) — two months’ wages for a guard.
Chitsere couldn’t walk to the bus stop, so I collected him from his spotlessly clean room to take him to the laboratory. He lay on his bed in only his underpants. His ribcage was like a large hump with hollows between each rib, his stomach was sunken, his hips stuck out and I probably could have closed my hand around the middle of his thigh. We waited five days for the results. ARVs are usually introduced at a count of 200. Chitsere’s was 16 and he was withering by the day. I took him to my GP for a prescription and just happened to phone the doctor while he was seeing Chitsere. The GP told me: "He said nothing about Aids or ARVs. He went on about a pain in his stomach." The next day, armed with the prescription, I got Chitsere to the Centre to pick up the ARVs. He now had a two-week starter pack and a month’s full ARV medication with nevirapine. On top of that, every day he had to take anti-diarrhoeal drugs, anti-emetics, antibiotics for the thrush, electrolytes, three vitamins, mineral supplements, zinc and selenium - to be administered by his wife, who was educated no farther than primary school and speaks no English. While we waited in the Centre’s reception area for the drugs, Memory noticed that Chitsere’s orange shirt was hanging open. She leaned gently across him and buttoned it up. That night I was forced to stop at an intersection as President Mugabe’s 28-vehicle motorcade of gleaming new Mercedes-Benz limousines, Yamaha motorcycles and troop-laden 4x4 behemoths roared past, and I was filled with rage. It was a horrible symbolic sight: a reminder that people like Emmanuel Chitsere and three million other Zimbabweans with Aids are paying for Robert Mugabe’s gross and cynical excess.
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Comment from The Daily News Online Edition, 19 April
How you too can become a cabinet minister
Munodii Kunzwa
A Harare man was asked if he had not attended the Independence celebrations at the National Sports Stadium because he felt there was little to celebrate. "No. It was because I couldn't find petrol." "But the government had laid on buses from the usual pick-up points." "I didn't know that." "But they were announced on the radio." "I don't listen to that...radio any more." After a while, the first man said: "Come to think of it, you would not have fitted into the buses anyway." "Why not?" "You are too tall. They are Chinese buses."
Notwithstanding the gloss which the State media tried to put on the celebrations there is little doubt that most people in the urban areas felt they could sleep through it all. Reuben Barwe, that rabidly pro-government journalist, tried his best to give the story the kind of spectacular coverage that the international media has been giving to the election of a new Pope. But even he, trying to convince people of the good times we are allegedly having by displaying his famous girth, failed miserably. I saw him gag a few times, missing a few words. Perhaps he is becoming finally aware of how reckless it is to continue to pretend that life is still beautiful in Zimbabwe. Before the celebrations, a man who spent the last 25 years of his life mostly in the government, Enos Chikowore, was buried as a national hero. There will always be debate on the criterion of a hero. But one fact is incontrovertible: membership of Zanu PF is a foregone prerequisite, although George Nyandoro may not have been one by the time he died. But most people interred at the Heroes Acre did so only after the endorsement of the Zanu PF politburo. Those who knew Chikowore in the early 1960s, when he was a young Highfield landlord were not surprised that, after independence, his portfolios in the Cabinet included housing, transport and urban development. While in the United Kingdom in exile he worked in those fields for many years. One of his major achievements (?) was the introduction of the emergency taxi. Admittedly, this eventually spawned a new breed of crooks, some of whom became millionaires overnight. The Zimdollar was strong then, not today when millionaires are a dime a dozen.
In the 1990s, Chikowore hired a transport guru from the UK to produce a plan for revamping urban transportation. The end-product should have included a completely new department dealing specifically with urban transport, with its own Commissioner. This department would ensure the efficient but speedy and safe transportation of passengers in the cities and towns. One recommendation was the preference for larger buses rather than the minibuses that were eventually unleashed on the roads, resulting in the road carnage that followed. The debate has raged since then over whether a political element was introduced into the transport imbroglio. Minibuses meant more players, more jobs and more potential political supporters for the ruling party. But the minibuses have spawned their own breed of crooks. And there are now billionaires and trillionaires among them. Chikowore was well-meaning - that could be said to have been his hallmark. But he was also a politician and when he ceremoniously turned the first sod of soil on the site of what was to be the new Chitungwiza-Harare railway line a few years ago, he could not have realised how soon it would return to haunt him, his party and his government. As long as this remains one of the most abominable falsehoods ever perpetrated against the people of Chitungwiza, Zanu PF will never win a seat in the suburb. As a cabinet minister, Chikowore may not have performed with spectacular success, but people have said his heart was in the right place. His resignation over the fuel crisis came as no surprise to some of his former lodgers and tenants. Before him, the fuel crisis had caused another former cabinet minister, Simba Makoni, a lot of headaches and stomach aches. But he did not resign.
To be a cabinet minister in Zimbabwe is generally a reward for some achievement. At independence, all the major figures of the struggle were rewarded with cabinet posts. There were a few exceptions, among them Bernard Chidzero. There was no questioning his credentials and his integrity. But economics is not an exact science, in spite of how much Adam Smith you have read. In Africa perhaps more than in any other continent, economics must begin and end with the eradication of poverty - and there is still so much of it 48 years after Ghana's independence. Chidzero once remarked the budget had to take care of the soldiers in case they became disgruntled. He might have made it as a joke, but it couldn't have settled right with the politicians on the government benches. You just didn't make such jokes about soldiers - not in Africa. Chidzero enjoyed massive international backing because of his reputation on the world economic stage. But in the early days of independence, politics ruled the roost - nothing was done because it made economic sense. It had to contain a large dose of political sense. Cabinet ministers who are not politicians have not fared well.
Nkosana Moyo was an early casualty. Simba Makoni suffered the humiliation of being dropped over the devaluation fiasco. Leonard Tsumba, the former governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, is said to have fallen out with the President over the same issue. "Enemies of the state", Mugabe called them. The government used to be made in the image of the President. Today, there appears to be a noticeable change in that image. A government media news report said before the announcement of the cabinet that Mugabe and his two vice-presidents, Joseph Msilka and Joyce Mujuru, were closeted in a room, going through the names. What eventually came out was almost universally pooh-pooed as a "non-event", "more deadwood" and, most uncharitably, "a bunch of tired, old politicians looking for their last meal ticket". Mugabe called it a "development cabinet". Instead of just his own image, the cabinet is now lumbered with the additional images of the two vice-presidents, both from Mashonaland Central province, although Msika represents the old PF Zapu. The cabinet, in reality, is a "reward cabinet", probably the worst in Mugabe's unspectacular administration. Some would say for the people, it is their dubious reward for spinelessness.
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From News24 (SA), 21 April
Editor charged over polls
Harare - The editor of a privately owned weekly in Zimbabwe was charged on Wednesday with publishing false information over an article alleging that ballot boxes and papers from last month's elections had been found at a local official's house, the newspaper's lawyer told AFP. Lawyer Linda Cook said Davison Maruziva, editor of The Standard was charged under Zimbabwe's tough media and security laws. "He has been charged under a section of the Public Order and Security Act that relates to the publication of false statements prejudicial to the state and a section of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act that relates to publishing falsehoods," the lawyer said. "He has denied both charges. The police are still continuing their investigations. He (Maruziva) will be back tomorrow with the journalist who wrote the story." Maruziva was summoned to Harare's main police station on Tuesday to answer questions about a story published on April 10 stating that police arrested a district administrator found with seven ballot boxes and ballot papers at his home. The Standard claimed the police also arrested a schoolteacher who was a presiding officer during the polls, after she lost a ballot box in unclear circumstances. Publishing a false story intentionally is an offence under Zimbabwe's tough media and security laws attracting a two-year jail term or a fine.
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From The Daily News Online Edition, 20 April
ZESN blasts conduct of poll
Harare - The recent parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe did not comply with the SADC principles and guidelines and there were many flaws and irregularities before and during the one-day poll, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), Dr Reginald Matchaba-Hove has said. Speaking at a postmortem one-day workshop organised by the Silveira House Civics Department in Harare today, Matchaba-Hove noted that the Zimbabwean government flouted many regulations and for this reason, ZESN did not endorse the poll. He said his organisation had already written to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission expressing displeasure about the discrepancies of figures in the final count of votes. He said there had been serious discrepancies in a number of constituencies. He said ZESN noted the failure to invite observers at least 90 days before the elections, the bias by the state media in favour of the ruling party Zanu PF and irregularities on the voters roll. "As many as 10 per cent of the prospective voters were turned away for various reasons and we felt that the margin was too high," the ZESN boss said. Matchaba-Hove questioned the legitimacy of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission as it was created just before the elections. The voters roll was only released to the participating civic groups seven days before the election and yet it was supposed to be released much earlier. He said although there was relative peace during the election period there was concern about the transparency of the collation of results after they were taken from the polling stations to the main centre. Matchaba-Hove warned the nation to look critically at the planned amendment of the Constitution by Zanu PF now that it had the two-thirds majority of members in the House of Assembly. The presidential term might be amended so that both parliamentary and presidential elections are held simultaneously either in 2008 or in 2010, Mugabe has already hinted.
