LATEST RHODESIAN
NEWS
The Kent Branch of
the Rhodesians Worldwide organisation
held a very successful and enjoyable monthly braai in May 2022, at which many
new supporters and friends were in attendance. Pictured below are some of the
over 50 people who participated, relaxing outdoors after a really well
organised braai.
-
report sent by a supporter from the
“Zimbabwean’s failure to maintain Rhodesian living standards nothing
to do with racism – a response to criticism”- by Tendai Ruben Mbofana
http://www.thezimbabwean.co/2017/10/zimbabweans-failure-maintain-rhodesian-living-standards-nothing-racism-response-criticism/
- The Zimbabwean,
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The
annual “Raising of the Flag” ceremony in Norfolk, whch this year
took place on Sunday 10th September 2017, again proved a most
enjoyable and inspiring success. Unfortunately the threat of inclement weather
meant that the event had to be held inside the estate’s main barn this
year, which in spite of certain drawbacks did even so mean that the music
provided by the Cromer and Sheringham
Brass Band seemed more rousing and inspirational than ever. This event
commemorates the anniversary of the foundation of Rhodesia in 1890, when the
Pioneer Column reached the site of what was to become the capital city of
Salisbury, and hoisted the Union Flag on 13th September. It was
therefore particularly significant this year that the Union Flag was raised by
Mr.Andy Hope-Hall, who is a great-great-nephew of Lt.”Teddy”
Tindale-Biscoe who actually hoisted the original Union Flag in 1890! Pictured
above is [left] Mr. Hope-Hall giving a truly captivating speech just after
hoisting the Flag (which can be seen in the background), [centre] some of the
flags and other Rhodesian artifacts which adorn the rooms of Southrepps Hall,
and [right] the double yard-armed flagpole at the entrance to Southern Rhodesia
Avenue opposite Southhrepps Hall, which this year flew the Union Flag, the
Australian Flag and the post-UDI Rhodesian Flag.
In
Zimbabwe things have turned to the worse. Even if you have money in the bank
you can draw very little of it. The banks are short of US$ notes which is the
preferred currency. A lot of dollars were captured by the top dogs and
taken out of circulation. After local manufacturers closed down in big numbers
and farms were seized by the Mugabe regime very little is left for export in
exchange for foreign currency. To make matters worse almost everything needs to
be imported which requires foreign money.
-
report sent by DvdME,
Scene at
Rhodesians Worldwide Kent Branch braai – April 2017.
Although it hasn’t been mentioned on this site
for some time, the Kent Branch of the Rhodesians
Worldwide organisation continues to thrive and proves a vibrant and estimable
vehicle for the Rhodesian diaspora to keep the Rhodesian spirit and ideals
alive. Regular monthly braais are held throughout the year at a picturesque
venue in mid-Kent, and pictured above are three of the branch stalwarts at the
March 2017 braai – from left to right: Terry Oliver, Ian Oliver and Simon
Pegg.
A
Zimbabwean pastor who predicted President Mugabe will die on October 17 has
been charged with “causing offence to persons of a particular race or
religion”. Pastor Magadza claimed God told him on Boxing Day that Mugabe,
who turns 93 next month, would die in October. Pastor Magadza was previously
detained for protesting against Mugabe’s government.
-
Daily Telegraph,
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The 2016 “Raising of the Flag” ceremony,
which took place in the grounds of Southrepps Hall in Norfolk on 11th
September 2016, proved a great success. This event, which commemorates the
foundation of Rhodesia in September 1890 by the raising of the Union Flag by
the Pioneer Column in what became Salisbury, was re-enacted every year at Cecil
Square, Salisbury, from 1891 until 1979. From 1980 onwards, however, it has
been re-enacted in Norfolk, the home of Mr. Peter Sladden, the Lord of the
Manor of Southrepps. Pictured, from left to right, are: Mr. Peter Sladden and
Sgt. Graham Gillmore (ex-RLI) who acted as Parade Commander; the actual Raising
of the Flag by Mrs. Carol Walsh and Mrs. Laura Kirkwood (both Rhodesian-born);
a section of the large crowd at this year’s ceremony in front of Southrepps
Hall. Click here for the text
of one of the keynote speeches at the 2016 event.
Five game poachers were ‘shred to
pieces’ and three more seriously mauled after a pack of lions attacked a
group of armed men in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park in the Matabeleland
North province. Zimbabwean police say the victims are known
‘local’ poachers who were illegally hunting for elephants inside
the boundaries the national park. They were ‘surprised’ by a group
of almost twenty adult Southwest African lions. The Southwestern African lion
as the same species as Cecil the Lion who were shot a couple of kilometres away
in July last year. Five of the ten men were killed on the spot, three severely
injured and two escaped with minor injuries. All the animals were unhurt.
Zimbabwe Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri said in a statement the
surviving poachers abandoned their dead and ran for their lives. He hopes the
terrifying experience serves as a lesson to other poachers. All the surviving
members of the gang were arrested in a nearby village where they were pleading
for medical attention. Zimbabwe News
quotes Commissioner-General Chihuri as saying “the men were visibly
traumatised by the attack… and after seeing their injuries and the
remains of their dead comrades, I can see why. These guys are tough criminals
carrying AK-47s, but they were literally shred to pieces and devoured by the
lions. I have never seen an animal attack reach this level of violence, and I
have seen a lot! [It was] a horrible blood bath”. He said there were
bones and bits of flesh scattered over hundreds of square metres.The surviving
poachers will now face criminal charges, including illegal-hunting, possession
of illegal weapons and contravening the Parks and Wildlife Act.
- report
sent by GML, Cape Province, South Africa,
Panic set in at the Reserve Bank
who recognised that if nothing was done the whole banking system could crash
taking with it what remained of the formal economy. So yesterday we saw a whole
raft of measures by the Reserve Bank designed to curb the demand for cash and
to try and protect the Banks. In particular the Reserve Bank Governor did
something that until now has been totally taboo – he announced that the
printing presses were running again and that a range of “Bond”
notes would be introduced with a face value of 1 US$ to 1 Bond Note. He also
announced controls on imports to protect the balance of payments and
restrictions on daily cash withdrawals – something that is already in
force by the Banks themselves and some limiting withdrawals to a small sum (as
low as $20 a day). Some of his actions were difficult to understand – he
announced that exporters would be credited with export proceeds in the
proportions of 50% US$, 40% Rand and 10% Euros. Even as he spoke the Rand
collapsed by 5 per cent and is expected to continue to depreciate and this
underlines the negative view of the public of the Rand as a store of wealth and
exchange. When the new currency notes are introduced I doubt if they will find
acceptance in the markets. Certainly any attempt to pay the Civil Service in
Bond currency would be fiercely resisted. What we have here is a perfect
financial firestorm and in my own view the final collapse of the economy is
threatened. So what can be done; the first thing is to face up to the truth of
the matter. This government has failed completely and does not have a clue as
to what to do. They must deal with the political crisis that this creates as a
first priority – Mugabe must retire immediately. Then we need a National
Government made up of our best people irrespective of political affiliation and
put them in charge of our affairs with a mandate to fix things. Their first
priority must be to complete the re-engagement process initiated by the MDC in
2012 and to restore normal political and economic relations with the rest of
the World. Then we have to cut our cloth to fit our capacity and to introduce
tough fiscal and monetary controls and changes. These should not in any way
interfere with the economic freedoms gained in the GNU and restoring confidence
and hope in the country has to be a top priority – without confidence and
hope no recovery is possible. This time we do not have the regional or the
international community to rescue us and if we do not do this ourselves, we
have only ourselves to blame for the consequences.
- report sent by Eddie Cross, May 6th 2016
Zimbabwe’s
First Lady Grace Mugabe’s aide, Olga Bungu, has acquired a court order to
kick white dairy farmer Gillian Munn off a farm in Goromonzi. The Goromonzi Magistrates’ Court last week gave Munn 45 days
to vacate the farm, which means she will have had to have done so by November
26. Munn has been staving off pressure from Bungu – a deputy
police commissioner – to vacate the 209-hectare Mashonganyika Farm, which
is about 50km to the east of the capital Harare [Salisbury], for the past five
months. The farm produces over 10,000
litres of milk a month and has around 115 hectares of maize. Munn said
the court ruled that the dairy permit she had was “not valid” since
it had not been issued by the Ministry of Lands and that she had been
“illegally residing at the farm” for the past 13 years. Gillian
co-owned the farm with her former husband Allan Munn before they divorced and
he went to France. Meanwhile, another White commercial farmer also risks losing
his farm after Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement minister Douglas Mombeshora
approached the Bulawayo High Court to evict Michael Norman Conoly from Boxwell
Farm in Matabeleland South province. Mombeshora filed at the High Court last
Tuesday that he was an authority in whom powers over all prime lands were
vested and that he was the watchdog in the administration of the Land
Acquisition Act, hence his seeking to evict Conoly. The Lands minister submitted he had also found beneficiaries of the land
reform programme for the farm and had even issued them with offer letters “In
terms of the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act in furtherance of the land
reform programme, the plaintiff lawfully acquired for resettlement the farm
from the efendant, the former owner,” he made submissions through the
Attorney-General’s Office. “Despite demand and despite the land
having been lawfully acquired, the defendant has failed or refused or neglected
to vacate the farm and make way for the said new offer letter holders.
Defendant is neither an offer letter holder, nor does he have any legal basis
to remain on the farm without the consent and authority of the
plaintiff.”
- report
sent by JMcL,
Zimbabwe Cricket bans Vermeulen for calling
Blacks ‘apes’. Zimbabwe Cricket has, with immediate effect, banned
Mark from participating in all cricket activities, after he owned up to
repulsive remarks that reflect racism, prejudice and plain ignorance. Vermeulen has been training with Mashonaland Eagles in
the hope that they would contract him for the coming season. We find Vermeulen’s
Facebook comment distasteful and unacceptable particularly for a senior
sportsman who should have learnt from playing in Zimbabwe and abroad that there
is no place for racism in sport more so on the field of play where one may have
teammates and therefore colleagues of different races. This is why, as Zimbabwe
Cricket, we pride ourselves in this diversity and seek to feed off it in our
pursuit of excellence. For Vermeulen not to appreciate the humanity of another
race is regrettable — to say the least — because at the time when
he was virtually an international pariah after having also fallen foul of the
law in England, a non-White leadership at ZC decided to accommodate him. For
Vermeulen to set fire to the ZC Cricket Academy and still come back and be allowed
to play not just for a franchise but also for Zimbabwe and then to go public
with such toxic views, says a lot about the former Zimbabwe international. For
example, if when he was practising with Eagles last week, he was among the
“apes”, he was among them as what? So instead of Vermeulen writing
in his apology about “how our minds” work, he should tell us how
his own mind works. Racism is abominable and there can be no defence for it.
The best anyone who is uncomfortable with another race can do is to
rehabilitate themselves so that they accept fellow human beings as equals and
not “apes”.
- The Herald,
Zimbabwe's veteran President
Robert Mugabe was booed and heckled by opposition lawmakers over the
deteriorating economy as he gave his state of the nation address to parliament
Tuesday. Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) lawmakers questioned his economic
policies, jeering as the 91-year-old delivered a policy speech which lasted
less than half an hour. He spoke as the UN confirmed earlier estimates that
around 1.5 million Zimbabweans or 16 % of the country's population will face
hunger later this year and need food aid. When Mugabe -- who has been in power
since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980 -- outlined his government's
plan to improve the economy, one lawmaker yelled at him to admit that "you
can't do much about it". Mugabe presented a 10-point plan which included
boosting agricultural growth, encouraging private sector investment and
fighting graft. "What about job creation?" one opposition member
shouted while another accused Mugabe's government of "corruption".
Another parliamentarian shouted "if wishes were horses" while his
other opposition legislator screamed "you have utterly failed". The
economy of the southern African nation has been on a downward spiral for more
than a decade with slow growth, low liquidity and high unemployment. Many
companies have closed, downsized or relocated to neighbouring countries. The
government has cut its growth forecasts for 2015 to 1.5 %, from 3.2 %, mainly
due to slow growth in the agricultural sector. Zimbabwe's harvest of the staple
corn has shrunk by half due to erratic rains and abnormally high temperatures.
The country will need to import 700,000 tonnes of corn to feed those facing
hunger in the coming months. Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa has already
appealed for cash from "development agencies and the private sector".
The UN's World Food Programme on Monday said 16 % of the population "are
projected to be food insecure at the peak of the 2015-16 lean season, the
period following harvest when food is especially scarce". "This
represents a 164 % increase in food insecurity compared to the previous
season," said WFP in a note. Amidst the heckling, Mugabe -- not known for not
brooking dissent -- continued unfazed and read his speech through to the end.
His ZANU-PF lawmakers then burst into a song praising their leader while the
opposition countered singing "ZANU-PF is rotten". It is not the first
time Mugabe has been jeered in parliament. In August 2008, MDC deputies roundly
booed the president during a speech to show they did not recognise his
legitimacy following a flawed presidential vote held earlier that year.