Addressing the same group of participants, mainly drawn from civic groups, a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Zimbabwe, Dr Eldred Masunungure, predicted a massive disengagement by civil society in socio-economic and political affairs of the country. "After failing collectively to bring about positive change through the ballot box in 2000, 2002 and 2005, many people will feel disinclined to take part in national affairs at whatever level," said Masunungure. He painted a very ugly picture of the Zimbabwean economy, noting that experts say the former British colony has the fastest shrinking economy in the world. Socially, Dr Masunungure said as many as 12 000 people die of Aids every month making Zimbabwe the second highest country affected by the Aids pandemic in Africa after Botswana. Masunungure said while many people were hopeful that the elections would bring about change, they were disappointed with the outcome. " Most people feel resigned, disillusioned, defeated and powerless. They might turn to divine intervention. They have become like tortoises that withdraw into their shells when they feel threatened or out of sorts," he said. He warned that disengagement was dangerous in the long term. "It means political submission. People are not happy and when anger is bottled up, it can lead to a sudden spontaneous outburst. This is real but this might result in leaders who are demagogues - leaders who will remove both the MDC and the ruling Zanu PF party," he said. He also noted that President Mugabe, who has in the past been accused of appointing people from the Shona group, had moved a step further by appointing people mainly from his own Zezuru tribe in the recent Cabinet reshuffle. He said the Zezuru domination was not good for the country as it could ignite national chaos. Most of the 40 participants agreed that the elections were grossly flawed but they could not reach consensus on what strategy to be taken as a step forward.
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From The Washington Post, 20 April
In rural Zimbabwe, AIDS still means death
Politics and poverty deprive many of relief as new drugs stem disease across Africa
By Craig Timberg
Zhulube - Little is easy these days for Gladys Mataruse. Walking tires her. Talking hurts. And in long, sleepless nights of coughing fits, she lacks even the comfort of her husband, who has declared her "useless" and moved away. But nothing, she explained in a hoarse whisper, is more painful than her fear that she will soon die of a mysterious disease, effectively orphaning her two school-age daughters. Mataruse, 29, has the thin arms, slack-skinned face and glum stare of someone very ill. She said she had heard of AIDS. Yet all she knows about the disease is that it often causes the symptoms she's experiencing - weight loss, diarrhea, coughing, fever - and that here in rural Zimbabwe it is invariably fatal. "I wish to be healthy again, but now I'm doubting it will happen," said Mataruse, her eyes fixed on the floor as her youngest daughter, 6-year-old Florence, sat unsmilingly beside her, wearing a white dress. AIDS is no longer an unavoidable death sentence in most of the world. Even in much of Africa, billions of dollars in international aid has made it a chronic, controllable disease for a small but growing number of patients with access to antiretroviral medicine. But this relief is arriving in a profoundly uneven way, dividing the continent into areas where AIDS is survivable and areas where it is not.
By this measure, Mataruse could not live in a worse place. Zhulube is a remote region in southern Zimbabwe, a country whose public health system has been decimated by economic collapse and international isolation. In southern Africa, the epicenter of the global pandemic, no country is as far behind in treating AIDS, according to World Health Organization statistics. An estimated 1.8 million Zimbabweans have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Of that group, 295,000 need antiretroviral treatment immediately, but only 8,000 - less than 3 percent - are getting it, according to a December report from WHO. The need for treatment is growing far more quickly than the capacity to provide it, the report shows. Mataruse's local clinic, an arduous three-mile walk from her home, lacks not only antiretroviral medicine but also the kits needed to test for HIV. Even the basics of modern health care - syringes, intravenous fluid, antibiotics and elastic bandages - are frequently out of stock, a nurse at the clinic said. There are no doctors there. The nurses who have chronicled Mataruse's decline have never mentioned either HIV or AIDS, she said, and neither term appears in the battered paper folder of medical records she keeps.
The surge of international funding that is beginning to prolong the lives of Africans with AIDS has bypassed Zimbabwe almost entirely. The United Nations, the World Bank and President Bush's AIDS initiative are focusing on other countries, in large part because President Robert G. Mugabe's reputation as one of the most undemocratic and anti-Western African leaders has kept donors away from Zimbabwe. "There is tension between the international community and the government of Zimbabwe," said James Elder, a UNICEF spokesman in Harare, the capital. But he added, "Don't take it out on children. Let's move the attention a little bit away from politics and put it on people." The average amount of international funding each year in southern Africa is $74 per person infected with HIV, according to UNICEF. In Zimbabwe, that figure is $4. The discrepancy is even more dramatic when compared with sums received over the border in Zambia, where international donors provide $187 per infected person. And though Zimbabwe is slated to get a grant of $14 million from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the same agency rejected a request in December for more than $250 million, citing technical flaws in the proposal.
The results can be seen in the relative availability of medicine. In Zambia, antiretroviral drugs are reaching 13 percent of those who need them, according to WHO statistics. Zimbabwe's southwestern neighbor, Botswana, which has a much higher per capita income and receives substantial health care funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is getting antiretrovirals to 50 percent of those who need it. Even in South Africa, which has been widely criticized for its sluggish response to AIDS, antiretrovirals are reaching 7 percent of those who need the drugs. In major South African cities such as Johannesburg and Cape Town, the waiting list for government-subsidized AIDS medicines has virtually disappeared, doctors there said. While the governments of most countries hit hardest by AIDS have cooperated with international donors, Mugabe's government has grown increasingly belligerent toward the West, especially the United States and Britain, which he regularly attacks with caustic rhetoric. Mugabe has won some international praise for his willingness to discuss AIDS publicly, in contrast to South African President Thabo Mbeki. He revealed in a speech last year that members of his family had contracted the disease, and the government also instituted a tax supposedly intended to generate resources to fight AIDS. But many Zimbabweans express doubt that the money raised by the levy has gone to treating or preventing AIDS. There are few public health messages about HIV anywhere in the country, aside from a handful of vaguely worded billboards promoting condom use.
The reputation of Mugabe and his ruling party for siphoning public funds for private gain, meanwhile, has made the major international donors even more reluctant to deal with him. And the parliament passed a law last year to bring independent aid groups, which might provide an alternative for delivering international health assistance, under government control. The victims in this standoff between Mugabe and Western donors are Zimbabweans with AIDS, activists here said. "You can't win this battle by fighting the government, because they control the resources," said Lynde Francis, an AIDS activist in nearby Bulawayo. "It doesn't matter how much you whine and moan about the government. It doesn't get you anywhere to withdraw help." One of the few international donors to make a significant commitment to fighting AIDS in Zimbabwe is the studiously non-partisan French medical group Doctors Without Borders, which has managed to make Bulawayo the only city in Zimbabwe where antiretrovirals are widely available. A Zimbabwean company is also beginning to make a generic version of a popular combination of antiretroviral drugs, which might improve access.
But here in Zhulube, a dusty, destitute village in a gold-mining region, the public health system has trouble handling even comparatively simple maladies such as pneumonia or infected wounds. Mataruse has walked to the clinic almost monthly in the past two years, complaining of coughs, headaches, fever, diarrhea and night sweats. Her health records show she was routinely given nothing more than painkillers. The slide in Mataruse's health has been accompanied by other troubles. Weight loss is one symptom that even those with little education in southern Africa have learned to spot. As her weight fell from 136 pounds to 99, Mataruse said her husband decided to find another wife because she could no longer clean the house or carry water on her head. Her husband's family, which reluctantly took over her care, has insisted she use her own dishes and blankets in the mistaken belief that sharing them could spread the virus. Last month, Mataruse was told that she must also prepare all her own meals, an increasingly difficult task as her strength wanes. Once, several months back, she considered moving to her parents' home in a nearby city. But she relented, she said, after her husband objected. "Why are you going?" she recalled him saying. "You are dead already."
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Comment from The Star (SA), 20 April
The Weimar Republic revisited
In this land of illusions it is only the ruling elite who find life rosy
By Allister Sparks
The young Zimbabwean looked at me with troubled eyes. "I earn a lot of money," he said, "but this is a country of poor millionaires." As I review a week of intense interviews and conversations that I have just undertaken to gain some insight into where Zimbabwe may go in the wake of its rigged election, the bizarre truth of that throwaway remark stands out as the one thing that best captures the essence of the national condition. The prescribed wage for a domestic worker in Zimbabwe is a million dollars a month. The same for a floor sweeper in a factory. Yet both are poor, for this is Weimar Republic money. President Mugabe babbles on about how the economy is turning the corner, and his Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono, boasts that inflation has come down to a mere 127%. Golden days lie ahead, Mugabe says, as he buys six Chinese jet fighters in a deal which supposedly illustrates the success of his "look East policy". Yet in this land of illusions it is only the ruling elite who find life rosy and future prospects encouraging, because they have access to foreign exchange, which they can change at privileged rates. Down on the ground the rural people are starving and the middle class is being forced into exile by a collapsed economy and worthless money.
All rational notions of prudent financial management are turned upside down. You are crazy if you save, it is wise to be spendthrift. If you have money, buy something, and buy it now, even if you don't need it, for it may hold its value while your money certainly won't. By next week your Zim dollars will be worth a fraction of what they are today. "When I left school at age 17 my father told me the prudent thing to do was to take out insurance policies," a businessman told me. "So I took out five annuities. I have been paying the premiums for 48 years, starting when the currency was hard and I battled to afford them. But when those policies mature as I turn 65 this year, I'll be lucky if what I get will buy a week's groceries." I spoke to a retired woman who gets a pension of Z$ 8 000 a month - enough to buy a Coca Cola. My friend the poor millionaire - "actually I'm a multi-millionaire", he confessed - explained that he had bought a house eight years ago for Z$10 000. He added a double-storeyed wing and made some interior alterations. He has been told it is now worth Z$5-billion. But he can't insure it. He can't afford the premiums, and even if he could, like the businessman's annuity policies any future payout would be laughable compared with the market value of the house. "So if my house burns down I'll just have to go and live in a squatter camp," he said.