- report sent by GML (who
commented “and to think we fed Africa”),
The UN
has over the last decade taken a prominent role in raising money for
humanitarian and development aid to Zimbabwe after the West withheld direct
budget support in 2002 over policy differences with veteran President Robert Mugabe.
Western donors like United States and European Union funnel financial aid
through charities and the UN, leaving Zimbabwe to fund its budget from taxes
because it does not qualify for international credit due to a foreign debt of
$9 billion. Bishow Palajuli, the UN's resident coordinator in Zimbabwe said the
global agency had raised $1.64 billion for its Zimbabwe United Nations
Development Assistance Framework (ZUNDAF) which started in 2012 and ends this
year and was now seeking to do the same for the next four year period. Parajuli
however said donors were financially stretched, trying to cope with
humanitarian crises around the world. Early this month Zimbabwe asked for
financial support from the West for the first time in a decade at a meeting with
Western diplomats and international lenders. The International Monetary Fund
has predicted weaker growth in Zimbabwe after a drought hit farm output, while
several companies are closing due to lack of credit, power shortages and
competition from cheaper imports. Zimbabwe will this year import 700,000 tonnes
of the staple maize following the drought and officials from foreign relief
agencies say up to 1.8 million people - more than a tenth of the population -
may require food aid this year.
-
Reuters’ report,
It flew profitably through 23
years of United Nations-imposed sanctions. It carried on without a blip after
Black nationalist guerillas shot down two of its Viscounts in the late 1970s,
the last years of White-ruled Rhodesia. After independence in 1980, its name
was changed from Air Rhodesia to Air Zimbabwe. It was comfortably in the
black with 16 aircraft, and a reputation as a clever, durable little African
airline. It has taken President Mugabe 31 years without war or economic sanctions
to finally drive it into the ground. The last Air Zimbabwe domestic flight was three weeks ago. Late last year it
cancelled international flights after a Boeing 737 at Johannesburg’s
Oliver Tambo Airport and a Boeing 767 at Gatwick were impounded for unpaid
services. On Friday last week lawyers for the National Airways Workers’ Union and the Air Transport Union filed for the airline to be placed under
judicial management. Court papers said they had not been paid since January
2009 and were owed US$ 35 million. Air
Zimbabwe executives who asked not to be named said the company owed a total
of US$160 million. Among the many reluctant benefactors who bailed it out in
emergencies is Nicholas van Hoogstraaten, the former London rack-renter who has
recreated himself as one of Zimbabwe’s most influential businessmen.
“The demise of Air Zimbabwe is
a disgraceful waste of a valuable asset, which is now beyond redemption,”
he said. The “disgrace” he refers to is the blundering mismanagement
and greed Mugabe and his cronies have visited upon every enterprise they have
touched since he came to power in 1980. From the outset, Mugabe used Air Zimbabwe as his personal air taxi.
The abuse was legendary. Passengers were ordered off their flights when he
turned up at 30 minutes notice with a crowd of hangers-on. Or if they managed
to keep their seats, they would be flown to wildly out-of-the way destinations
to drop off the president. On one trip, he circumnavigated the globe. Political
appointments fill the senior executive positions, and relatives much of the
rest. Air Zimbabwe has a staff of
1,400 where experts estimate 400 would be ample. Fares were kept unsustainably
low, and charged in worthless Zimbabwe dollars until they were phased out in
2009. It has no board of directors. The company is in the hands of a coterie of
executives who, staff say, pay themselves US$20,000 amonth and drive the latest
Mercedes Benz models. “They are
law unto themselves,” said one. Early this month a long-unpaid pilot won
a court order for the seizure of company property in lieu of his salary. The
sheriff entered Air Zimbabwe
headquarters and left with three of the limousines. “It’s become
the ZANU-PF carrier,” said a senior technician. Each time the Mugabe
“royal family” return from a trip abroad, a 10-tonne truck and
several pick-ups can be seen to drive up to the aircraft’s hold to be
loaded with the Mugabe’s goods. Last year, Grace, the president’s
wife, flew into a rage when her flight was late. Acting CEO Peter Chikumba
presented her with US$10,000 “spending money” by way of an apology.
Since the government took control of the fabulously wealthy Marange diamond
fields in the east of country, cabin staff say, pilots are regularly given
small sealed parcels by Mrs Mugabe’s staff for personal delivery to Asian
businessmen in the Far East. Just ahead of elections in 2008, an Air Zimbabwe plane flew tonnes of
ZANU-PF t-shirts from Beijing. But as Air
Zimbabwe (Pvt) Ltd crumbles, a new development is secretly unfolding. A
plain white 150-seat Airbus A320 with French markings arrived at Harare airport
10 days ago and was quickly concealed in an Air
Zimbabwe hangar. Company and transport ministry officials have been
tight-lipped. The plane is on loan from Sonangol,
a Chinese company with enormous interests ranging through oil, air transport
and diamonds, Air Zimbabwe
administrators say. A larger Airbus 340 is soon to follow. “It’s a
ministry of defence project,” said one. “It can only be funded by
diamonds. ZANU-PF will not be without their own airline.”
- Report sent by B.O.N.,
Air Zimbabwe has been suspended from
the International Air Transport Association (IATA) for failing to comply with
global safety standards, a cabinet minister has said. Transport, Communications
and Infrastructural Development Minister Nicholas Goche confirmed the
development. He, however, said the national airline was given a grace period of
up to November 31st to comply with the standards. He said the global
aviation body recently wrote to Air
Zimbabwe communicating the position. If it fails to meet the deadline, Air Zimbabwe will be banned from using
international airports and air spaces of other countries forever. IATA is a
global aviation body that works with airline members and the air transport
industry to promote safe, reliable, secure and economical air travel for the
benefit of travellers.
-
Rhodesian Christian Group news update, December 2012
The bulk of imported maize being supplied to hungry
Zimbabweans is coming from former White commercial farmers evicted during the
2000 chaotic land invasions and now farming in Zambia.
- http://www.radiovop.com, June 11, 2012
A government
minister in Zimbabwe says work has stopped on new reservoirs because workers
have been scared off by mermaids, a report has said. According to
orangenews.com, Minister of Water Resources Samuel Sipepa Nkomo reportedly told
a parliamentary committee that terrified workers were refusing to return to the
sites, near the towns of Gokwe and Mutare [Umtali]. He said the only way to
solve the problem was to brew traditional beer and carry out rites to appease the
spirits. “All the officers I have sent have vowed not to go back
there,” Zimbabwe’s state-approved Herald newspaper quoted him as
saying. The senior politician allegedly said mermaids were also present in
other reservoirs around the country. The building of the reservoirs is long
overdue, but is considered essential if Zimbabwe is to provide adequate water
for its population and boost agricultural production. The belief in mermaids
and other mythical creatures is widespread in the country, where many people
combine a Christian faith with traditional beliefs.
-
Independent On-Line,
It flew profitably through 23
years of United Nations-imposed sanctions. It carried on without a blip after
Black nationalist guerillas shot down two of its Viscounts in the late 1970s,
the last years of White-ruled Rhodesia. In 1980, its name was changed from Air Rhodesia to Air Zimbabwe. It was comfortably in the black with 16 aircraft, and
a reputation as a clever, durable little African airline. It has taken
President Mugabe 31 years without war or economic sanctions to finally drive it
into the ground. The last Air Zimbabwe
domestic flight was three weeks ago. Late last year it cancelled international
flights after a Boeing 737 at Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo Airport and a
Boeing 767 at Gatwick were impounded for unpaid services. On Friday last week
lawyers for the National Airways
Workers’ Union and the Air
Transport Union filed for the airline to be placed under judicial
management. Court papers said they had not been paid since January 2009 and
were owed US$ 35 million. Air Zimbabwe
executives who asked not to be named said the company owed a total of US$160
million. Among the many reluctant benefactors who bailed it out in emergencies
is Nicholas van Hoogstraaten, the former London rack-renter who has recreated
himself as one of Zimbabwe’s most influential businessmen. “The
demise of Air Zimbabwe is a
disgraceful waste of a valuable asset, which is now beyond redemption,”
he said. The “disgrace” he refers to is the blundering
mismanagement and greed Mugabe and his cronies have visited upon every
enterprise they have touched since he came to power in 1980. From the outset,
Mugabe used Air Zimbabwe as his
personal air taxi. The abuse was legendary. Passengers were ordered off their
flights when he turned up at 30 minutes notice with a crowd of hangers-on. Or
if they managed to keep their seats, they would be flown to wildly out-of-the
way destinations to drop off the president. On one trip, he circumnavigated the
globe. Political appointments fill the senior executive positions, and
relatives much of the rest. Air Zimbabwe
has a staff of 1,400 where experts estimate 400 would be ample. Fares were kept
unsustainably low, and charged in worthless Zimbabwe dollars until they were
phased out in 2009. It has no board of directors. The company is in the hands
of a coterie of executives who, staff say, pay themselves US$20,000 a month and
drive the latest Mercedes Benz models. “They are a law unto themselves,”
said one. Early this month a long-unpaid pilot won a court order for the
seizure of company property in lieu of his salary. The sheriff entered Air Zimbabwe headquarters and left with
three of the limousines. “It’s become the ZANU-PF carrier,”
said a senior technician. Each time the Mugabe “royal family”
return from a trip abroad, a 10-tonne truck and several pick-ups can be seen to
drive up to the aircraft’s hold to be loaded with the Mugabe’s
goods. Last year, Grace, the president’s wife, flew into a rage when her
flight was late. Acting CEO Peter Chikumba presented her with US$10,000
“spending money” by way of an apology. Since the government took
control of the fabulously wealthy Marange diamond fields in the east of
country, cabin staff say, pilots are regularly given small sealed parcels by
Mrs Mugabe’s staff for personal delivery to Asian businessmen in the Far
East. Just ahead of elections in 2008, an Air
Zimbabwe plane flew tonnes of ZANU-PF T-shirts from Beijing. But as Air Zimbabwe (Pvt) Ltd crumbles, a new
development is secretly unfolding. A plain white 150-seat Airbus A320 with
French markings arrived at Harare airport 10 days ago and was quickly concealed
in an Air Zimbabwe hangar. Company
and transport ministry officials have been tight-lipped. The plane is on loan
from Sonangol, a Chinese company with
enormous interests ranging through oil, air transport and diamonds, Air
Zimbabwe administrators say. A larger Airbus 340 is soon to follow.
“It’s a ministry of defence project,” said one. “It can
only be funded by diamonds. ZANU-PF will not be without their own
airline.”
- report by Jan Raath,
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On Sunday 13th
November 2011 the Rhodesian Army
Association held their annual Remembrance Day Service at the Field of
Remembrance outside Westminster Abbey in London. As well as members of the Rhodesian Army Association members of
the Rhodesian Air Force Association,
the BSAP Regimental Association,
the Rhodesian Internal Affairs
Department and various individual Rhodesian regimental associations also
took part in this most moving ceremony. The service was conducted by Pastor
E.A.Lee (formerly Major Staff Corps HQ 3 Bde) and others participating in the
service included Peter Phillips of the BSAP
Regimental Association, Geoff Cooke of Rhodesians Worldwide, Lt.Col. D.P.P. Hobson, Major Alison
Ruffell, Major E. Jackman and Lt.Col. M.L. Clewer. [Pictured left are the
standard-bearers representing the Rhodesian
Army Association, the Rhodesian
African Rifles, the Rhodesian Air
Force, Internal Affairs, the BSAP, the Rhodesia Regiment and the Rhodesian
Light Infantry.] |
A Zimbabwean nurse registered with
the Nursing and Midwifery Council in the United Kingdom is at the centre of a political
storm after she and her husband were named in the seizure of a White owned farm
in Chegutu. ZANU-PF militants like this are normally used to intimidate White
farmers off their land. Irene Zhanda who is reported to have worked for a West
London hospital for over 5 years and her husband Hudson Zhanda are behind an
eviction notice to Beatrice commercial farmer Wayne Greaves and his 84 workers.
The farmer was told to leave the property by the end of the week. Wayne Greaves
and his staff are in the process of moving their belongings off Enondo B farm,
after the eviction papers were served by a sheriff of the court last Friday.
That same court sheriff warned that he would return this week and anyone left
on the property would be arrested. An ‘offer’ letter for the farm
was first served on Greaves in February. The offer letter was in two names,
Hudson Zhanda and his wife Irene Zhanda. At the time Greaves went to see the
Governor in Marondera and explained that he had already given up two farms
2002, leaving him with Enondo B, where he was allowed to continue farming.