As we drove away from his home, down an avenue of pleasant suburban houses set in neat gardens, my friend gestured towards them. "You are looking at billions and billion of dollars worth of real estate," he said, "but it's all dead capital. The banks won't give mortgages and the only people who can afford to buy these houses are those who have enough cash, through their access to foreign exchange." In which case the money is paid into an overseas account and is lost to the Zimbabwe economy. To even the untrained economic mind it must be obvious that Zimbabwe cannot extricate itself from this Weimar mire without international help. And realistically that help can come only from the West. Mugabe's notion of "looking East" is simply part of the great illusion. China is an emerging superpower with a hunger for mineral resources, of which Zimbabwe has a modest amount. But China is not in the business of granting aid to developing countries. So how can the Mugabe government engage the Western nations and donor agencies and persuade them to pour aid money into this declining country to help it recover?
Only if it can persuade them that it is able and willing to introduce much- needed political and economic reforms. President Thabo Mbeki's long-held hope has been that he could persuade Mugabe to institute a constitutional reform that would elevate him to the role of ceremonial president while appointing a prime minister to head a government of national unity that would include the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). However, as MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai made clear in an interview at his Harare home, the MDC will not consider joining a coalition of any sort with Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF. "That's out," he said emphatically. The MDC is too mistrustful of Mugabe, and too mindful of the fate of the old Zapu leader, Joshua Nkomo, who was bullied into accepting such a deal in 1987 only to find himself neutered in a powerless vice-presidential role and his party discredited and destroyed. But Tsvangirai also made it clear the MDC would be willing to join in negotiations with Zanu PF to draft a new constitution for Zimbabwe. "Anything that will open up some democratic space for the people will be acceptable to us," he said.
But that would be a tightrope for him. Mugabe could use it, together with a few token concessions, such as his refusal to sign a bill that would cripple NGOs and an offer of puny concessions to a handful of dispossessed white farmers, to project a reformist image without actually conceding anything substantive. That could be political death for the MDC, whose young radicals are already angry that MDC candidates did not refuse to take up their parliamentary seats as a protest against the rigged election. To avoid that trap Tsvangirai would have to set demanding conditions for such negotiations, broadening them to take in the dismantling of the many authoritarian institutions Mugabe has established and the direct powers of decree he has vested in himself. The MDC would also demand that the negotiations be more inclusive than just a cosy discussion between a handful of parliamentarians from the two parties. It would insist on a constitutional commission including a range of civil society bodies as well as the political parties with the finished product being put to a referendum. A constitution, after all, is for the whole country, not just its politicians. It is hard to see Mugabe agreeing to this. He must know through his own intelligence services that he does not have majority support in the country and he would be fearful of any process he could not control within the parameters of the parliamentary system. So what is in prospect is a long haggle of talks about talks. While that goes on Mugabe will doubtless use his two-thirds to introduce his new constitution unilaterally, while the economy continues to wind down and the angry young radicals drift ever closer to violent confrontation. It is not a pretty prospect and it could turn Zimbabwe into a vector for instability in this otherwise promising region.
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 12 April
Zim police charge another journalist
Zimbabwean police on Thursday charged a second journalist from a privately owned weekly with publishing false information in an article alleging a scandal over ballot boxes and papers from last month's elections, a lawyer said. Savious Kwinika, a reporter with The Standard, was summoned to Harare's main police station and charged under Zimbabwe's tough media and security laws, said the newspaper's lawyer, Linda Cook. The Standard's editor, Davison Maruziva, was charged on Wednesday in connection with the same article stating that a local official was arrested after ballot boxes and papers were found at his home. "He has been charged under sections of the Public Order and Security Act and Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act relating to making false statements prejudicial to the state and publishing falsehoods," Cook said. "He denied the charges but he has admitted there were inaccuracies in the story. It is now up to the police to proceed with their investigations and hand over the dockets to the attorney general's office." In a lead story headlined "DA held in elections scandal", Kwinika claimed the police arrested Nyashadzashe Zindove, the district administrator for Zaka, in southern Zimbabwe after he was found with ballot boxes and ballot papers after the March 31 elections. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change slammed the elections as a "massive fraud", alleging ballot-stuffing on polling day and intimidation leading up to vote. President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party won enough seats to secure a two-thirds majority in Parliament, which will enable the veteran leader to make changes to the Constitution. The Standard claimed the police also arrested a schoolteacher who was a presiding officer during the polls, after she lost a ballot box in unclear circumstances. Police have also dismissed the story as false and are demanding a retraction. Publishing a false story intentionally is an offence under Zimbabwe's tough media and security laws, attracting a two-year jail term or a fine.
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From SW Radio Africa, 21 April
Lindela screening
Lindela Detention Centre in South Africa holds a large number of Zimbabwean refugees. In a disturbing development, the South African government has appointed a Zimbabwean government official to interview refugees who are seeking asylum. The appointment lends support to claims that Thabo Mbeki is collaborating in human rights abuses against Zimbabweans who oppose the regime of Zanu PF. Lindela The Zimbabwean government official is to decide who deserves to be allowed to stay and who gets deported and sent back to Zimbabwe. Civic groups and human rights organizations are already up in arms over the appointment. They fear the Zimbabwean official will discriminate against opposition supporters and give confidential information about them to state agents. The MDC announced that they severed ties with the South African government this week, and the Lindela situation may actually prove their decision was a good one. South Africa has from the very beginning not crafted any policies that help Zimbabwean refugees who cross the border looking for help. The success rate of asylum cases is very low, and the suffering of Zimbabweans living in South Africa is well-documented.
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From Zim Online (SA), 22 April
Top police officers accused of looting fund
Bulawayo - Disgruntled junior police officers have accused some top officers, including police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri, of looting a Z$1 billion fund meant for their allowances during last month’s controversial parliamentary election won by Zanu PF. The junior police officers who spoke to ZimOnline in Bulawayo yesterday, said they had initially been promised Z$7 million each as part of their allowances during the election but were shocked to receive about $1.3 million each. "We were only given $1.3 million and were promised that we would get the remainder when we arrive back here in Bulawayo. But four weeks after the election, our bosses are now quiet and we don't even know whether we will get the money," said a sergeant who refused to be named. But sources at the Police General Headquarters in Harare said more than $1 billion was meant to pay members of the force during the March 31 election. They said the money was diverted under the guise of financing the police boarding school and sponsoring a lower division police soccer team Black Mambas. "It is true that some people did not get their money. The most affected were those who were deployed in the rural areas and those who remained at stations. What makes the whole thing bad is that some people on the ground did not get what they worked for," said an officer within the finance section of the police headquarters. Deputy police national spokesman, Superintendent Oliver Mandipaka, refused to comment on the issue, saying those with complaints should direct them through the "proper" channels. "Whatever grievances those juniors have, they should know how to channel them. I don't know of anybody who was not paid," he said. Chihuri, who has publicly declared his support for President Mugabe and his ruling Zanu PF party in the past, could not be reached for comment on the allegations that he abused the fund. Zimbabwe's police are notoriously pro-Zanu PF and the police force have been accused of bias against the main opposition political party.
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From Reuters, 21 April
Forex shortages, debt threaten Zimbabwe recovery
By MacDonald Dzirutwe
Harare - Deepening foreign currency shortages in Zimbabwe and spiralling domestic debt threaten President Robert Mugabe's plans to halt a long-running economic crisis, analysts said. The Zimbabwe government has increasingly relied on domestic credit to fund gaping deficits in the national budget, as foreign currency shortages take their toll on the a economy which has shrunk by more than a third over the last 6 years. Mugabe set up a "development" cabinet after the March 31 parliamentary polls that he said would tackle the problems, but analysts said rising domestic debt and the critical foreign exchange crunch cast doubt on an expected recovery in 2005. "There is a financial crunch and the government does not have enough to pay for its needs ... this has repercussions for economic recovery and inflation," said Rongai Chizema, economist at financial services firm Intermarket Holdings. Zimbabwe says the economy has turned the corner after 6 years of recession and is set to grow by up to 5.0 percent this year, on a rebound in agriculture and mining set to boost forex inflows to $3.7 billion from $1.8 billion last year. But analysts doubt those forecasts, as they do an official aim of reducing the annual rate of inflation to 20-25 percent by the end of 2005 from 127.2 percent in February. Inflation has fallen from a record peak above 600 percent early in 2004. "The government forecasts on the economy look unattainable because industrial and agriculture production are lower than forecasts, which should see another GDP decline this year," University of Zimbabwe business professor Tony Hawkins said. "I believe the government is already revising its GDP and inflation forecasts... but of course they will not a admit it," he told Reuters. Officials were not available to comment.