According to John Worsley-Worswick from Justice
for Agriculture (JAG), this formal agreement was then set aside to allow
the offer letter holder, Zhanda, to take over part of the land. But this has
since changed with Zhanda dragging Greaves to court in order to take over the
whole property. The case was heard and letters of support for Greaves were all
submitted, including letters from the Governor, the Provincial Administrator,
the War Veterans’ Association Chairman and the chief lands officer. In
the hearing, the Judge also suggested that a letter of support would
also be needed from the Minister of Lands. A letter was then duly written
by Minister Herbert Murerwa agreeing with the Governor’s recommendation,
which was subsequently submitted. But despite these letters of support, the
Supreme Court has now backed Zhanda. JAG’s Worsley-Worswick told SW Radio
Africa that Supreme Court Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku last week signed the
eviction notices for Greaves and his staff. “We are pretty horrified.
This is the first time that a Judge has signed eviction notices individually
for workers. Wayne’s concerns are all about the welfare of his workers,
because what do they do now?” Worsley-Worswick said. An appeal is now
being voiced for support for Greaves, his 84 farm labourers and their extended
families, a total of more than 450 people, set to lose everything.
- NehandaRadio.com report,
Coming
back to Zimbabwe after a month away is a huge shock to the system. Conditions
in our third world country can probably best be described as surreal, and
that’s being polite! The strangeness of the experience starts before you
even set foot in the country. Sitting in an international airport looking down
the list of departures for destinations all over Africa, your eyes are drawn to
the word ‘cancelled’ and your heart goes into your mouth. You look
back across the line and are not surprised to see that it’s Air Zimbabwe
flights that are cancelled. Our national airline is still on its knees, a
litany of excuses continuing to humiliate us with the word
‘cancelled’ on airport departure boards around the world. It could
be any number of reasons today: unpaid fuel bills, unpaid staff, striking air
crew. Arriving at Harare [Salisbury] International Airport, the contrast with
the service you’ve just left behind in the first world is dramatic. Bored
surly and unwelcoming Immigration Officials do not greet you or smile at you;
they scowl as they thumb through your passport leaving you feeling as if you
should turn round and go away again. In the ladies toilets only one of the door
latches on the row of stalls closes; there is no soap in the dispenser and a
huge plastic barrel of water stands in the corner, uncovered and exposed to a
myriad of germs. Encountering two police roadblocks in the first ten kilometres
from the airport is the surest sign that you are back in Zimbabwe. What do they
want? What are they looking for at their incessant roadblocks? It takes just a
few minutes to be reminded that these officials have perfected the art of
making everyone feel as if they are a criminal. With pity you look at the crowd
of commuter omnibuses that are inevitably pulled over at every roadblock. Their
passengers tired, thirsty and frustrated as time and again the vehicles are
stopped by the police and the drivers have to hand over money. Out of the long
grass on the roadside four school children wearing bright purple uniforms and
white shirts emerge. They look to be eight or nine year olds and on their backs
they wear little school satchels but this is not their only load to bear. Each
child carries a large bundle of sticks and branches balanced on their heads:
firewood for their Mums to cook supper with. Wood for the fire which will be
their buffer against the freezing winter nights and provide the flickering
light by which they will do their homework. After iPods and iPads, trains,
buses and aeroplanes, computers, laptops and broadband – this contrast is
so dramatic that it leaves you wide-eyed and deeply shocked at just how far
behind the world Zimbabwe has fallen. Arriving home the potholes and gullies on
the suburban roads are deeper than ever and there is no water and no electricity
in the house. An African Hoopoe stabs the browning grass for the last insects
of the day, calling its mate again and again: “Whoop–whoop,
whoop-whoop.” The sun turns blood red as it sinks into the dust smothered
horizon and for a moment the absurdity and abnormality is banished, because
this is home.
-
report by Cathy Buckle,
|
The
Rhodesians Worldwide Kent Branch welcomed Jill Baker, the much loved and
highly respected former RTV presenter, as their guest of honour at their
monthly braai in June 2011. In her keynote speech Jill Baker (pictured right,
standing) outlined some of her experiences and her ongoing commitment to
alerting the outside world to what is really happening in Mugabe’s
Zimbabwe. |
|
Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's Prime Minister, has warned that neither
he nor President Robert Mugabe are now in control of the country, which is
instead being run by a "dark and sinister" military junta. Morgan Tsvangirai is due to address a Movement
for Democratic Change rally in Harare [Salisbury], defying a police order that it be
cancelled. Mr
Tsvangirai on Friday returned from a trip to urge neighbouring leaders to act
to prevent Zimbabwe sliding back to the "dark
days" of violence seen in the disputed 2008 elections which saw him form a
coalition with his rival Mr Mugabe. On Saturday, he is due to address a Movement for
Democratic Change rally in Harare [Salisbury],
defying a police order that it be cancelled. Diplomatic sources in Harare
[Salisbury] said they feared the rally, which will take place close to a
meeting of Mr Mugabe's ZANU-PF supporters, could end in bloodshed if police
intervene. There are also concerns that Zimbabwe's Joint Operations Command,
made up of the heads of the police, armed forces and state security, could use
the opportunity to arrest Mr Tsvangirai, who was last week accused of contempt
of court for accusing the country's senior judges of political bias. Sources
have told The
Daily Telegraph that Mr Mugabe, 87, is becoming
increasingly frail and defers decisions to his closest advisers – mostly
members of the JOC.
-
Daily Telegraph, March 18, 2011
Robert Mugabe’s henchmen are preparing to arrest Morgan
Tsvangirai, his coalition partner, for contempt of court after he accused the
country’s senior judges of doing the bidding of Mr Mugabe’s ZANU-PF
party. Mr Tsvangirai has previously stated that the
government of unity with President Robert Mugabe is 'dysfunctional'. The
arrest of Prime Minister Tsvangirai was discussed in Tuesday’s cabinet
meeting, government insiders told The Daily Telegraph. On Wednesday, Augustine Chihuri, the Zimbabwean chief of police, is understood to
have visited the offices of the state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Corporation to collect a recording of Mr
Tsvangirai’s allegedly contemptuous comments. Mr Chihuri is a member of
the feared Joint Operational Command, the military junta which remained under
Mr Mugabe’s command when the coalition deal was struck in 2009. He is
believed to be increasingly taking power as the 87-year-old dictator’s
health declines. In the past month, more than 100 activists and politicians of
Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change have been arrested, including Elton Mangoma, the Energy Minister. Mr
Mangoma was detained over an allegedly fraudulent fuel deal struck with a South
African firm last January, when Zimbabwe was facing a fuel shortage.
-
Daily Telegraph, March 17, 2011
Robert
Mugabe’s health is failing, leaving Zimbabwe’s government
paralysed, according to sources in the coalition. Mugabe, 87 today, underwent a
prostate operation in Malaysia last month, sources said. His spokesman denied
the claim but said the president returned from Singapore yesterday following a
separate check-up. Cabinet has sat for just two hours in the past two months,
officials say, but his birthday is expected to be lavish. Last year’s
celebration cost £185,000.
-
Daily Telegraph,
People in Zimbabwe are
becoming angry about the lack of small denominations in circulation and tempers
are fraying as a result: A policeman recently shot dead a taxi assistant for
failing to give him the correct change. After the formation of a coalition
government in February 2008, the hyperinflation-afflicted economy was
dollarized - with the US Dollar and South African Rand most widely used, but
the Botswana pula, the Zambian kwacha and the Mozambican metical also in common
use. To avoid disputes, taxis now give out travel vouchers when they run short
of change - and the problem is not just in the transport sector. Sipho Mpofu, a
public sector employee, went grocery shopping last week and was given a brown
voucher instead of change. "When I asked them what it was for, they told
me that they could not provide me with change and the voucher worth five rand would
allow me to use their toilets for free. I threw away the offending piece of
paper because I knew I was being ripped off." The lack of change angers
many consumers, who are now trying to make purchases in round numbers. Shops
use items such as tomatoes, matches, eggs, potatoes, candles, bananas, sweets,
pens, pencils or vouchers in lieu of change. Mpofu said the use of
"unwanted" grocery items was a "huge inconvenience". The
lack of change angers many consumers, who are now trying to make purchases in round
numbers "Right now I have a huge pile of matches, candles and sweets which
I have no use for. In fact, they pose a threat should they be set alight
accidentally." He said he had to hide the sweets from his children.
Financial journalist Paul Nyakazeya said consumers were effectively being
forced to buy items they did not want. "At the end of the day, when
calculations are made, it may be discovered that the goods consumers end up
taking as change... make up a substantial percentage of their monthly groceries...
The best way out of this quagmire for the consumers would be the widespread
introduction of an electronic system to purchase commodities." But, with
frequent power cuts, especially in rural areas, Nyakazeya acknowledged it would
be very difficult to make such a system work. Economist David Mupamhadzi told
IRIN the authorities urgently needed to introduce smaller currency
denominations, especially for the South African Rand: Many service providers
round up the bill, making goods and services more expensive, eroding disposable
incomes and boosting inflation, he said.
- AfricanCrisis,
Former Chegutu farmer
Ben Freeth was presented with a prestigious royal award in London on Wednesday,
in recognition of his fight for justice and peace in Zimbabwe. Freeth was named
as one of 44 recipients of a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) as
part of the Queen's birthday celebrations in June. An MBE is a prestigious
international honour and is a tangible recognition of Freeth's efforts to
combat the injustices of Robert Mugabe's land-grab campaign. On Wednesday,
Freeth and other recipients were presented to the Queen, who officially
bestowed the honour on them. Freeth told SW Radio Africa about the experience
on Wednesday and agreed it was "surreal." He said the MBE award is a
"great credit to all the people that have been fighting so hard for a
better Zimbabwe." He called the award an honour that gives encouragement
to the ongoing fight against illegal land seizures, a campaign that has left
millions of people destitute. Over the last decade of Mugabe's land grab
campaign, an estimated two million farm workers and their families have lost
their jobs and homes, and the destruction of the agricultural sector means the
country is almost entirely dependent on food aid. "This is really
encouraging for all of the farming community and their efforts during this past
turbulent and traumatic decade," Freeth said. "It is also the start
of more things to come in what we can do to serve Zimbabwe." Freeth added
that he hopes the award will help the ongoing fight for change in Zimbabwe:
"We hope it will create a new, positive platform from which our country
can move forward. Hopefully we can get the people who have the power to
help." Freeth and his father-in-law Mike Campbell, who co-own Mount Carmel
farm in Chegutu, made history in 2008 when they took Mugabe's government to
court over the land grab. The protracted legal battle within the human rights
Tribunal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) led to the pair
and Campbell's wife Angela, being abducted, beaten and tortured. But despite
their serious injuries, they continued with their campaign to seek a legal
precedent to protect Zimbabwean commercial farmers from land invasion. The SADC
Tribunal eventually ruled in the farmers' favour in late 2008, declaring the
land grab unlawful. Mugabe's government was ordered to protect the farmers and
their right to farm peacefully on their properties, an order that has been
completely ignored. Freeth and Campbell have both been forced off their
property after their homes were burnt down last year by land invaders. Land
invasions and the persecution of farmers in the courts have also continued to
intensify across the country. The blatant disregard of the SADC Tribunal
meanwhile has not resulted in any action from SADC, who instead decided earlier
this year to 'review' the legal body. SADC leaders resolved at their annual
summit to 'review the mandate of the Tribunal', which many critics have said demonstrates
open support for Mugabe. The decision means that no farm cases still pending in
the court, will be dealt with. This essentially leaves commercial farmers with
no legal protection against ongoing illegal land seizures.
- AfricanCrisis,
A recent visit by TAU SA to the
Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) of Zimbabwe annual congress revealed that
Zimbabwe’s small coterie of commercial farmers - some of whom are farming
on the fringes of their properties - are unwilling to leave the land they love.
(Many of course cannot, and others won’t come to South Africa because
they see the same fate awaiting them as in Zimbabwe).
The catastrophe of Zimbabwe
president Robert Mugabe’s land “reform” program has been
broadcast to the world, but the real tragedy is watching your farm being
destroyed by squatters who have either invaded it or were dumped on the farm
during the takeover period. Calling the police to object is an exercise in
futility.
Most of the 180 CFU congress
attendees have been in jail, some of them up to fourteen times. Trying to take
out your furniture from your occupied house is enough to draw the wrath of the
regime – it is then that the police arrive with alacrity to cart one off
to the station to be charged and convicted. Despite this, many of these farmers
are convinced that their country will get back on its feet once the poison of
the regime’s presence is removed.
TAU SA members saw the pitiful
remnants of what used to be – macadamia trees at half their usual height,
choked by overgrown grass and weeds, farms where maize had grown as far as they
eye could see, now returned to savannah. The quality of the soil is
outstanding, yet the excuse for non-productivity is drought. (There’s
always an excuse in Africa, but for the record from 1991 to 2000, the average
rainfall was 611 mm and from 2001 to 2010, it was 671 mm. From 1971 to 2010,
the average rainfall never fell below 600 mm)
TAU SA saw no or little production,
no tractors working – except as transport along the roads! Somebody
donated a huge harvester that in South Africa would be used for thousands of
hectares. In Zimbabwe, it was being used for a ten-hectare plot! The full
circle is almost complete in some areas – the return to mud huts,
subsistence agriculture, dusty unpaved roads, no transport, and goats and
skinny cattle meandering along. Railroads don’t function – only
trains between the cities run. Electricity supply is a problem, and the
importation of food is now a way of life.