A big part of the problem is rocketing debt. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) says government domestic debt jumped to Z$7.9 trillion on April 15 from Z$2.3 trillion as of February 18. In mid-January 2004, domestic debt stood at just 576 billion Zimbabwe dollars. Analysts say the trend is being driven by government borrowing to plug gaps in its budget and fund state enterprises, as revenues subside on plunging company and individual taxes -- the result of waning industrial production. Foreign donors led by the International Monetary Fund have halted support over differences with Harare's policies, including the seizure of large tracts of commercial land from whites to resettle blacks, worsening the economic crisis. As a result, Zimbabwe has defaulted on arrears on its foreign debt, which rose to $4.5 billion in 2003. Updated figures are not available. Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party used upbeat economic projections for its campaign ahead of March 31 parliamentary elections, where it secured a constitution-changing two-thirds majority in parliament. But a drought which has hit most parts of Zimbabwe means the government will now have to import 1.2 million tonnes of grain this year, putting more strain on scant foreign currency inflows. Foreign currency shortages have seen the re-emergence of a black market in the aftermath of the polls, pushing the value of the Zimbabwe dollar against the greenback to 18,000 compared with an official rate of 6,200. A year ago, the official rate was 4,300 to the dollar while the black market rate was just 5,000. This has put pressure on the central bank to devalue the local unit again. But analysts said while this would keep some exporters afloat, a devaluation would also make imports more expensive, fanning inflation and pushing black market rates up. "It (devaluation) is a very tight judgement call ... the one obvious point is that you need a foreign big brother standing behind you and we don't have that," Hawkins said. While the economy sinks, Mugabe, isolated by the West, has turned to mostly Asian and Muslim nations to help pull the economy out of the doldrums but analysts say this has yielded little success.
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 22 April
Makoni lobbies for ADB top job
Former Zimbabwean minister of finance Simba Makoni was due in South Africa this Friday in a bid to shore up support for his campaign to head the African Development Bank. Makoni, who ran the Zimbabwean economy between 2000 and 2002, is Southern Africa’s preferred candidate for the post, and has the backing of seven Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, including South Africa. Lobbying is intensifying ahead of the bank’s May 18 and 19 board meeting, which will decide on a successor for Omar Kabbaj, who is stepping down after 10 years in the job. Among other frontrunners are Nigerian Olabisi Ogunjobi, a 20-year veteran of the bank, whose candidacy is supported by most major West African players, and Ghanaian Kingsley Amoako, who heads the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Africa and is supported by Zambia, Uganda and Ethiopia. At the time of his appointment to Robert Mugabe’s Cabinet Makoni was viewed a reformer who could help prevent Zimbabwe’s slide toward economic collapse. He quit in 2002 over what people sympathetic to him say was frustration with his inability to persuade Mugabe and his Cabinet to take urgent action on the economy. That record may not help his campaign, as regional heavyweights like Nigeria line up behind their own candidates, reminding funders such as the United States and Japan that his name appears - or appeared - on European and US "smart sanctions" lists, which targeted the Zimbabwean political elite with travel and banking restrictions. Ogunjobi’s supporters have been quick to suggest that he will be a more palatable choice than Makoni for the bank’s international shareholders. The Economic Community of West African States’s (Ecowas) handling of the constitutional crisis in Togo is, they have told journalists, in stark contrast to SADC’s dithering over the economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe and Ecowas expects to be duly rewarded for it.
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From Zim Online (SA), 22 April
Zimbabwean tennis thrown into turmoil
Harare - Zimbabwe tennis is in turmoil and development of the once promising game has been crippled after the International Tennis Federation (ITF) suspended financial support to Tennis Zimbabwe (TZ) following allegations of massive financial abuse, Zim Online has gathered. The world tennis association gives grants to tennis associations for the development of the sport from grassroots level. The funds are used to develop the sport by constructing tennis courts and buying equipment. The ITF has since stopped funding Zimbabwe projects pending an investigation into the scandal. Former TZ president Paul Chingoka, together with treasurer Bash Mahomed were suspended on Tuesday from all tennis activity by the Sports and Recreation Commission which is probing the allegation of serious financial irregularities at the association. A TZ official who refused to be named told Zim Online yesterday that the lack of funding was seriously hampering their operations. "It has been a difficult period for us because of the funds that disappeared from the coffers of TZ. The money which was abused came from ITF and that is why they want an investigation first before they start giving us money again.
"As we speak, tennis development is moving at zero pace because we rely on funding from ITF to survive. Plans are underway to write to ITF informing them that the suspects have been suspended and that investigations are continuing. This could open the way for further funding," said the source at TZ. Meanwhile, Chingoka could be ousted from his post at the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee (ZOC) following allegations that he misappropriated funds during his stint as Tennis Zimbabwe (TZ) boss. Sources said Chingoka, who assumed the reins at the ZOC last year, faces a revolt at the association’s annual general meeting scheduled for Sunday in Harare. He was last year nominated unopposed for the post and was set to be endorsed as the substantive head at the meeting on Sunday. "This could be the end of Chingoka's dominance in sports administration. The allegations of financial impropriety and suspension from all tennis activity came at a bad time for him. The veteran sports administrator was at the helm of Tennis Zimbabwe for 13 years before he moved to the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee.
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From The Daily News Online Edition, 22 April
Gono's resignation turned down by Mugabe
Harare - Dr Gideon Gono, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor, last Wednesday allegedly tendered his resignation to President Robert Mugabe but it was turned down. The governor was allegedly angered by the government's apparent rejection of his monetary policies aimed at taming the country's high inflation rate. Neither Gono nor anyone from the President's Office, under which some RBZ departments fall, could be reached for comment. Mugabe is away in Indonesia to attend an Asia-Africa summit meeting. According to senior RBZ officials who spoke on condition they remained unnamed, Gono met Mugabe last Wednesday at which he allegedly expressed his sadness at the government's reluctance to live within its limits. He reportedly told Mugabe that the idea of a Senate, the impending payouts to ex-political detainees and ex-political restrictees and the expanded Cabinet had not been budgeted for in this year's financial year, a situation that would fuel inflation. Already, the RBZ has approved the devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar in response to pressure from business and industry.
A source said: "Before his meeting with the president, the governor held several meetings with all departments at which he reiterated that their fight to revive the country's faltering economy would be ineffective unless the government matched their performance." Another official said President Mugabe had to at least demonstrate that he was willing to turn around the country's fortunes by making informed statements regarding their relationship with the West, and particularly the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The IMF suspended its support to Zimbabwe in 1999 after the government failed to service its debt. The situation in the country would definitely worsen once we authorize the increase in the fuel price at the end of this month," the official said. "We have met representatives from fuel importers and they made their proposals which the RBZ has accepted. Most goods' prices would increase. The President's action so far amounts to a snub of our efforts to turn around this economy."
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From Zim Online (SA), 23 April
New information boss shields Mugabe from criticism
Harare - Newly appointed Information and Publicity Minister Tichaona Jokonya yesterday promised a less restrictive environment for journalists but on condition they did not "malign" President Robert Mugabe. Jokonya, a former envoy of Zimbabwe to the United Nations promised during a meeting with senior editors from both the government and non-government owned media firms to move away from his predecessor, Jonathan Moyo’s hostile approach towards the Press. He said he will try to foster better relations with both the local and foreign Press and said journalists were free to criticise the government when it errs but warned they should tamper their criticism when it came to Mugabe, whose policies are blamed by many for running down Zimbabwe to the ground. "We no longer want to see journalists arrested over stories they write. But we should not malign the President. We should allow foreign journalists to operate without fear or harassment because we have nothing to hide," he said. Criticising Mugabe in a way that might be construed as malignant or denigrating is already a crime punishable by up to two years in jail under the government’s Public Order and Security Act. Jokonya’s statement yesterday ironically comes as police this week charged the editor of the independent Standard newspaper Davison Maruziva and his reporter, Savious Kwinika, over a story claming that ballot boxes and papers were found hidden at the house of a government district administration official days after last month’s disputed election. The state official accused of having illegally kept voting material at his home has since appeared in court over the matter and the police do not question the substance of Maruziva and Kwinika’s article. But the police accuse the two journalists of having published the story with the intention of inciting public violence.
More significantly, Jokonya said the draconian Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) under which more than 100 journalists have been arrested and charged since 2002 will not be repealed. But those who attended the meeting said the former diplomat said he was open to debate over the harsh law with a view to changing some of its most offending clauses. The press Act requires journalists and media firms to be registered with a government appointed Media and Information Commission (MIC) before they can practise or operate in Zimbabwe. Journalists found practising without being registered face up to two years in jail while newspapers will be forcibly closed and their equipment seized for operating without registration. Four newspapers, including the country’s largest circulating and non-government owned daily paper, the Daily News, were shut down in the last two years for breaching some clauses of the Act. Jokonya did not say whether or when the Daily News will be allowed back onto the streets after the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the (MIC) reviews its 2003 decision not to grant the newspaper an operating licence. An editor of one of Zimbabwe’s privately-owned newspapers said Jokonya’s statements were encouraging after years of tension and open hostility between the government and the media. But he added that the fact that AIPPA still remains in place meant "little will change in the way things are done on the ground."
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From News24 (SA), 23 April
He shouted against Mugabe
Harare - A Zimbabwean was arrested for shouting "abusive words" against President Robert Mugabe, the Herald newspaper reported on Saturday. Thirty-two-year-old Clifford Ruhukwa was waiting at a bus stop in Harare's satellite town of Chitungwiza on Monday, when he was allegedly heard shouting words the newspaper said were "unprintable", referring to Mugabe. Ruhukwa appeared in court on charges of denigrating the veteran leader, who has ruled Zimbabwe since its independence from British colonial rule in 1980. A magistrate ordered that he be remanded in custody to May 10 when his trial is due to start. "Prosecutor Tymon Tabana told the court that while standing at a bus stop, Ruhukwa was heard shouting unprintable abusive words against President Mugabe," the Herald said. He was immediately arrested and taken to Chitungwiza police station, the newspaper said. Zimbabwe's strict Public Order and Security Act makes it an offence to insult the head of state. There are regular reports of people being arrested for slandering Zimbabwe's long-time president. Usually those found guilty receive light jail sentences, fines or are ordered to do community service.