The country’s agriculture is
returning to the subsistence, live-for-the-present mentality that existed
before the settlers arrived.
Zimbabwe dollars are used no more
– only South African rands and US dollars are legal daily tender, some
notes so dirty as to be illegible. People have taken to washing US dollars and
pegging them out to dry. Check points dot all the roads – it’s easy
money. What did you bring for me? asks the policeman as he stops your vehicle.
Then there are the toll roads, another attempt to siphon something from the
populace.
Democratic Republic of Congo, here
we come! Another beautiful, rich and superbly endowed African country bites the
dust, while its leader thumbs his nose at the rest of the world, shops in Hong
Kong and ignores his people’s suffering – all in the name of
democracy. Where are the United Nations resolutions condemning yet another
African tyrant? Where is the International Criminal Court?
Let us look at what the US, the UK
and the UN replaced in the name of one man, one vote.
The Zimbabwe government’s campaign
to obliterate commercial agriculture (certainly with a racist motive!), under
the guise of agrarian reform, but in reality in the interest of retaining power
through illegal and violent means, has been incredibly effective. Watched by
the so-called world community, Zimbabwe’s Mugabe set out to make life so
intolerable for whites that they would leave. And leave they did.
But they left behind a legacy no
one can obliterate, not even those who denigrated the old Rhodesia’s
farmers as oppressors and exploiters of the masses.
We quote hereunder from a 2008
quarterly issue of the Rhodesians Worldwide magazine:
“In the later nineteenth
century, the first white hunters, traders and missionaries who came to the
region which used to be known as Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe, found a land
devoid of infrastructure. The wheel was not yet in use. With a population of
about a quarter of a million at the time, most of the land was not occupied.
Commercial farming started in the 1890s on what was, for the most part, virgin
land. There were no roads, no railways, no electricity, no telephones, no
fences, boreholes, pumps, windmills, dams, irrigation schemes, cattle dips,
barns or any other farm buildings.
These first farmers had to discover
how to contend with predators that killed their livestock and other animals
that consumed their crops; and how to control diseases, pests and parasites
that were foreign to them. Knowledge and experience built up over generations
in the developed world had limited application in the new Rhodesia, since the
local climate, soil and vegetation were vastly different.
From this starting point, fraught
with difficulties, agriculture developed faster than it had anywhere else in
the world. Soon the country became self-sufficient in most agricultural
products. In many cases yields per hectare and quality equaled or bettered
those in the developed world.
The United Nations Food and
Agriculture Year Book of 1975 ranked the then Rhodesia second in the world
in terms of yields of maize, wheat, soya beans and groundnuts, and third for
cotton. In the combined ranking for all these crops, Rhodesia ranked first
in the world.
Some of these rankings were in fact
reached long before 1975. Rhodesia’s Virginia tobacco was rated the best
in the world in yield and quality, while maize entries in world
championships were constantly graded in the first three places.
The world’s largest single
citrus producer was developed early in the country’s history. The highest
quality breeding stock of numerous breeds of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and
poultry were imported. At the same time, the indigenous cattle were developed
through breeding and selection to highly productive and respected breeds.
Wildlife was incorporated into farming systems to develop a highly successful
eco-tourism industry and endangered species found their most secure havens on
farm conservancies.
Zimbabwe was the world’s
second largest exporter of flue-cured tobacco. Agriculture contributed more to
the Gross Domestic Product than any other industry. It was the largest employer
of labour, providing employment for about a third of the total labour force.
Zimbabwe indeed was the bread basket of Africa.”
The report continues with details
of government agricultural departments and technical colleges set up, of
veterinary services, of Research and Development of specialist products
including tobacco, of improved crop varieties, of livestock nutrition and
management, of wild life conservation, of water management, of sustainable
production through drought years as well as through high rainfall periods. (Rex
Tattersfield, a former plant breeder in Zimbabwe, was one of only five men in
the world awarded a gold medal for soybean research and development.)
The farmers contributed to the leadership,
fabric and welfare of society out of all proportion to their numbers. Each farm
was to a certain extent an outpost of civilization, where schools were
established, clinics and dispensaries were built, and where ambulance services
were almost always available.
No more. All of this has been
replaced by poverty, terror, wholesale theft and wastelands where once crops
grew. Yet this state of affairs seems preferable to the world than white
commercial farming control. The yardstick by which countries are now judged is
not whether people go hungry or are crushed by grinding poverty, but by whether
there is a democracy - of whatever sort - where tyrants stay in power for
decades, and where millions flee as refugees, never to return. Indeed, the West
has much to answer for, but they will not be held responsible for present-day
Zimbabwe. They have moved on and millions are left to pick up the pieces.
-
International Bulletin from TAU South Africa,
A new
spate of arrests in the name of Robert Mugabe's land 'reform' programme has
rocked the country's remaining commercial farming community, with at least four
arrests since last Tuesday. Most recently, last Friday police went to James
Taylor's Cedor Park Farm in Nyamandlovu, and arrested him. His son Matthew was
later also arrested when he went to Nyamandlovu police station to assist his
father. Both were kept behind bars over the weekend and were only released on
Monday, despite James being in a fragile medical condition due to a recent stroke
and diabetes. According to Chris Jarrett, the Chairman of the Southern African
Commercial Farmers Alliance (SAFCA), the Taylors have since been barred from
entering their property this week. Taylor gave up his Shirville Farm for
resettlement several years ago, and in return was allowed to stay on at Cedor
Park. Nevertheless the farm was invaded some months ago by a Mr. Chiguru who
claimed he had an offer letter which 'authorised' him to occupy Shirville Farm
next door - and Cedor Park. The Taylors immediately sought the intervention of
the High Court, who ordered that Chiguru vacate the property. But on Sunday it
was clear that Chiguru was being given some influential help, as police took
Taylor's son out of the cells, transported him to Cedor Park and ordered him to
clear the house, for Chiguru. "This whole situation makes a mockery of the
legal system in Zimbabwe," SACFA's Jarrett said. "There is no logic
to it at all." Meanwhile, last Tuesday six truckloads of armed police
arrived at Goff and Shirley Carbutt's Oscardale Farm in the Inyathi district of
Matabeleland North. They surrounded the homestead and proceeded to arrest Goff
for being in illegal occupation of 'state land'. This is despite him also
giving up a large portion of his property for 'resettlement' under the land
reform programme. As in the Taylor case, the Carbutt's had been allowed to
remain on a portion of the property, which was deemed as not being 'state
land'. But regardless of legal papers allowing them to remain on the farm, the
family was evicted from their home at gunpoint on Tuesday. Goff, who has
recently had a kidney transplant, was taken to the police station in Inyathi
where he had to sleep on the concrete floor of the police cells for two nights.
The convoy of police then proceeded to the vacant home of Ed Grenfell-Dexter of
Riverside and Riverbank farms. There they convinced his watchman to lure Dexter
out from Bulawayo, where he now lives. When he arrived he was arrested and was
also detained in Inyathi police cells for remaining on 'state land', despite
not living on the property anymore. The police then also went to Mike Huckle's
Felton farm and broke into the house where Huckle's staff lives. They gathered
all the staff together and told them they had one hour to vacate the farm.
Huckle is a South African resident and is meant to be protected by a recently
ratified bilateral investment protection agreement. That agreement has proved
fruitless, as a number of South African farmers in Zimbabwe have faced eviction
and harassment in recent months.
-
AfricanCrisis,
Here's a measure of how President Robert Mugabe destroying this
once lush nation of Zimbabwe. In a week of surreptitious reporting here
(committing journalism can be a criminal offense in Zimbabwe), ordinary people
said time and again that life had been better under the old, racist, White
regime [sic] of what was then called Rhodesia. "When the
country changed from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, we were very excited," one man,
Kizita, told me in a village of mud-walled huts near this town in western
Zimbabwe. "But we didn’t realize the ones we chased away were better
and the ones we put in power would oppress us. It would have been better if
Whites had continued to rule because the money would have continued to come,"
added a neighbour, a 58-year-old farmer named Isaac. "It was better under
Rhodesia. Then we could get jobs. Things were cheaper in stores. Now we have no
money, no food." Over and over, I cringed as I heard Africans wax
nostalgic about a nasty, oppressive regime run by a tiny White elite. Black
Zimbabweans responded that at least that regime was more competent than today's nasty, oppressive regime run by the tiny Black elite that
surrounds Mr. Mugabe. A [New York] Times colleague, Barry Bearak, was jailed
here in 2008 for reporting, so I used a fresh passport to enter the country as
a tourist. Partly for my own safety, I avoided interviewing people with ties to
the government, so I can't be sure that my glimpse of the
public mood was representative. People I talked to were terrified for their
personal safety if quoted - much more scared than in the past. That's why I'm being vague about
locations and agreed to omit full names. But what is clear is that Zimbabwe has
come very far downhill over the last few decades (although it has risen a bit
since its trough two years ago). An impressive health and education system is
in tatters, and life expectancy has tumbled from about 60 years in 1990 to
somewhere between 36 and 44, depending on which statistics you believe. Western
countries have made the mistake of focusing their denunciations on the seizures
of White farms by Mugabe's cronies. That's tribalism by Whites; by far the greatest suffering has
been endured by Zimbabwe's Blacks. In Kizita's village, for example, I met a 29-year-old woman, seven
months pregnant, who had malaria. She and her husband had walked more than four
miles to the nearest clinic, where she tested positive for malaria. But the
clinic refused to give her some life-saving anti-malaria medicine unless she
paid $2 - and she had no money at all in her house. So, dizzy and feverish, she
stumbled home for another four miles, empty-handed. As it happened, the clinic
that turned her down was one that I had already visited. Nurses there had
complained that they were desperately short of bandages, antibiotics and beds.
They said that to survive, they impose fees for seeing patients, for family
planning, for safe childbirth - and the upshot is that impoverished villagers
die because they can't pay. I also spent time at an
elementary school where the number of students had dropped sharply because so
few parents today can afford $36 in annual school fees. "We don't have desks. We don't
have chairs. We don't have books," explained the
principal, who was terrified of being named. The school also lacks electricity
and water, and the first grade doesn't have a classroom
and meets under a tree. This particular school had been founded by Rhodesians
more than 70 years ago, and the principal mused that it must have served Black
pupils far better in Rhodesian days than today. At another school 100 miles
away, the deputy headmaster lamented that students can't
even afford pens. "One child has to finish his work, and then he lends his
pen to another child," he explained.
- article
by Nicholas D. Kristoff, New York Times,
White
Zimbabwean [Rhodesian] farmers whose land was grabbed by Robert Mugabe plan to
turn the tables by seizing Zimbabwean-owned property in South Africa. Lawyers
for dispossessed farmers believe that on Monday they will be able to start
using the law to seize houses in Cape Town which are owned by the Zimbabwean
government. Their action, which follows a landmark legal ruling, promises to
humiliate Mugabe and embarrass South Africa's president Jacob Zuma, who was on
a state visit to Britain last week. The battle for justice fought by one of the
White farmers, Mike Campbell, aged 77, was featured in the documentary film
Mugabe and the White African. It was shown in British cinemas this year to
great acclaim. The film tells how he fought stubbornly to bring a legal case in
2008 against Mugabe's government at the Southern African Development Community
tribunal, based in the Namibian [South-West African] capital Windhoek. Mr
Campbell won a victory when the court ruled that Mugabe's farm takeovers were
racist in nature and therefore illegal. At the North Gauteng [PWV area] High
Court in the South African capital Pretoria last month, the farmers successfully
applied for the Namibian [South-West African] judgement to be enforced in South
Africa. Lawyers acting for the Mr Campbell and a group of other farmers believe
after that ruling they can seize Zimbabwean government-owned property, to
recover legal costs from the South African case. Mr Campbell, who was severely
beaten by land invaders in 2008, was too frail to comment yesterday. But his
son-in-law Ben Freeth, 41, said: "This is not about revenge. This is about
the long arm of the law. We hope to expand our actions further and investigate
whether we can, in time, sue individuals who were responsible for what has been
going on." Late last year Mr Freeth watched helplessly as thugs burned
down his farmhouse in Zimbabwe. Their representatives have identified at least
11 properties which are owned by the government of Zimbabwe, including houses
in Cape Town worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Unlike properties in
Pretoria which are connected to the embassy, the Cape Town properties are
thought not to be protected by diplomatic immunity. The lawyers say it will be
a groundbreaking development, as they are not aware of any precedent for
government-owned properties being seized in pursuit of a civil judgement. The
timing is awkward for Zuma. This week the South African president called for
Western sanctions to be lifted against Mugabe and his cronies, during a state
visit to Britain. The EU recently renewed sanctions for another year, although
Western officials point out the sanctions hit only specific regime members
rather than the Zimbabwean people as a whole.