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From The Daily News Online Edition, 22 April
State move to postpone torture case
Johannesburg - The Zimbabwe government, smarting from a bruising parliamentary election in which charges of electoral rigging have been raised, has appealed to the African Union's Commission on Human Rights to postpone the case in which lawyer Gabriel Shumba is suing for torture. Shumba, a human rights lawyer who is now based in South Africa, took his case to AU's Human Rights Commission, where he is claiming compensation for the torture he was subjected to during a 2003 arrest by the Zimbabwe police. The case was supposed to be heard on 26 April but the government has asked it to be postponed to November this year. Shumba, together with opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Member of Parliament Job Sikhala, and three other MDC youths were arrested and charged under the Public Order and Security Act. All the five allege that they were tortured while in police custody. Subsequent medical examinations proved Sikhala and Shumba had electric shocks applied to their genitals, mouth and feet and that they were also forced to drink their own urine in front of jeering policemen.
In a sworn affidavit to the United States of America House of Representatives, Shumba said he had been condemned to live in exile in South Africa because of unrelenting persecution, death threats and torture at the hands of President Robert Mugabe's regime. He narrated his ordeal at the hands of the Zimbabwe Republic Police after he had gone to a local police station, representing Sikhala, who had gone into hiding after harassment by members of the force. "My young brother, Bishop Shumba, accompanied me to take instructions. I found the MP in the company of one Taurai Magaya and Charles Mutama. I proceeded to take instructions and confer with Mr Sikhala. However, at or about 23:00 hrs, riot police accompanied by plain-clothes policemen, the army and personnel, who I later discovered were from the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), stormed the room," said Shumba, adding that he then identified himself as a lawyer and enquired as to the nature and purpose of the police actions.
At that time, according to Shumba, one of the officers confiscated his Lawyer's Practicing Certificate and informed him that there was "no place for human rights lawyers in Zimbabwe". From then on Shumba claims that he was subjected to various inhuman treatments which included beatings and blindfoldings. Although a report was later lodged with the police over the alleged torture, up to now no action has been taken. "I have instructed my lawyer to institute civil proceedings, but am not hopeful, as the Executive has largely subverted the judicial system. Furthermore, the police in Zimbabwe are notorious for defying court orders," charged Shumba. Shumba, worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania for two months, where he was allegedly threatened by Zimbabwe's Ambassador to Tanzania after he publicly charged that the Zimbabwe government was constantly violating human rights. The AU Commission is currently being run by former Zimbabwean attorney-general, Andrew Chigovera.
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From The Sunday Independent (SA), 24 April
Now trade unions face Mugabe's wrath
Zimbabwean federation prepares for onslaught as former head of intelligence is appointed minister of labour
Harare - Wellington Chibebe is putting a brave face on it. He knows that now that Zanu PF have thoroughly beaten the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) at the polls - whether free and fair or not - the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) is next. Not that it has ever been out of the firing line since the MDC emerged from its ranks during the Working People's Convention in September 1999 and Chibebe was elected secretary-general to replace Morgan Tsvangirai a year later. The unions have largely been on the news backburner in the extraordinary five years since then. When the convention, led by the ZCTU and the civics, decided that the MDC should be formed, not a single journalist was there to record the event that would spark the most widespread repression since the Matabeleland massacres 17 years earlier.The MDC made the headlines since then but the ZCTU has been its rear base and, according to Chibebe, its most consistent core. "The government believes strongly that it has now done away with the MDC, but cannot eliminate it altogether without dealing with the ZCTU," he said in an interview this week.
He and his colleagues have been expecting the worst since President Robert Mugabe announced a new, enlarged cabinet last week and appointed Nicholas Goche, formerly responsible for the Central Intelligence Organisation, as the labour minister. Goche, according to "preposterous" evidence in the treason trial of Tsvangirai that ended with his acquittal last November, hired Ari Ben Menashe, a Canadian who was the state's only material witness and who was described by defence advocate George Bizos as a "crook". "The cabinet reshuffle has given us a former minister of state security. A lot of people are not reading this strategy and it is part of a grand plan that by the end of June they must have a new leadership at the ZCTU." Chibebe said the government had slipped up by announcing this plan in local newspapers days before the election, with the aim being to present a united front by a government-controlled workers' union in order to lobby the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva in June to bring an end to sanctions. "Zimbabwe was placed on a special paragraph - that's the severest sanction by the ILO, when a state is condemned as a pariah. Last year it was removed, provided that the government stopped interfering with unions and amended the Labour Relations Act," he said.
For three years before the very public booting-out of a Cosatu fact-finding mission last year, the ZCTU was feeding the South African labour organisation with information on the injustices being perpetrated by the government of Zimbabwe. Zanu PF demonstrably misread the rumblings after food riots in 1997 when Tsvangirai and the then ZCTU president Gibson Sibanda and colleagues concluded that governance was behind the economic chaos. "The CIO knew what we were doing, but never expected Tsvangirai, who they called a 'tea boy', and Gibson Sibanda, who they said was a 'train driver', to be able to lead a serious political party. They also never believed that a few months later, in February 2000, the MDC would cause Zanu PF's first political defeat, when people voted against a new constitution at the referendum," said Chibebe. With vacancies on the ZCTU executive after Tsvangirai and Sibanda became politicians, Zanu PF officials, who head five out of 37 ZCTU affiliates, pushed their candidates for election to the executive but lost. The losers then pushed for a new "apolitical" union federation, to be called the Labour Centre, but that failed too.
Then came the state-funded Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions (ZFTU), led by Joseph Chinotimba, a Harare municipality worker who was given a white-owned farm and made headlines when he led unemployed youths on a spree of invasions of South African-owned factories. Since the disappearance of Chinotimba's bogus federation, the ZCTU has been troubled by the "dissident" affiliates led by Zanu PF officials who want the executive thrown out ahead of the ILO meeting. They lead and allegedly finance "demonstrators" to disrupt ZCTU council meetings, then call in police to "restore law and order" - the last time being on April 6, said Chibebe. State newspapers carried reports following this meeting saying the ZCTU's leadership was irregularly elected and was questioning its administration of members' dues. Chibebe grins widely. For all its problems, and a shrinking workforce is just one, the ZCTU has a pretty good bookkeeping record, and its latest audited accounts will shortly be distributed to the government and the ZCTU's members. None of the officials at the five affiliates would comment on the ZCTU's allegations against them.
So where to now? "Even a kindergarten child would not have passed off the March 31 election as free and fair," Chibebe said. He does not believe that Zanu PF will be able to reform itself with the present leadership and will never win the majority of rural or urban votes in a truly free and fair election. "They [MDC] were fighting people who had been in the bush for 20 years without even a bed in the liberation struggle and today those same people are fighting from their big houses in Gunhill [a wealthy Harare suburb] and they have resources. Visitors to the process can be expected to leave the MDC, but even if it collapses, another party will come up as people know that without democracy there can be no escape from our situation," he said.
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From News24 (SA), 22 April
Zimbabwe in the dark
Harare - Failures in generators at power stations and a fault in a line connecting Zimbabwe with a power grid in Congo are responsible for two days of nationwide electrical blackouts, officials told state radio on Friday. The power cuts caused lifts in buildings to stop working, traffic lights to go out, cafes and restaurants to close and cinemas to send patrons away. A spokesperson for the state electrical authority told state radio that the blackouts were caused by generator failures at the Hwange coal fired power station west of Harare and at the Kariba hydro-electric power scheme on the Zambezi River. He said there was also a fault in the connection to the grid in Congo. Many areas of the capital were without power for 12 hours on Friday, bringing work to a standstill in offices that depend on computer equipment. The electric authority spokespersonn said further "load shedding" must be expected, as the country is going into its coldest season. "The region has run out of power to export to countries such as Zimbabwe," the spokesperson told state radio. President Robert Mugabe 10 years ago vetoed Western companies' competing plans for massive upgrading of Hwange power station in favour of his own scheme to give the project to a Malaysian consortium. The scheme was never followed through.
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From The Sunday Independent (SA), 24 April
Tourists see Zim game rangers kill elephants for celebrations
By Mike Cadman
A least nine elephants were shot, four by Zimbabwean National Parks scouts, and used as meat for celebrations to mark the 25th year of Zimbabwe's independence, according to conservationists. Four elephants, part of a herd which is accustomed to people and easy to approach, were shot in full view of tourists close to the Bumi Hills Hotel, near the Matusadona National Park bordering Lake Kariba, two days before the March 18 celebrations. The other elephants were shot by a farmer at the request of the local rural council in the Urungwe Safari Area that borders the Mana Pools National Park in the Zambezi Valley. There has been widespread slaughter of wildlife in Zimbabwe since farm invasions began in 2000 and tens of thousands of animals have been snared or shot in game reserves, conservancies and on farms. During the run-up to the March 31 elections large amounts of other game were also shot for meat on the orders of government officials. "Despite all our efforts to prevent the Bumi elephants from being shot, we could not have predicted that the guardians of our wildlife, National Parks, would go in and shoot them," Johnny Rodrigues, the chairperson of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force (ZCTF), said. "It also is a great shame and embarrassment for Zimbabwe that two foreign tourists witnessed the killings." The ZCTF monitors events concerning Zimbabwean wildlife and had alerted conservationists to the plans to shoot the animals on April 4. "The National Parks scouts were instructed to shoot elephants in the Omay hunting area but were running out of time so they went to the Bumi foreshore to shoot four of the elephants, which were much easier targets," Rodrigues said. "The Omay elephants are wild and take a long time to track but the Bumi elephants are almost semi-tame. Normally, it is quite common to see up to 50 elephants on a game drive in Bumi and it is possible for a vehicle to get as close as 3m to them. But the day after the killings, there was not a single elephant in sight," Rodrigues said. Zimbabwean National Parks officials were not available for comment.