-
AfricanCrisis,
MDC-T has
suspended Bulawayo South legislator Mr Eddie Cross over allegations of
indiscipline as internecine strife deepens in the party. Mr Cross is party
leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai's economic advisor and is a member of MDC-T's
national executive. It is understood that the leadership is still trying to
come up with a "soft" way of officially communicating the suspension
because they fear a backlash from the White Rhodesian donor element that has
traditionally backed Mr Cross' position in the party hierarchy. They also fear
that, if not properly managed, the affair could open a can of worms that will
reveal the extent of divisions within MDC-T. Reliable sources say the decision
to suspend Mr Cross was taken at a meeting of the party's Standing Committee at
Wild Geese Lodge in Harare last Friday. "Cross was suspended last week
when the party held a meeting at Wild Geese Lodge. He is accused of
disseminating information on the Internet and in the Press without clearance
from the party and some of the statements were against party policies,"
one of the sources said. Among the statements the party is using to nail Mr
Cross was his declaration last year that the land reform programme was
unacceptable and reversible. In the article - which appeared on many online
publications - Mr Cross said MDC-T's national executive had resolved that the
land reform programme was unacceptable and would be reviewed. His remarks went
against Article V of the Global Political Agreement, which upholds the
irreversibility of the land reform programme. Another source said the
suspension was part of an attempt to "purge the Rhodesian element calling
the shots in the Prime Minister's Office". The source said Mr Cross had
"rubbed raw nerves when he wrote an article in which he essentially said
he wanted to see the inclusive Government crash and burn". The source said
the statements gave foundation to those who said MDC-T were "puppets".
"The progressive elements in our party are trying to shake off the
Rhodesian element that has permeated the ranks. They are, however, yet to
communicate the decision (suspension) to Cross as it will have serious
repercussions with Rhodesian elements in South Africa and Australia," said
the source. A third source said MDC-T was in the process of notifying donors on
Mr Cross' suspension. "They took the decision but they are afraid to
implement it. Cross is connected. They have not notified him officially but he
is already aware of it," the source said.Yesterday, Mr Cross would neither
confirm nor deny his suspension. "I do not know. I have not heard about
it," he said. Contacted for comment, MDC-T deputy president Ms Thokozani
Khupe asked: "Who has told you that?" She went on to claim: "It
is not true. We have not yet had any standing committee or national executive
meeting." When it was pointed out that the national executive did, in
fact, meet at Wild Geese last week she backtracked and said: "That issue
(Cross' suspension) was never discussed." This development comes as the
party is investigating three senior officials - Energy Minister Elias Mudzuri,
Mines Deputy Minister Murisi Zwizwai and Home Affairs co-Minister Giles
Mutsekwa. The three are accused of corruption.
- AfricanCrisis,
A White
Zimbabwean farming family, who were forced out off their land, have had a first
taste of revenge against Robert Mugabe's regime after a documentary on their
plight emerged as an Oscar contender. Mugabe and the White African opens in
London this week after being named best documentary at the British Independent
Film Awards in December. The movie, directed by Andrew Thompson and Lucy
Bailey, is being likened to non-fiction films that achieved global success,
such as Super Size Me, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Touching the Void. It tells how Mike
Campbell, his wife Angela, daughter Laura, son- in-law Ben Freeth and their
black Zimbabwean workers battled to keep hold of Mount Carmel, the mango farm
70 miles south-west of Harare [Salisbury] where his family had lived for 30
years, in the face of beatings by militia gangs loyal to Mr Mugabe. The family
lost a long battle to hold on to the farm last year despite winning an
unprecedented court case against the Zimbabwean government. The Campbells and
Freeths were burned out of their homes in August and Mount Carmel Farm was
occupied by Nathan Shamuyarira, an octogenarian former cabinet minister and
President Mugabe's offical biographer. Mr Freeth, his wife and their three
children now live in a friend's house about 10 miles away in the town of
Chegutu while Mr and Mrs Campbell live in the capital Harare [Salisbury].
Months earlier Mr Campbell, 76, was subjected to a horrenous beating after he
petitioned a tribunal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) rule
against Mr Mugabe's efforts to seize white owned farms. After a nine-hour
ordeal at a militia camp, Mr Campbell was so badly injured that he could not
attend the hearing in Namibia; Mr Freeth, whose skull was fractured, managed to
be present in a wheelchair with his head bandaged. "We knew there would be
consequences, taking on Mugabe," Mr Freeth said. "He's a dictator, he
doesn't brook any opposition or anyone trying to bring him to book in any way.
But we felt it was very, very important to ensure the world really knew what
was going on in this country, so it had a chance to put an end to the
suffering." Mr Mugabe once declared: "The White man is not indigenous
to Africa. Africa is for Africans. Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans." But the
tribunal's ruling in Mr Campbell's favour was an unprecedented reverse for this
doctrine - effectively determining that Mr Campbell and others like him had the
same rights as Zimbabwe's majority Black African population. However in February
last year, President Mugabe declared that he would ignore the SADC ruling and
the forcible seizures would continue. Mike Campbell, 76, hopes it will force
the international spotlight back on the campaign of violent, state-sponsored
farm evictions which has continued under Mr Mugabe even though he was forced to
form a new power-sharing government.
-
AfricanCrisis,
President
Robert Mugabe on Friday called Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's choice for a
ministerial post an "offspring of a settler" who was not Zimbabwean,
a remark which is likely to further strain the country's fragile coalition
government. Mugabe was referring to Roy Bennett, a White commercial farmer who
was driven off his land by Mugabe's controversial land reform targeting Whites.
Mugabe has refused to appoint Bennett as deputy agriculture minister in the
coalition government with Tsvangirai's Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC), saying he must first be cleared of terrorism
charges he is facing. Addressing a congress of his ZANU-PF in Harare
[Salisbury], the president attacked the MDC as a puppet of the West, saying
they asked for sanctions to be imposed on Zimbabwe. "To the MDC I say:
Open your eyes. This is your country and not for Whites. Not the Bennetts. They
are settlers, even if they were born here they are offspring of settlers,"
he said. The ZANU-PF congress, which ends on Saturday, has already nominated
Mugabe as its presidential candidate in the country's next election, for which
no date has been set. Mugabe and Tsvangirai formed a power sharing government
in February, following a disputed presidential election run-off that the
international community refused to recognise. Tsvangirai had trounced Mugabe in
the first round. In his speech on Friday, Mugabe admitted for the first time he
lost an election. He attributed the loss due to the internal squabbles of his
party. He repeated his calls for the West to remove the sanctions imposed on
him and some ZANU-PF senior members in 2002 following a spate of human rights abuses
and allegations of a rigged election. Mugabe said the
sanctions were unjustified and meant to punish him for his controversial land
reform programme. "If you have a rich country, well naturally-resourced
whether mineral, agricultural, or otherwise, they envy these resources, they
find ways of penetrating your system," said Mugabe. He claimed that
Britain formed the MDC to change revolutionary trends in Zimbabwe. "That
is how the MDC was formed. They (Great Britain) did not hide this. They were
blatant." Bennett, 52, is on trial for allegedly plotting to overthrow
Mugabe's government in 2006. Mugabe's opponents have often been charged with
plotting insurgency, but none of the charges ever stuck.
- News24,
The
treasurer of Zimbabwe’s former opposition party went on trial on
terrorism charges yesterday in a case that could decide the future of the
fragile “unity” government. Roy Bennett denies plotting to
overthrow Robert Mugabe. His party, the Movement for Democratic Change, says
that the accusations are politically motivated. The MDC and Mugabe’s
ZANU-PF formed a unity government earlier this year, but they co-exist
uneasily. The MDC has only just returned to joint meetings with ZANU-PF, having
suspended co-operation last month over Mugabe’s refusal to implement key
provisions of the power-sharing agreement. Its complaints include malicious
prosecution of the party’s activists, and if Mr. Bennett is convicted,
let alone condemned to death, the maximum possible penalty, it is unlikely that
the coalition will survive. Mr. Bennett was nominated as Deputy Agriculture
Minister by the MDC, but was arrested before he could be sworn in. His lawyers
have argued that Michael Hitschmann, the main witness against him, was tortured
while in custody. He was convicted of illegal weapons possession in 2007, but
did not implicate Mr. Bennett at his own trial. Johannes Tomana, the
country’s attorney general whose unilateral appointment by Mugabe is one
of the MDC’s key complaints, is personally leading Mr. Bennett’s
prosecution. Many senior figures in Mugabe’s party genuinely believe
their propaganda that the MDC is a tool of the West, bent on re-colonising
Zimbabwe by force of arms if needs be.
- Daily Telegraph,
Zimbabwe has lost about 200 rhinoceroses - a quarter of its
total population - to rampant poaching over the last three years as security
and the economy deteriorated, state media reported on Tuesday. The southern
African country has been badly damaged by an economic crisis, which critics
blame on Mugabe's seizure of White-owned farms, including wildlife farms, to
resettle landless Blacks. The director of the National Parks and Wildlife
Authority, Morris Mutsambiwa, told a parliamentary committee that 86 poachers
linked to international smuggling syndicates had been arrested this year alone.
"We have lost close to 200 rhinos in the last two to three years,"
Mutsambiwa was quoted saying by the Herald newspaper. "From the
intelligence we are gathering, we strongly believe that there are syndicates
which operate in the region, involving locals." Estimates put Zimbabwe's
black and white rhino population at about 500 and 300, respectively. Mutsambiwa
said poachers were mainly targeting the low-lying south-eastern part of Zimbabwe
and the Zambezi valley to the north. Asia seemed to be the main destination for
the illicit rhino horns. Mutsambiwa said the wildlife authority was unable to
provide adequate security, hence the rise in poaching cases.
- AfricanCrisis,
As
expected, given the illusionary sham of the so-called 'deal' between the ruling
ZANU-PF regime and the opposition MDC, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's
office has ridiculed the boycott of cabinet meetings announced by his 'partner'
in the so-called unity government, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. Two days
after Tsvangirai's announcement, a spokesperson for the ZANU-PF president
said in state media that government will conduct business 'with or without the
prime minister's party'. "The MDC-T has disengaged from nothing. It's
sound and fury signifying nothing. The MDC-T president knows that. It's a poor
protest," George Charamba told the Sunday Mail, referring to Tsvangirai's
Movement for Democratic Change.The 85-year-old dictator has so far not even bothered
to reply personally. "As for this needless excitement from the MDC-T, I
suppose the president will find time when the right time comes," Charamba
said, with Mugabe having been busy selecting students to study abroad and with
Zimbabwe's football team. Many independent observers have long pointed out that
the so-called deal between ZANU-PF and the MDC has been a sham, forced on
Tsvangirai by powers embarrassed by the blatant disregard of election results
by Mugabe, the man they put in power in 1980 to get rid of the White Rhodesian
government. The 'unity rule' has enabled Mugabe to re-gain some international
acceptance and ease the return to stability, getting some money from
international donors - though governments like the US still refuse to officially
lift all sanctions. Having bent over backwards to try and make it work,
Tsvangirai has now announced a boycott of cabinet meetings, following repeated
provocations and harassment of his party's leadership and members. The straw
that broke the camel's back seems to have been the renewed detention of one of
his top aides, Roy Bennett, on terrorism charges this week in a move that the
leader said showed the "fiction of the credibility and integrity" of
the unity government. The long-suffering White former coffee farmer, whose land
was expropriated under Mugabe's land grab policies, was later released on bail
and a Mutare [Umtali] court is set on Monday to decide the date of his
postponed trial. The MDC has said it is disengaging only from co-operation with
Mugabe's party and not quitting the government - though it is unclear how,
since the two parties share power through an internationally mediated unity
pact.
-
Southern Cross Africa News,
Marauding
gangs of armed robbers are on the loose in Harare [Salisbury] and are pouncing
on unsuspecting motorists and travelers, stealing vehicles, cash and other
valuables. A Harare man was stripped naked yesterday morning and robbed of a
Toyota Hiace, valuables and US$170 cash by five armed robbers along Willowvale
Road. In separate incidents the same day, nine people lost over US$700 cash,
cellphones [mobile ‘phones] and other valuables to five robbers driving a
Mazda Eagle. The first incident occurred at around 3:30am near a block of flats
in Highfield along Willowvale Road. Harare [Salisbury] provincial police
spokesperson Inspector James Sabau said one of the robbers pretended as if
their car, a blue Datsun 120Y, had broken down. He waved down the commuter
omnibus and the unsuspecting driver stopped with the intention of offering
assistance. He went over to the vehicle and found four other men sitting
inside. The gang reportedly asked for tools to fix their vehicle and as the
kombi driver was walking towards his commuter omnibus, which had no registration
numbers, he was hit with an iron bar. They assaulted him all over the body
before stealing US$170 cash, LG cellphones [mobile ‘phones], clothes and
a leather jacket. One of the robbers went behind the wheel of the commuter
omnibus and sped off. Insp Sabau said in another incident over the weekend,
three people were offered a lift by robbers at the intersection of First Street
and Robert Mugabe Road at around 11:30pm on Saturday. Near Cresta Lodge, the
robbers, who claimed they were going to Mutare [Umtali], stopped the vehicle
and asked for fares on the pretext that they wanted to buy more fuel. While
collecting the money, it is reported that they demanded cash and personal
property from the complainants. They collected US$473, two cellphones [mobile ‘phones],
a pair of shoes and a satchel. The gang dumped the victims and drove off. A
report was made to the police. Insp Sabau said the same gang had at midnight
last Friday robbed six people of US$250 cash, cellphones [mobile ‘phones]
and various goods along Seke Road. He said they offered the victims a lift to
Chitungwiza along Julius Nyerere Way. On the way, the gang -- one of them armed
with an iron bar -- ordered all the passengers to surrender all their
valuables. The complainants surrendered US$250, a G-Tide, Samsung and Nokia N93
cellphones [mobile ‘phones], shoes and three handbags. They were driven
along a dirt road where they were dumped by the gang before it headed back
towards Seke Road.