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 25 April
Journalists charged over Zaka poll story
By our own staff
Two journalists from The Standard, Davison Maruziva and Savious Kwinika, were last week charged with breaching the country's draconian security and media laws. Maruziva, the Editor of The Standard, and Kwinika, from the newspaper's Bulawayo bureau, were charged on Wednesday and Thursday respectively for breaching section 15 (2) (a) (i) of the Public Order and Security Act (POSA). It is alleged that they published statements prejudicial to the State. In the alternative, they were charged under section 80 (c) (i) (A) of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) on the basis that they published a false story. The charges arise from a report published in The Standard two weeks ago. In that report, it was stated that seven ballot boxes and papers had been found at the home of the Zaka District Administrator, Nyashadzashe Zindove and that he had been arrested. The Standard has since established that the information on which this report was based was not correct. In fact, no ballot boxes or papers were found at his home, nor was he arrested. Consequently, Maruziva and Kwinika have admitted that there were inaccurate statements contained in the articles but have denied the other elements of the charges.
The Standard has, in fact, established that John Dzinoruma Mubako (56), Zaka acting District Administrator (DA) and Norah Thokozani Chisi (46) were last Tuesday further remanded out of custody to 31 May 2005 by Zaka magistrate Godfrey Gwaka. The two are being charged under section 87 as read with section 69 of the Electoral Act Chapter 2:13 for allegedly failing to transmit the election material to the constituency election officer after completion of the voting exercise in the just ended parliamentary polls. The State led by Thadeus Muchangani alleges that on 1 April 2005 the accused persons wilfully failed to transmit the election material to the constituency election officer as required by the law. It is the state evidence that the ballot books with the following serial numbers 060101 to 060200, 060201 to 060300 and the unused ballot books from pages number 060001 to 060076 were not transmitted to the constituency election officer after the polls. Mubako was an assistant election officer for Zaka West, while Chisi was the presiding officer for Jichidza council clinic polling station in Zaka West during the 31 March parliamentary elections.
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From The Sunday Telegraph (UK), 24 April
Time stands still for the men condemned to Mugabe's prisons
By Toby Harnden
Two Sunday Telegraph journalists were freed last week after 10 days in a filthy Zimbabwean jail. But as Toby Harnden writes, the 103 men who shared his cell could wait years for a trial.
There are no clocks in Harare remand prison. Ask a prisoner the time and he glances through the barred window and hazards a guess from the angle of the sun. The sky turning cobalt blue to herald the approaching dawn is one point of reference. Another is the clunk of the jail gate signalling the change of the prison guard shift at 6am. Moments later, what sounds like a spiritual starts up from cell B2. "Baba vedu uri kudenga... Zita renyu ngarikudzwe novutswene." It is the Lord's Prayer sung in Shona, Zimbabwe's main language. In B2, about two dozen of the 105 prisoners jump up and start praying. Another day has begun. For many of the 2,500 prisoners in the remand jail, where I was held with my colleague Julian Simmonds for 10 days earlier this month, time stands still. Zimbabwe's justice system is corrupt and crumbling and inmates can wait for up to five years before a case comes to trial. Many are unable to find even paltry amounts to meet bail or to pay fines. On the prison bus one day, a youth called Lazarus, who has been convicted of stealing barbed wire, opts to serve three months in prison because he can't pay 40,000 Zimbabwean dollars - about £3.50.
"We are crying," says Moses, who is accused of murder and who, with his friend Henry, has been appointed by the prisoners to look after the two strange white men in their midst. "We have nothing, not even hope. The best we can do is survive." Like many inmates, Moses is accused of a terrible crime but has been forced to wait years to hear the case against him. Just 21, he has been on remand for nearly two years. His mother, who like her son was suspected of axing to death the white couple they worked for, recently died in the neighbouring women's jail; she was 45. Moses's angelic face is covered with bumps and the whites of his eyes are flecked with brown stains. Sores cluster around his knees and ankles where, he says, he was beaten by police and leg irons broke the skin. Disease is rife in the prison, which is so overcrowded that prisoners are stacked against each other on the concrete floor as they sleep. At night the cell looks like a deck full of galley slaves shifting with the waves. Yet a surprising order prevails. A small group of inmates organises life for the rest in a strange, self-imposed discipline. Each morning, the blankets are piled neatly so the cell can be swept. Every inmate is allocated a sleeping space - new arrivals arranged head to toe in the centre, while those in for longer are given a little more room near the walls.
The day crawls by, tedium interrupted by roll call, queuing for food down the stairways to the courtyard, and reading. There are Bibles and tracts by L Ron Hubbard. For a few cigarettes we rent two books - The Best of Betjeman and Anton Chekov's Plays and Stories. Below Betjeman's poem The Exile are scrawled an inmate's questions to his girlfriend. "Do you still love me? Are you ashamed of me? Do you believe I stole the car? Will you wait 10 years?" Some have newspapers, though the prison censor cuts out any articles judged unfit for inmates to read, including any criticism of President Robert Mugabe. Some opt for boxing. "Dance, boxer, dance" screams a man nicknamed Gudu (Shona for "baboon"), who is built like Mike Tyson. "Let's go, boxer. Jab, jab, jab - killer punch". His partner aims his blows at flip-flops on Gudu's fists. After lock-down following 6pm roll call, a group from Matabeleland dances to songs in the minority language, Ndebele. Several card schools play with decks made artfully from cigarette packets.
Another favourite is chess. Earlier, in our police cell in Norton, a rural area south of Harare, Julian and I had constructed a crude set, drawing the grid on a sheet of paper, tearing out squares for pieces. The prison sets are altogether more elaborate. Magnificent pieces have been painstakingly fashioned from sadza - the maize substance that is Zimbabwe's staple diet - and lavatory paper. Embarrassingly, The Telegraph is humiliated by the Zimbabwean inmates. In my first game, my mentor Henry destroys me in three dozen moves while other inmates nod in approval, their Shona peppered with references to "the Kasparov move". The next game is even more humiliating. A man accused of rape with "Crazy Sexy" tattoed on his forearm defeats me effortlessly in what is billed "Europe versus Africa". I forfeit a cigarette. At 9pm, the cell becomes quiet. It is story time. A big-time fraudster called Isaac paces up and down relating a tale in Shona. We assume it is a traditional Zimbabwean yarn until we hear English phrases such as "black-tinted windows" and "agent of the FBI". Isaac's tale is a rendition of the thriller, The Bourne Identity. His repertoire also includes Predator and The Matrix: Reloaded. After midnight, a few people smoke cannabis surreptitiously in the far corner of the cell. Some obtain cocaine from crooked guards.
Our arrival offers business opportunities. Brian, one of the few political prisoners, accused of being an opposition activist, tries to barter a dead pigeon for a cigarette. Others believe that they can curry favour with the guards by extracting information from us. We are quizzed about our case and whether we were working as journalists, the "crime" of which we are accused. We are warned by Moses and Henry that Mugabe's feared Central Intelligence Office has spies in the jail. Questions from John, an army sergeant, are a little too pointed. Most suspicious of all is Shepherd, who seems to know we work for "The Sunday Telegraph" and is always trying to glean more. Charles, a cheerful Ndebele and another opposition activist, tells us to be careful. A political prisoner died in the adjoining cell, he said, after he was poisoned. Such is the desperation of some prisoners, we could be murdered for a few packets of cigarettes. Much to Julian's chagrin, Charles turns out to be a chronic m………r. I go to sleep each night with Charles' breath on my shoulder. On his other side, Julian has to contend with an elbow nudging him rhythmically in the ribs. Many inmates ask us to pay for legal advice or arrange UK visas. Barnabus, who revels in having tried to kill his wife, wants to go to Britain. "I shot her in the head joyously in front of the children," he said. He is confident of bribing the prosecutor to drop the case against him. Darling, a young gang member, is facing six counts of armed robbery. His cocaine-fuelled crime sprees netted so many televisions and VCRs that he stole three bull terriers and installed them as guard dogs. One of his mistakes, he said, was to rob the Zimbabwean vice-president's house - holding his wife at gunpoint. There are a few celebrity prisoners. One is Christopher Kuruneri, Zimbabwe's finance minister, who has been held without trial for a year on charges of foreign currency fraud. He has a few extra privileges, such as daily visits to the dispensary and an electric razor. He is managing in jail, he explains, because he has to, just like anyone else. Moses nods. "Here we are all the same," he says. "We have nothing and we are nothing. Pray for us all."