-
AfricanCrisis,
Zimbabwe
could start using the Rand as its currency this year. The country's finance
minister, Tendai Biti, said his ministry was exploring three options and a
decision would be made by the end of the year. One of the options is to join
the rand monetary union. We will also consider continuing with the [current]
regime of multiple currencies or bring back the Zimbabwean dollar and
re-denominate it either with the rand or the US Dollar, he said. Economist
Dawie Roodt said South Africans should not be concerned if Zimbabwe adopted the
Rand. I'm very much in favour of such a move. People assume that the Rand could
go the same way as the Zimbabwean Dollar, but that simply won't be the case.
Biti's comments come after ex-President Kgalema Motlanthe suggested in February
that it would be a practical move for Zimbabwe as part of their economic
recovery plan under its coalition government. The idea was hailed at the time
by economists. However, such a move would take away Zimbabwe's powers over its
monetary policies. It also means Zimbabwe's interest rates and inflation levels
will be the same as South Africa's. Biti said: Any such decision depends on the
performance of the economy - that would be the ultimate deciding issue. He said
there were signs of stability with the country expecting a growth rate for the
year of 6%. Zimbabwe recorded a -1.1% inflation rate in April. Just last month
Biti announced that Zimbabwe would be receiving 400-million in credit lines
from several African countries. Chris Hart, an economist at Investment Solutions,
said adopting the Rand was an important step in terms of Zimbabwe's recovery.
It effectively imposes a fiscal and monetary discipline with the Zimbabwean
economy functioning on a basis where it does business that is more competitive
on an international basis. He said it could be painful initially because, among
other things, our interest rates will be linked to theirs and they will have to
cut back expenditure. However, it would put their economy on a stronger footing
in the long term. Roodt said the only downside would be that, in the short
term, South Africa would probably have to lend Zimbabwe Rands to kick-start any
switch-over. We can either provide them a loan or they can earn it. The latter
is probably best as then we don't have to run any major risk. Last week the
African Development Bank announced a short-term emergency recovery programme in
Zimbabwe. The bank called for greater foreign assistance and an injection of
private capital to resuscitate the economy. Announcing the strategy that would cover
the next 19 months to December 2010, the bank said it had eliminated the
quasi-fiscal activities of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and introduced cash
budgeting, spending only what it receives in revenue.
- AfricanCrisis,
Zimbabwe
has this week been rated as the most food-aid dependent country in the world, a
title that comes as the unity government continues to refuse to act on the
ongoing land invasions. According to a report released by the International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies this week, up to 80% of the
population relies on food-aid to survive. The report also revealed that more
than half of the children who died as a result of the cholera epidemic were
critically malnourished. The details in the report are a shocking indication of
the severity of the ongoing crisis in Zimbabwe, which used to be regarded as
the 'breadbasket of Africa'. The Global Political Agreement (GPA) that set out
the guidelines for the formation of the unity government, called for the
production of food to be encouraged to counter the desperate food crisis in the
country. But, in complete violation of this point in the GPA, farm invasions
have intensified and even been encouraged by Mugabe, to the point that food
production is mostly non-existent. The ongoing and increasingly violent land
attacks are therefore the leading cause of the country's suffering and lack of
investment, and yet the unity government seems unable to take any action to
stop the attacks. During an interview about the 100-day milestone of the Global
Political Agreement last week, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai even played
down the serious nature of the invasions, calling them 'isolated incidents'
that have been 'blown out of proportion'. "We have investigated examples
of those so-called farm invasions," the Prime Minister continued,
repeatedly referring to the land invasions as 'so-called' attacks. "We
have asked the Minister of Lands (ZANU-PF) to give us a detailed report of what
has been happening over all these so-called farm invasions and the outcry over
that." Tsvangirai also insisted that the matter was being attended to,
despite the clear lack of action by the government that has already sparked
anger in the beleaguered farming community. Justice for Agriculture's (JAG)
John Worsley-Worswick explained on Tuesday that the Prime Minister's comments
are a gross "misrepresentation of the facts," that will ultimately
jeopardise the future of the country. He further explained that "papering
over the cracks," by playing down the severity of the land attacks, will
not solve the bigger problem, saying: "We have a massive humanitarian
crisis on our hands that will not be solved until the MDC challenges the Mugabe
administration on issues such as the land attacks." The JAG official
expressed frustration and disappointment over the MDC's unwillingness to
confront ZANU-PF, explaining the party is becoming complicit with ongoing
crime. "Farmers are now being exposed as a soft target because no one will
take action to stop these attacks happening," Worsley-Worswick explained.
"The continued infringement of property rights is a crime that no one is
doing anything about." Many farmers have been forced into hiding as a
result of the latest attacks, while more than 100 are already facing
prosecution on trumped up land-related charges. The physical land attacks have
also become increasingly violent in recent weeks, and in most cases, farm
workers have been the victims of beatings and harassment at the hands of land
invaders. Thousands more workers have lost their jobs because of the forced
takeover of land by ZANU-PF loyalists, adding to the 94% unemployment already
crippling the country.
-
AfricanCrisis,
The death rate inside Chikurubi prison, about 12 miles
east of Harare [Salisbury], compares with the worst jails in history, according
to The Standard, an independent
weekly newspaper. Of the 1,300 inmates, at least 700 have died in revolting
conditions. Six were found dead in their filthy cells yesterday alone. About the
same number died last weekend. Some 100 bodies, many of them mutilated by rats,
are stacked up in the prison mortuary. If they are unclaimed, they will be
buried as paupers in prison grounds. The collapse of Zimbabwe's economy and of
the state itself has crippled the prison system, leaving thousands of inmates
with scarcely any food. Any provision of medical care has also collapsed,
leaving prisoners to die of starvation and disease. Chikurubi packs about 30
inmates into cells designed for only 10. An off-duty warder confirmed the
figure of 700 dead and said the mortality rate in other prisons was probably
similar. "It's the same at all the rest of the prisons around the
country," he said. "We often find six died at a time. A lot have AIDS,
but die quickly because they don't have enough food." Since Zimbabwe's new
coalition government took office in February, the International Committee of
the Red Cross has begun improving prison conditions, installing a borehole in
Chikurubi two months ago.The death rate has recently fallen, but prisoners
still succumb almost every day. Between November and January, 327 deaths were
recorded at Chikurubi - almost a quarter of all the inmates.Major-General
Paradzai Zimondi, the commissioner of prisons, is in President Robert Mugabe's
inner circle. "He has never been to see what is going on in
Chikurubi" said the warder. "He doesn't care."
- Daily Telegraph, May 19, 2009
If the
state of the toilets in public and even private buildings in Harare [Salisbury]
were a measure of the inclusive government's progress, then it has failed
miserably. In the courts, in the ministries, in all public buildings and some
privately owned office blocks, the putrid smell of human waste is perhaps
President Mugabe's most telling legacy. Emaciated prisoners in fetid cells
where water pipes have not been fixed since the days of Rhodesian rule are
another legacy of ZANU-PF's staggering failure, which goes way beyond the 10
years of political turmoil since the Movement for Democratic Change emerged.
Even top government schools which used to produce some of the best education
results are shells. Some of the bricks and mortar are still there, but the
windows, desks, doors, blackboards and books are missing. Despite this aversion
to maintenance, Mugabe's power is slowly ebbing, mostly because he can't get
hold of the cash for his power base. The re-detention on Tuesday of 18
activists accused of a repetitive plot - trying to overthrow Mugabe - was the
most serious ZANU-PF breach of the political agreement to date, even if 15 were
freed on bail 24 hours later. There are so many breaches of the political
agreement it is astonishing that it still there at all. But neither side has
any alternative. As one diplomat said after the re-arrests: "Prime
Minister (Morgan) Tsvangirai can't threaten to walk out more than once. So he
has a very difficult balancing act. But we do wish he, personally, would speak
out more critically." Mugabe never gives up, even as his control - now
limited to a diminishing group of thugs in the riot police and their senior
officers, the hard core of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and
military intelligence - is waning. The ordinary policeman is much more
interested in organising a roadblock to extract bribes from motorists than
looking for the mythical weapons Mugabe claims photo-journalist Shadreck
Manyere, still in detention in hospital on Friday, had stashed somewhere among
his laptop and cameras. It has begun to dawn on some ZANU-PF civil servants
that the US Marines, the British Army and Rhodesians on zimmer-frames have not
been massing on the border, as their CIO masters have been telling them. Mugabe
has been at this particular game - keeping Zimbabwe on a war footing for a
mythical invading force - for decades. His methods are not working as well as
they used to, but he is not finished yet. Three times in the past week he put
off a meeting to address his violations of the political agreement. Will he
make concessions after he has attended President Jacob Zuma's inauguration?
Probably not. Then what? Then the MDC will have to recommend that the SADC
tries to resolve outstanding issues, which even some of its apologists
recognise are, indeed, outstanding.
-
AfricanCrisis,
The
Zimbabwean government has decided to suspend the country's national currency
for a year, which has in fact already disappeared from circulation, state-run
media reported on Sunday. "The Zimbabwe dollar will be out for at least a
year because there is nothing to support and hold its value," Economic
Planning Minister Elton Mangoma told the Sunday Mail. In January, in response
to unprecedented hyperinflation, Zimbabwe legalised the use of foreign
currencies including the Botswana pula, the South African rand, the United States
dollar, the Euro and the British pound. The Zimbabwe dollar immediately went
out of circulation. In the past two years Zimbabwe's central bank knocked 22
zeros off the local currency as the country's economy plunged info freefall.
The highest note previously in circulation, a 10-trillion Zimbabwe dollar note,
was not even enough to buy a loaf of bread.
-
AfricanCrisis,
As Mugabe
continues persecuting White farmers, eight of them have been arrested for
refusing to vacate State land. Two of the farmers have already appeared in
appeared in separate courts in Chegutu and Chiredzi over land-related issues.
The harassment of farmers comes hard on the heels of calls by Prime Minister
Morgan Tsvangirai to halt the farm invasions. The farm invasions are likely to
affect Zimbabwe’s efforts top secure financial aid from the international
community, warned analysts. In Chegutu, Martin Joubert was charged with taking
hostage eight youths living on a farm allocated to Zanu-PF information and publicity
secretary.Nathan Shamuyarira. Digby Sean Nesbitt appeared in a Chiredzi court
for refusing to vacate a farm allocated to the Officer Commanding Matabeleland
North Province, Senior Assistant Commissioner Edmore Veterai. Still in
Chiredzi, former farmers Michael Fay-Dherbe of Farm 33 Hippo Valley Settlement,
Benoit Lagesse of Farm 1 Hippo Valley, Cecil Jean Derobellad, Tony Renato Sarto
of Lot 1 Ranch North, Jeffrey Soma of Lot 2 Fair Ranch and Mariah Theressa
Warth of Wasara Ranch were arrested for refusing to vacate acquired farms. Also
arrested were farm managers Jaison Mahomu (Lagesse), Albert Chisango
(Derobellad) and Chenzira Wilson Gondo (Soma). Warth is expected to appear in
court today, while the other five are due to stand in the dock on April 16.
-
AfricanCrisis,
Harvey
Clifford Potter (aka Cliff), was born during the depression in Rochdale,
Lancashire, on 3rd March 1929. He spent many nights in air raid shelters there
during World War II before being evacuated to Fleetwood with his younger
brother Norman (a stalwart of the Rhodesians
Worldwide Kent Branch, who sadly died at the end of 2007) . During
this time he joined the Air Training Corps as a cadet attending parades twice a
week. At the age of 14 he left school to work at the local aircraft factory,
following advice from the headmaster to "help win the war". This was something he later regretted as he
forfeited the opportunity for further education. After WWII he moved to
Blackpool with his parents, where they purchased a beachfront hotel. It was
during this time, aged 17, he decided to join the Royal Navy Supply &
Secretariat branch. To satisfy his interest in both aircraft and ships he
served on two aircraft carriers, namely HMS
Implacable and HMS Illustrious. In
1949 his parents decided to sell up and immigrate, along with his brother and
sister. Their decision was based on an article published by Rhodesia House
in the local newspaper promising readers "Your place
in the sun" and an opportunity to "immigrate
and flourish". He was extremely lucky to obtain a compassionate release
from the Royal Navy and traveled with his family to Southern Rhodesia. After
two years in Rhodesia he returned to the UK to marry Jean, the girl he met
before the family emigrated. His two children were born 1952 and 1955
– first generation Rhodesians! After marrying he joined the civil service
in Southern Rhodesia, completing 33 years of pensionable service. This service
started in the GPO engineering branch followed by many happy years in the Royal
Rhodesian Air Force. He retired from the RRAF, aged 50, but continued in the
civil service as an Executive Officer with the Ministry of Defence, followed by
a period with the Ministry of Agriculture where he eventually retired aged
60. During this time he was called up to the RRAF on many occasions. He
became a founder member of the Royal
Naval Association of Rhodesia, serving 31 years as a "skipper" and treasurer, and also served over 25 years in the
Combined Shell-Hole MOTHs in Salisbury where he was the "Old
Bill" for 15 years. In July 2005 he made the difficult decision
to leave the country he loved, and that had been his home for 56 years, in
order to return to the UK. A decision made by many others living in
Zimbabwe. He is the proud grandfather of six grandchildren, and also has one
great grandson living in Sydney Australia.
- ORAFs
report,
Zimbabwe
will introduce a Z$100-trillion note in its latest attempt to keep pace with hyperinflation
that has left its once-vibrant economy in tatters, state media said Friday. The
new $100,000,000,000,000 bill would have been worth about US$300 at Thursday's
exchange rate on the informal market, where most currency trading now takes
place, but the value of the local currency erodes dramatically every day. The
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is introducing three other notes in trillion-dollar
denominations of 10, 20 and 50, the government mouthpiece Herald newspaper said. "In a move meant to ensure that the
public has access to their money from banks, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has
introduced a new family of banknotes which will gradually come into
circulation, starting with the $10-trillion," the bank said in a statement
quoted by the Herald. Just last week,
the bank had introduced billion-dollar bills in denominations of 10, 20 and 50
with the same goal, but those notes are no longer large enough to keep up with
hyperinflation. The last official estimate put inflation at 231 million % in
July, but outside experts now believe it is many times higher. When Zimbabwe's
leader Robert Mugabe first took power in 1980 the local unit was worth about
the same as the British pound. With the local currency in freefall, everyone
from street-side vegetable vendors to mobile phone service providers are
pegging their prices in foreign currency to hedge against losses. Zimbabwe's
central bank has licensed at least 1,000 shops to sell goods in foreign
currency in a move aimed at helping businesses suffering from a chronic
shortage of foreign currency to import spare parts and foreign goods. Other
shops and service providers have followed suit al! though they have not been
authorised by the government and have done so despite warnings that those
arrested for flouting foreign exchange regulations would be prosecuted. Even
basic commodities are scarce in Zimbabwe, driving up their prices in US dollar
terms and making life here more expensive than in neighbouring countries, while
an estimated 80 % of the population has been driven into poverty. The crisis
has left Zimbabwe's health services in tatters, with government doctors and
nurses on an indefinite strike to demand higher wages after hyperinflation
turned their salaries into pittances. Even if the doctors were on the job,
public hospitals and clinics have no money to buy medicine or equipment, no
clean water, and often scant supplies of electricity. Most teachers have left
the classroom to eek out a living elsewhere, and end-of-year examinations taken
in November have yet to be graded after the markers demanded their wages in
foreign currency, the Herald said on
Friday. Schools were supposed to re-open this week for the new academic year,
but government has already pushed back the start of classes by two weeks since
students don't yet know if they passed. The breakdown in the national
infrastructure has allowed a cholera epidemic to spread across Zimbabwe,
claiming more than 2,100 lives, according to UN estimates. Meanwhile, chronic
shortages of food are starting to bite again this year, as rural households'
supplies from last year's harvest are running out months before the new crops
will be ready. The World Food Programme says five million people - nearly half
the population - are dependent on food aid.
- ZWNews,
January 16, 2009
More than
30,000 people in Zimbabwe have been diagnosed with cholera, the World Health
Organisation said Thursday, as the number of those contracting the deadly
disease continues to mount. As many as 31,656 suspected cases were diagnosed to
date with one third of them in the capital of Harare [Salisbury], the WHO said.
The organisation last reported some 29,131 suspected cases on Monday and 1,564
deaths from the water-borne disease. Cholera also continues to plague
neighbouring South Africa, where it has killed 13 people, mainly in the Limpopo
border region where nine people have died from a total of 1,334 suspected
cases, the WHO said citing South African sources. United Nations aid agencies
fear Zimbabwe may be hit with up to 60,000 cases, with the upcoming rainy
season likely to spread the disease more easily.
- report
sent by RH-GE (Johannesburg), January 2, 2009
I have
just returned from Mutare (Umtali) , numbed by the slaughter I have seen. When
contacted with the news of these events I packed a truck with food and
blankets and went down with my staff to see what help we could offer. I could
not imagine what I was about to see. Bullets whistling across main roads,
people screaming and running as bullets punched holes through their homes,
bodies being dumped into army trucks. I eventually placed the food and blankets
with a church group for distribution and headed to central Mutare (Umtali) to
see if I could get help sent south to Marange. Everyone, ZRP included, are too
scared to move. Helping a family look for two missing relatives at the Mutare
(Umtali) morgue has left me with visions of horror that will haunt me to my
death day. I estimate over 200 bodies lies in rotting piles at the morgue,
grotesque heaps of what were human beings until a few days ago. They are
unknown persons, families are scared to come forward to claim them, fearing the
same fate. The stench is indescribable; power is off in Mutare (Umtali) for
between 12 and 18 hours per day. You may ask what this is all about. It is
simple. The dead are “suspected” by the military bosses to be
illegal diamond panners. No due process, no presumption of innocence, no right
to defend ones self in a court of law, just instant summary execution by the
defenders of this “liberation”. Top businessmen in Mutare (Umtali)
have been picked up by the army, and taken away, tortured for a few days,
released, no charges, no crimes, just a "suspicion" that "maybe
you know something". They are also robbed of any Forex they have on
them/in their homes. I met two of them at an attorneys office, one is a 70 year
old man, his back and buttocks beaten for 3 days, until he begged them to kill
him, then they realised he actually did not know anything. Another, Ari
Badhella (family of Badhella Traders) bought his way out of the torture
sessions.
- report
sent by “Neil”,
Growing
international fury came as cholera ravaged the people - 575 have died and
13,000 are infected - and the economy is worse than anything the world has
seen. The Zimbabwe central bank sacked executives at four banks accused of
illegal foreign currency trading. The managers were sacked for diverting
Zimbabwean dollars to the black market before the notes were introduced,
central bank Governor Gideon Gono told the state-run Herald newspaper.
Referring to reports that the central bank itself bought black market currency,
Gono said: 'We are sick and tired of being labeled crooks.' Inflation is at
231,000,000 per cent and the Reserve Bank has been unable to print money fast
enough to keep up with prices, which double every 24 hours.
- AfricanCrisis, December 9, 2008
The
embattled Zimbabwean strongman, Robert Mugabe ordered the chilling execution of
16 rioting soldiers in a cold blood murder carried out by members of the
Presidential Guard death squads at its PG HQ Base in Dzivarasekwa, north-west
of the capital. Three others died during torture, we can reveal. The callous
act has been communicated to all members of the armed forces as a chilling
warning by the paranoid regime. Last night, a fast track military court marshal
at Army Head Quarters' KG6 Barracks was presided over by the retired High Court
judge Major General George Chiweshe, sitting with three other assessors, two
Majors and a Captain. They passed death sentences to the 16 soldiers and it was
signed by Robert Mugabe just before midnight and executions were carried out
around 4am in the presents of a military doctor and the victim's bodies were
taken to unknown destination. It is not known whether relatives of the victims
have been informed. Major General Chiweshe is the current Chairman of the
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, and prior to his appointment to the High Court
bench he was the Director Army Legal Services (DLS). The 16 soldiers executed
on Tuesday morning are believed to have been arrested during the skirmish with
police in the last few days. It is also reported that three other soldiers died
during torture. Zimbabwe is also facing a cholera epidemic which has killed
more than 400 people.
- AfricanCrisis,
The
Zimbabwean capital, Harare [Salisbury], is offering free graves for victims of
a cholera outbreak sweeping the southern African state, which a United Nations agency
says is only the tip of a health crisis. Nearly 400 people have died from the
disease, preventable and treatable under normal conditions, which has infected
more than 9,400 in the country and spread to some of its neighbours. Harare
City Council has decided not to charge fees for the burial of victims of the
water-borne disease as residents are already under pressure from an economic
crisis, including shortages of food and banknotes, the state Herald newspaper
said on Saturday. "Council has since resolved to offer free graves to
those who have died of cholera since most people are finding it hard to get
cash to pay for the graves," it quoted the town clerk as saying. A grave
in Harare costs an average of $30, a teacher's monthly salary at the current exchange
rate. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday a lack of clean
drinking water and adequate toilets were the main triggers of Zimbabwe's
epidemic of cholera, a diarrhoeal disease that is especially fatal for
children. WHO spokesperson Fadela Chaib said there are very few places where
people infected with cholera in Zimbabwe can seek medical care, and the clinics
that are open have far too few health workers to contain the outbreak.
International aid groups are building latrines, distributing medicine and
hygiene kits, delivering truckloads of water, and repairing blocked sewers
across Zimbabwe to combat the cholera outbreak, which has moved into South
Africa and Botswana.
- Reuters
report,
Nearly a decade
of economic meltdown has made it impossible for Harare [Salisbury] to import
adequate chemicals to treat water. As a result, many citizens have
resorted to shallow wells and rivers to obtain drinking water. Meanwhile the
United Nations says about half the population is in urgent need of food aid.
Unemployment is estimated at 90% and official inflation at 231 million % - the
highest in the world. The health and economic problems plaguing the country
come as a power-sharing deal between Mugabe and opposition signed in September
has failed to take off. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has
refused to form the government of national unity, accusing Mugabe of grabbing
all the key ministries such as foreign affairs, local government, finance, home
affairs and defence.
- SAPA
report,
Inflation levels in Zimbabwe could reach an all-time
world record within weeks. The latest figures put the country's annual rate at
516 quintillion per cent - 516 followed by 18 zeros - overtaking Yugoslavia in
1994 and putting it behind only Hungary in 1946. With goods unavailable and
official statistics widely distrusted, the Cato Institute in Washington
calculated the figures based on exchange rate movements and market data. In
post Second World War Hungary monthly inflation reached 12,950,000,000,000,000
per cent, with prices doubling every 15.6 hours - Zimbabwean prices are
currently doubling every 1.3 days. The most famous hyperinflation, Weimar
Germany in 1923, is in a distant fourth place, at 29,525 per cent a month with
prices doubling every 3.7 days. Prof Steve Hanke said: "They still have a
way to go to catch Hungary, but they are getting there. This is conjecture, but
if they keep going at this pace, they have a shot at it within a month or maybe
a month-and-a-half at the outside. "For ordinary Zimbabweans, the
consequences are appalling and they must spend money as soon as they get it
before it loses its value. But the dysfunctional economy means that goods are
in desperately short supply, and they must spend hours foraging to find things
to buy. There comes a point, though, where the inflation rate makes little
practical difference. "The economy just stops functioning or slows down
very much," said Prof Hanke. "A lot of barter takes place. Money is
not used as much or if it is, it's all foreign exchange." Supermarkets in
Harare are accepting only US dollars and South African rands, leaving those
Zimbabweans without access to foreign currency in dire straits. The latest official
figure for inflation in Zimbabwe - dating back to July - is 231 million per
cent a year.
- Daily
Telegraph,
Rhodesian regimental colours raised in London - 9th November
2008. Rhodesians never die!
On Saturday 27 September 2008 at
Hatfield, Hertfordshire the Rhodesian Light Infantry Association unveiled and
re-dedicated the RLI Trooper Statue. This service was carried out in the Chapel
and the Armoury of Hatfield House by kind permission of the Marquess of
Salisbury. Salisbury in Rhodesia was named after his family, and the
Marquess’s brother, who was a member of the RLI, was killed in action.
The Sunday started at the ‘Comet Hotel’ in Hatfield town centre.
The hotel was named after the world’s first jet engine airliner which was
manufactured by the local De Havilland aircraft company. Although the hotel is
called the ‘Comet’, the king size model of an aircraft sitting on
the top of a pole in the forecourt is that of a De Havilland
‘Dove’. There were over one hundred and fifty RLI members and
visitors registered, receiving a complimentary bag containing a souvenir
programme, an RLI glass tankard and given a clip-on lapel name-tag, plus the
extra security protection of a plastic RLI wrist band. This tag was green and
had the picture of the trooper statue on it. At the main entrance of Hatfield
House the steps were graced by six standard bearers holding the flags of the
Rhodesian Light Infantry, and also eight buglers of the ‘Rifles’
who played a fanfare. The chapel is big for the household but was too small to
seat one hundred and fifty ‘botties’, so well over one hundred were
seated in the armoury. Col Ron Reid-Daly was present in the upper echelon of
the chapel. There were four large television screens in the armoury so that
everyone could see and hear the service. The two venues were next to each other
and connected by a short passage - so short in fact that when Pipe Major John
Spoor in his splendid Scottish regalia played the bagpipes and marched from the
armoury into the short passage to the chapel; in doing so he disappeared from
our sight and immediately re-appeared on the television screens After this part
of the service everyone went back to their coaches and were transported to the
bank of the River Lee where the Trooper statue was draped in the Green and
White. After a short service and speeches which mentioned the Rhodesian Air
Force and its air cover and helicopter transportation into forward areas, the
Marquess of Salisbury unveiled the Trooper Statue, with the Last Post played by
the buglers of the Rifles Band. Many wreaths of flame-lilies were laid at the
base of the statue. Following this all were entertained by the playing and
marching of the Rifles Band and Buglers. The Trooper Statue is sighted on a
wide grass bank with its back to a commercial forest of tall straight pine
trees, fronted by a copse of deciduous trees.
- report sent by ORAFs,
Zimbabwe’s
inflation rate has risen to 2.2 million per cent, the government said yesterday.
Mugabe accused Britain of trying to seize control of resources in Zimbabwe.
- Daily Telegraph,
|
|
|
|
This is what Mugabe and his thugs are doing to the elderly
people in Zimbabwe. We need to have Mugabe and Thabo Mbeki answer for crimes
against humanity.
- pictures
sent by ex-Rhodesian refugee now living in Melbourne, Australia,
The Zimbabwe Vigil, a London-based protest group,
has launched a campaign to have the 2010 Football World Cup moved from South
Africa because of growing instability in the region. It says FIFA must take
action to ensure the safety of teams and their supporters. The Vigil has been
demonstrating outside the Zimbabwe Embassy in London every Saturday since 2002
in protest at human rights abuses by the Mugabe regime. It is gathering
signatures for a petition to FIFA from the thousands of people passing the
Embassy. It says the situation in South Africa will be so bad because of
the implosion of Zimbabwe that the World Cup should be moved. The Vigil is also
running a petition calling on European Union governments to suspend aid to
governments of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) because they
have failed to hold Zimbabwe to account. It wants this money to be used instead
to finance refugee camps in countries neighbouring Zimbabwe to provide a refuge
for Zimbabweans forced to flee because of hunger, violence and the need for
medical attention safe from xenophobic violence. Vigil Co-ordinator Dumi Tutani
said “We find it repugnant, for instance, that British taxpayers' money
should go to the Malawi government. More than £60 million a year
goes to Malawi whose President, Bingu Wa Mutharika, has been given a farm in
Zimbabwe and has named a highway after President Mugabe”.
Text of
the Petitions:-
1. "A Petition to the International
Federation of Football Associations (FIFA). With the deteriorating
situation in Zimbabwe and the likelihood of unrest spreading to South Africa we
call upon FIFA to move the 2010 World Cup from South Africa to a safer venue.
By the time the World Cup takes place President Mbeki's support of the Mugabe
regime will have made the whole region unsafe because millions more refugees
will flee Zimbabwe prompting further xenophobic violence in neighbouring
countries. FIFA must ensure that World Cup teams and their supporters are not
endangered."
2. "A Petition to European Union
Governments. We record our dismay at the failure of the Southern African
Development Community (SADC) to help the desperate people of Zimbabwe at their
time of trial. We urge the UK government and the European Union in
general to suspend government to government aid to all 14 SADC countries until they
abide by their joint commitment to uphold human rights in the region. We
suggest that the money should instead be used to feed the starving in
Zimbabwe."
- report sent from the FLF (South Africa),
Mugabe’s
onslaught against his opponents widened to include their families yesterday
when the wife and child of the mayor of Harare [Salisbury] were abducted. Armed
men raided the house of Emmanuel Chiroto, a senior member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and
recently elected mayor. They burned down the house with petrol bombs and
kidnapped his wife, Abigail, 27, and their four-year-old son, Ashley. The boy
was released a few hours later, but Mrs. Chiroto is still missing. The incident
bore all the hallmarks of a state-organised operation designed to break the
MDC’s organisation by targeting its key figures. Five of the MDC’s
local organisers have been murdered.
- Daily Telegraph,
Mr X arrived by bus in a town north of Harare
[Salisbury] at approximately midnight on the night of Sunday 11th May,
2008. The (full) bus had been delayed by a breakdown. Despite the
late hour, a 200 strong group of stick and axe wielding men and women aged
between 20-30 years and imported from another area, was waiting to meet
the passengers. The assailants were led by Mr Mafiyos (MP for the area),
Mr Zonke (army personnel, rank unknown, but the only one to carry a firearm)
and Mr Kararira of the youth brigade and residing at Dande Store. These 3
individuals represented wards 1 to 34 on the voter's role, which Mugabe lost.
The group appeared to be "high" on either alcohol and/or drugs, since
their actions were irrational. They questioned the occupants of the bus as
to their political affiliation. Those who had a ZANU-PF card were released
unharmed, but those men and women who did not have a ZANU-PF card were
beaten. Mr X did not observe any children being physically
attacked. According to Mr X, one woman and 2 men, all in their 40's, were
beaten to death at the bus stop. A lone policeman at the scene was too
intimidated to take any action. When it came to Mr X's interrogation, he stated
he had lost his ZANU-PF card. This was not believed and he was beaten
twice on the lower back and once on the right hand. When I
examined Mr X, he had a slow, cautious gait. He experienced obvious pain on
flexing his vertebral column. Power, tone, reflexes and peripheral
sensation were all normal. There was a healing 4 cm fairly recent
superficial abrasion over his lumbar spine. The dorsum of his left hand
was swollen and tender and there was a small superficial abrasion at the base
of his thumb and another superficial abrasion on the lateral aspect of the base
of the right second finger. He responded well to oral analgesics plus
rest. Mr X was also examined by a second doctor in order to confirm my
findings. Mr X informed me that persons living in the area were under-going
regular beatings, their property stolen, their houses burnt down and their
children were unable to attend school since all the teachers had run for their
lives.
- Report
sent anonymously,
Zimbabweans were given the stark
choice yesterday of eating or voting, as Robert Mugabe tightened his grip ahead
of the final round of voting in the presidential election. James McGee, the US
ambassador to Harare [Salisbury], said that Mugabe was using food as a
“political weapon”, allowing members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change food aid
only if they handed over their voting cards. The claim came after the [ZANU-PF]
regime banned all overseas aid agencies and non-governmental organizations from
working, ending the food relief they provide to millions. Mr. McGee said the
government was trying to become the sole distributor of food to help Mugabe win
the election in three weeks’ time. “If you have an MDC card you can
receive food, but first you have to give your national identity card to
government officials. This means they will hold on to it until after the
election.” Mr. McGee said. “The only way you can access food is to
give up your right to vote. It is absolutely illegal. We are dealing with a
desperate regime here which will do anything to stay in power,” he said.
The government said the groups had been banned for “operating
politically” and supporting the MDC.
- Daily Telegraph,
Deep into the night a bunch of gangsters burst
through the outer gates of the Rogers' property, broke down the door of the
house and threatened the occupants with brandished guns. Meanwhile these
"war vets" were screaming the usual insults. In case anyone remains
unaware of the nature of these brutish impostors, they are drug-crazed youths
ruthlessly trained and brainwashed to carry out violent acts on behalf of their
paymasters in Harare. Their evil has been unleashed in the aftermath of
ZANU-PF's heavy defeat in the elections. Unable to retain power legitimately,
Mugabe has let loose the dogs of war. Merely threatening a middle-aged couple
was not enough for these heroes. Instead they fired seven bullets and set about
assaulting them with rifle butts. Both adults suffered smashed cheek bones.
Bruce was beaten black and blue and X-Rays revealed that two of his vertebrae
had been broken. Mrs. Rogers incurred a broken eye socket and several fractured
ribs. Apparently her face was so badly belted that she was barely recognisable.
Both are now on retroviral drugs.
Report sent by Bob Vinnicombe (Sydney,
Australia),
The
illegitimate ZANU-PF government is at war with its citizens. This war intensified
after 29 March 2008 polls, which ZANU-PF lost to the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC). Robert Mugabe (84 old), is the leader of ZANU-PF. It’s a
serious crime for not supporting ZANU-PF. Many houses of dissenters have been
burned. More than 5000 Zimbabweans have been left homeless. On 4 May 2008, we
had 7000 casualties. Now the number has increased as cases of torture, rape,
and murder are coming up on daily basis. Only 10% of the people tortured or
beaten are able to get treatment. From the 7000 casualties, only 700 have been
treated. One State registered Nurse said, "We are particularly worried
about people with fractures who are still out there because their injuries will
go septic in about a week and there are no drugs in the government hospitals.
The violence started slowly in the Mashonaland East province, where Robert
Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF suffered defeat in the March 29 election, but had
spread throughout the country.” Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF are
committing genocide. This is being done tactfully, in such a way that the world
will not see. Most of the crimes have been concentrated in rural areas where
independent media is not available. Independent newspaper offices have been
bombed and closed down some years back. Only state registered (biased)
journalists are allowed to report. Thousands of independent journalist have
fled the country and are reporting from outside. The world will admit some
years after Mugabe is gone that genocide has taken place.
- report submitted to AfricanCrisis, May
12, 2008
This
evening on television I saw that the MDC's spokesman had said that
approximately 500 of their members have been injured in attacks by Mugabe's
thugs. He also said their houses and huts were being set on fire. Zimbabwe's
opposition said on Sunday that 10 of its members had been killed by supporters
of Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party since the disputed elections were held three
weeks ago. "I can confirm that 10 of our members have died, four of them
in the last few days, due to political violence perpetrated by ruling party
supporters in the aftermath of the elections," said Nelson Chamisa,
spokesperson for the MDC.
- AfricanCrisis,
Details of a widespread brutal
campaign by the military to keep Mugabe in power has been revealed to The Sunday Independent. Central to the
plot are hundreds of "command centres", led by war veterans and
youths in police uniform, which are being established across Zimbabwe to wage a
national terror campaign. Zimbabwe's top military authority, the Joint
Operational Command, made up of service chiefs, has established a chain of
command to ensure that Mugabe and ZANU-PF remain in office even though they
both lost the elections three weeks ago. The command centres are waging a
campaign of intimidation, violence and ballot rigging. In this way, the regime
plans to guarantee victory for Mugabe in a second round of presidential
elections. The network will probably not cover the cities, all strongholds of
Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) leader. Instead, they will be concentrated in
the rural areas where 70% of Zimbabweans live. Three weeks after the poll's
first round, no official results have been announced, but the regime has
publicly acknowledged that Mugabe fell short of the 50% threshold needed to
avoid a run-off. A senior army officer and a police chief described the
president's re-election plan to The
Sunday Independent. They attended a meeting in a rural province on Monday
morning. It included traditional chiefs and local politicians and was addressed
by two senior members of Mugabe's regime. They said each command centre would
consist of three police officers, a soldier and a war veteran who would be in
charge. They would dispatch militias,
comprising war veterans and members of the ZANU-PF's youth wing, to assault and
torture known opposition supporters. They would also control the local police
to ensure that the militias were immune from arrest. The generals have called
on the four security services - army, police, intelligence and prisons - to
ensure that people are terrorised into voting for Mugabe in the expected re-run
of the presidential poll. The results of that poll have still not been
released, arousing suspicions of vote-rigging and provoking growing domestic
and international pressure on Zimbabwe's authorities. The victor has to win 50%
plus one vote of the votes cast or face a re-run. The result, when it is
finally announced, cannot be recounted, according to the Electoral Act. The
Sunday Independent has heard evidence that the announcement of the results has
been postponed deliberately to allow Mugabe's government to falsify votes to
close the gap between him and Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai is widely believed to have
won the election with about 49 to 51% of the vote, against Mugabe's 42 or 43%.
Independent candidate Simba Makoni won the rest. Mugabe's strategy appears to
be to close the gap so that his rigged victory in the expected run-off election
will be more credible. Apart from doctoring the presidential votes, Mugabe's
officials have also needed the delay to replace votes cast for MDC candidates
in the parliamentary poll on the same day to try to ensure that the rigging
cannot not be detected, according to sources. All the results for the four
elections - parliamentary, senate, local government and presidential - that
took place on March 29 were posted outside more than 8,000 polling stations by
midnight April 1. ZANU-PF narrowly lost its parliamentary majority to the MDC
and the presidential results had to be transferred to Harare [