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From The Guardian (UK), 25 April
The tourist trap
Tom de Castella on the risks of being an undercover reporter in Zimbabwe
At Linquenda House, Harare's gloomy immigration department, the official inspecting my visa extension form asks me what I do. "I'm a wineseller," I lie. "You're not a news seller?" he shoots back, his eyes watching me mischievously. "What's that?" I say, trying to be innocent, but taken aback by his apparent mind-reading. "A journalist," he answers. "Oh, no, I'm not one of them" I say, trying to laugh. He chuckles and explains that "some of your fellow countrymen are attempting to come in and make trouble," before stamping my passport. That was in 2002, but on subsequent trips I have been a birdwatcher, architect and cricket fan. Such is life for the "tourist" in Zimbabwe, where lying to strangers and suspicion of others becomes second nature. You know that you could be jailed for up to two years, but you are also aware that unaccredited journalists caught by the authorities are usually deported. But now, the trial of two Sunday Telegraph "tourists" arrested at a polling station during last month's parliamentary election has changed all that. It is true that Toby Harnden and Julian Simmonds were acquitted of working without accreditation and are now safe in the UK. But without a judge who insisted on proper standards of evidence - by no means certain in Zimbabwe - they could have been spending the next two years in a crowded, disease-ridden jail cell.
Since Zimbabwe's new media laws came in three years ago, the state has sought to stop journalists from the BBC, and other news organisations it terms "agents of imperialism", from entering the country. The British media's answer has been to send in the "tourists" - an army of men and women keen to see the elephants, visit Victoria Falls and, of course, write about Mugabe. It is a peculiar existence, and one that looks increasingly dangerous. I have spent three periods working in Zimbabwe without accreditation. Each time you arrive you promise yourself that you will keep risks to a minimum. There are the obvious steps. Keeping a pile of tourist guides, birdwatching books and half written postcards about your person, not talking to strangers about politics, not taking notes in public, ensuring your emails are not being read over your shoulder, keeping phonecalls short and discreet, and listening to the advice of locals you trust. But despite one's good intentions, journalistic instincts are hard to suppress. Casual questions become more focused, feigned ignorance disappears, your eyes light up and before you know it, your notebook is out and you are scribbling away. The bottom line is, if you are going to do the job properly you cannot avoid taking risks. When deciding whether to interview people you constantly have to ask yourself: "Do I trust this person?" Not in the traditional sense, but on whether they will turn you in. It comes down to calculated risks.
A year after the murder of white farmer Terry Ford, I visited his farm to see what had happened to it and the "war veterans" who had taken over there. Local farmers warned me the killers were still there and did not welcome visitors. My heart thumped as I introduced myself as an aid worker and showed them a business card belonging to someone I had recently interviewed. But the risk paid off - their desperation meant they wanted to believe me. They were hungry, the farmhouse was an empty shell. I took notes and photos but did not hang around when one of them tried to ring their "boss" for me to interview. At the junction of the dirt track back to the main road I came across a couple of police Land Rovers, apparently waiting for me. My blood ran cold. "This is it," I thought, as I saw the box-shaped vehicles parked at the side of the road. But they ignored me, I turned onto the Harare road, and slowly my adrenaline levels returned to normal. There are many such moments in Zimbabwe for the "tourist" hack. In the township of Kuwadzana during the 2002 election I was followed by plain-clothes police. The most malevolent-looking officer bade me farewell, succinctly: "If I see your face again I will shoot you." It was probably just a threat, but in a place like Kuwadzana, you do not hang around to find out. You can never totally relax and constantly worry about being followed or whether your phone is tapped. Ultimately you rely on the goodwill of most Zimbabweans and the incompetence of Mugabe's police state. So why do we do it? If journalists take the famous William Randolph Hearst maxim as their creed - "News is what someone does not want you to print, the rest is just advertising" - then Zimbabwe is the apotheosis of news. But after the Sunday Telegraph's close shave, it might be only freelances who are willing to take the risk.
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From Business Day (SA), 25 April
Being Zimbabwean may cost Makoni the African Development Bank presidency
International Affairs Editor
Simba Makoni, a former Zimbabwean finance minister, could be a serious contender to become president of the African Development Bank, but he has a problem in the campaign - his nationality. When he was in Washington last week to lobby industrial country treasury officials, he was told it would be very difficult for them to vote for him because he comes from Zimbabwe. With "smart sanctions" against some members of ruling political elite of President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF, it would be politically tricky for European Union members and the US to vote for Makoni. Makoni says that, in his talks with treasury officials from around the world, he made it plain that, "I’m not going to represent Zimbabwe or Mugabe." It would be "very sad if I’m not elected for political reasons", Makoni said in an interview in Johannesburg last week on his way back to Harare from Washington. Non-African countries have a stake of 40% in the bank, with the Group of Seven largest industrial economies owning 28% of that. SA, with a stake of a little more than 4%, is the bank’s fifth-largest shareholder after Nigeria, the US, Japan and Egypt.
Up until abut a year ago it was widely suggested that Makoni, who is a fit-looking 55, was the man Pretoria was keen to see succeed Mugabe, but with speculation that he lacked a widespread support base - something he denies. That idea has somewhat waned and, with the ascendancy in Zimbabwe of Mugabe’s Zezuru sub-clan, Makoni is not thought to be in the running. Makoni remains a member of Zanu PF’s governing body, the politburo, but he will not be drawn on recent developments, saying only that change will come from within the party. And neither will he be drawn on what he would change at the African Development Bank. "I’m a strategist and a pragmatist," says Makoni when asked about development. "I’m not an ideologist. I believe it is important for families and countries to live within their means." He also says he is a strong believer in entrepreneurship. Makoni’s academic background is in chemistry, but his senior position at the Southern African Development Community in the early 1980s, and several ministerial appointments in Zimbabwe, give him the technical and international type of experience for running the bank. Makoni says he was able to speak to Mugabe quite freely and tell him the truth when he was finance minister in 2000-02, as he could always go back to his business. At the moment he runs a consulting firm for private companies and sits on a host of boards.
SA and others in the region nominated Makoni to lead the bank, but he is up against some tough competition in the poll next month to succeed Moroccan Omar Kabbaj, who has had the job for 10 years.Kingsley Amoako, a Ghanaian and a former World Bank staffer who now heads the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, is well respected among in treasuries on the continent and abroad. Negerian Olabisi Ogunjobi has been at the bank for 27 years and, with backing from his home country and a number of other west African countries, he could be a safe bet for those countries who want shake-ups at the institution.Cameroonian Theodore Nkodo works for the African Development Bank and has worked at the World Bank. He is the only candidate with his own website for the campaign. But with backing only from his home country and Burundi, his chances may not be too strong. The other candidates are Ismaiel Hassan from Egypt, Casmir Oye-Mya from Gabon, and Rwandan Donald Keruka. Makoni’s campaign pitch revolves around his policy and business background, and the bank’s failure in its 40 years to become a leader in development banking on the continent or in generating ideas. He wants the bank to be "an innovation and ideas bank" so it can be African countries’ "the first port of call for development problems", rather than the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank.
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From Business Day (SA), 15 April
US envoy to SA sipped for top Africa post
International Affairs Editor
US ambassador to SA Jendayi Frazer, who is close to US President George Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, looks set to leave her post after less than a year to take up the top Africa job in Washington. According to the Washington-based news site allAfrica.com, the top Africa policy maker in the US state department, Constance Berry Newman, has resigned. Newman will not leave immediately, but allAfrica said several sources in the US government had indicated she felt she could not be effective without the type of close working relationship with the secretary of state that she had when Colin Powell was in office. It is not clear whether Frazer will be in place in time for the Group of Eight meeting in Scotland next month, at which UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa proposals will be discussed. Frazer’s appointment last year as ambassador to SA signalled that the US was placing a new emphasis on relations with Pretoria. Following that indication of SA’s importance to the US, all eyes will be on Frazer’s successor, to see whether SA has retained that position.
Frazer served under Rice in the White House on the US’s top foreign policymaking body, the National Security Council. She was also a student of Rice’s at Stanford University. Frazer, her mother and her sister sat behind Rice when she appeared before a senate committee for her confirmation as US secretary of state. "To me, it was a sign that Jendayi might again be playing a bigger role in US policy towards Africa," Melvin Foote, who heads the Constituency for Africa, a Washington-based advocacy group, told allAfrica.com. US embassy spokeswoman Judy Moon would not comment on the allAfrica report, calling it speculation. Moon said the ambassador "is hard at work in Pretoria" and that appointments were being made for her "well into the future". In recent months, Frazer has become increasingly outspoken against SA’s policy of "quiet diplomacy" towards Zimbabwe. Rice said earlier this year that Zimbabwe was one of six "outposts of tyranny".
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From Zim Online (SA), 26 April
State agents raid NGOs
Harare - Government agents have since the beginning of this month raided 15 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to probe their activities in a fresh crackdown on civic society, Zim Online has established. Sources yesterday said former intelligence minister and now Social Welfare Minister, Nicholas Goche, appointed a taskforce with members recruited from other government ministries and from the dreaded state spy Central Intelligence Organisation to inspect and investigate the activities of NGOs. The government hopes to unearth information that might give it a pretext to close or restrict certain NGOs it believes are opposed to its rule, according to the sources. Goche yesterday refused to discuss the investigation or reveal the names of members of the probe team saying he was still trying to find his feet at his new job. But the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO), the main representative body for civic society groups in the country, confirmed that several local and international NGOs had reported visits at their offices by the government taskforce. NANGO information officer Fambai Ngirande charged that the probe appeared to go beyond merely establishing whether civic bodies were operating within the law but had a "political dimension" to it.
Ngirande said: "The inter-ministerial team, which appointed inspecting officers, is currently doing the rounds investigating NGOS around various aspects of their operations. We understand that the team also includes representatives from different line ministries. Whereas the minister is legally entitled to carry out investigations under the auspices of PVO Act on incidents of maladministration, the process appears to go beyond merely adhering to the dictates of the law as there are other political dimensions evident particularly in the identification of the probed organisations." The NANGO official would however not confirm the names of NGOs visited by the state-probe team or what exactly the government inspectors wanted to know about the civic bodies’ operations. But well placed sources said NANGO itself was raided on April 19, 2005. Other NGOs visited in the past few weeks include ZimRights, Plan International, Girl Child Network, Care and World Vision.
According to documents shown to ZimOnline, the government taskforce will among other things inspect the affairs and activities of each NGO, examine all documentation relating to the group’s registration and also establish who constitute its board of trustees or directors. The investigators will also probe funding of NGOs to ensure that groups receiving funding from outside the country comply with foreign currency regulations. NGOs have become the target of government attacks after exposing in the last five years corruption, gross human rights abuses and general misrule by President Robert Mugabe and his government. Mugabe in turn accuses NGOs of working with his Western enemies to incite Zimbabweans against his rule. A new and tougher NGO law banning civic society groups from carrying out voter education and barring those involved in governance-related work from receiving foreign funding was this month referred back to Parliament by Mugabe for further perfection before he signs it into effective law.
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From Reuters, 25 April
Fuel shortage piles pressure on urban Zimbabwe
By Stella Mapenzauswa
Harare - Zimbabwe's fuel crisis worsened on Monday with most garages in the capital Harare saying their supplies had run dry, adding to the misery of erratic electricity and water supplies. The crisis-ridden southern African state has seen an upsurge in commodity shortages since soon after March 31 parliamentary elections which returned President Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF party to power amid opposition cries of rigging. "We haven't had petrol here for days and the diesel delivery we had over the weekend ran out within hours," said an attendant at a Harare garage which gets its supplies from state oil importer NOCZIM. The government revoked NOCZIM's previous monopoly on imports a few years ago, allowing a slew of mostly black-owned new companies to bring in their own fuel, but these have been stymied by a persistent foreign currency crunch. Residents in the second city of Bulawayo, host later this week to a week-long international trade fair, also said they struggled for weeks to fill up their car tanks. Zimbabwe has suffered erratic fuel supplies since 1999, when key donors led by the International Monetary Fund withdrew support over policy differences with the government. Critics say Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, has crippled a once-vibrant economy through skewed policy decisions including the controversial seizure of white-owned commercial farms for landless blacks, a programme they say has destroyed the mainstay agriculture sector.
Foreign cash inflows are a trickle as exporters struggle to stay in business in a harsh climate, and analysts estimate that foreign exchange auctions controlled by the central bank are only meeting about 8 percent of importer demand. The foreign currency crisis has also affected electricity supplies, 35 percent of which state power utility ZESA has to import from neighbouring countries. Last Friday ZESA said it was unable to access its electricity imports from the Democratic Republic of Congo due to a transmission failure, and that lack of spares for maintenance of some of its generators had also hit supplies. Cash-strapped ZESA has struggled to import enough power from its neighbours in past years, leading to frequent power cuts that have disrupted industrial production. On Monday the private-owned Daily Mirror newspaper said Zimbabwe's central city of Kadoma had experienced water supply problems in the past week due to power cuts by Zesa. The paper quoted residents as saying they feared an outbreak of disease as electricity-powered pumps failed to draw adequate water to the town. Mugabe denies misruling the country over the past 25 years, arguing the economy has fallen victim to domestic and foreign opponents of his farm seizures.
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 25 April
Zim’s political cancer has gone too deep
Mandla Mpofu
Johannesburg - Former Zimbabwe information minister Jonathan Moyo says claims by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that the ruling Zanu PF rigged the elections are credible. In an exclusive interview with the Mail & Guardian Online, Moyo also ruled out economic revival in Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe, whom he said has been in power for too long. Stopping short of calling for immediate regime change, Moyo said Zimbabwe needs "an absolute renewal" because "the political cancer has gone too deep". Once regarded as the fiercest defender of the Mugabe regime, Moyo also lamented the system of patronage under Mugabe's rule -- which, ironically, many people believe was the reason for his rise in Zimbabwean politics.
How does it feel to sit in Parliament among parliamentarians who, by all public appearances, hate you? Zanu PF regards you as a "traitor" or "defector" and the MDC views you as the architect of the current media regime, which it cites as one of the causes of electoral fraud since 2002. Mugabe also expressed these sentiments during this year's campaign period, as did the opposition: It's a simplification that they do that. Many of them know better and are much more serious politicians who understand the challenges our country faces. I have had a good working relationship with many in Zanu PF and many in the MDC. Even the campaigning did not reflect what you are talking about, other than the vitriol that came from certain sections of Zanu PF, but not all of them. It is a fact that the national chairman of Zanu PF, John Nkomo; VP Mujuru; Elliot Manyika; and Cain Mathema said a lot of things they are regretting right now, which are not shared by many people, even in Zanu PF. The president himself led that chorus. I'm sitting in Parliament as an elected member, and all of us have taken an oath of allegiance to Zimbabwe and are guided by the national interest. On the day of swearing-in, there was a clear demonstration that we are committed to working together.
Being the only independent MP, how are you going to make yourself effective in shaping national policy in Parliament, since the last Parliament showed us that MPs vote on partisan party lines? : It is regrettable that there is a history of voting on party lines, even when reason or national interest dictates otherwise. But Parliament is not just about voting. We're elected to articulate national issues as they are, without fear or favour, and as an independent, I will not be constrained by so-called party lines. Because of the polarisation and division in our country, having a true independent voice that is able to articulate issues of national concern is an advantage. My concern will be all the people of Zimbabwe.
Will you enter into any coalition with the opposition or the ruling party, and under what principle or understanding? : There is no need for me to enter into any coalition. I'm not going to enter into such a coalition. I'm not a member of either Zanu PF or the MDC, and I have no intention of joining either. I will work with those who are prepared to deal with Zimbabwe's problems. Zimbabwe needs a political settlement. So, I will cast my vote with whoever takes the national position, even if it is the ruling party. My vote will not be guaranteed to anyone. Certainly, I will be sitting there [in Parliament] in opposition to Zanu PF. I ran a campaign opposing Zanu PF in principle because of the unfortunate development in November [when Zanu PF reprimanded Moyo and suspended six provincial chairpersons for taking part in the Tsholotsho "declaration" to choose an alternative candidate for the vice-presidency]. In general terms, I will be working together with the MDC as a constructive opposition. This is something I assured the electorate in Tsholotsho. People wanted to be assured that I will not take their vote to Zanu PF, and I will not do so.
What is your view of the March 31 election? Was it fraudulent as the opposition says, given that you have also challenged certain Sections of the Electoral Act? : I have to make a correction here. I have not challenged Sections of the Electoral Act, as reported in the media. I have challenged a section of the electoral regulations, not the Electoral Act. The reason for doing so is not to say the election was fraudulent, but that a key minimum condition was absent. However, the discrepancies that have been cited [by the MDC] are serious and you don't have to be a specialist to realise that. One instance in Beitbridge shows that. Before the announcement of result, the authority running the elections announced that 36 000 people had cast their vote, but when the result was announced, what came out was that 19 000 people had voted. The same body [the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission] cannot say at one point that 36 000 people voted and then say 19 000 voted. It has never happened in the rational world that the preliminary figure is higher than the final figure, and by that margin. You have to be totally mad or have a terrible leap of faith to believe that. It does not make any sense, especially since it is the same body that announced the preliminary figure and the final figure. You can't have the left hand doing what the right hand doesn't in the same body. Many people are shocked that the response to this has been very casual. The freeness and fairness of the elections are about perceptions people have about the [electoral] process, and that needs [to be] a rational process. In this election, that rationality was totally absent, notwithstanding what may come out of the courts regarding the challenges that have been made. It raises serious eyebrows, and the sooner the authorities realise that this is a serious matter and respond seriously and accordingly, the better for the democratic process.
Do you think the coverage of opposition candidates - including yourself - by the Zimbabwean media was fair? : I had no coverage whatsoever myself. Invitations were made for us to come and debate on national television, but we did not accept them because the whole thing was just a charade, and in any case, there is no TV reception in Tsholotsho. We learnt a few things in this election, and one of them is that the best broadcasting is people broadcasting -- that is, direct, interpersonal communication with the people. Obviously ... the opposition does not receive favourable coverage, but the Broadcasting Service Act enables it to get its messages across during an election.
To be continued...
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Comment from Business Day (SA), 25 April
Plotting the decline of a tyrant
Tim Hughes
Tyranny is rule by fear. The government of Zimbabwe is a tyranny. Tyrannies lack legitimacy and popular consent, relying rather on the abuse of state power to remain in office. Insofar as the state has a virtual monopoly on the instruments and use of force, this presents a potent weapon in the hands of a tyrant. Tyrannies deftly and crudely manipulate the discourse and institutions of democracy while simultaneously occluding its space. Under tyrannies, sycophantic parliaments pass immoral legislation; jurists preside over its application and the police enforce its adherence. For their duration, tyrannies are in authority, but lack authority, particularly moral authority on which to draw in times of crisis. When the fig leaves of democratic legitimacy shrivel, tyrannies rely on structural violence, state repression and privatised intimidation, such as hit squads, vigilantes and youth militia, to ensure quiescence. Tyrannies not only occupy the office of government - such office is subordinated to vicarious personal whim. Democrats are repulsed by such regimes, thugs are drawn to them. Tyrannies are deceptive and ambiguous regimes, however, being at once forceful and vulnerable. The Mugabe regime is both. After 25 years of rule by an evil political genius, how much longer can the Zimbabwean tyr |
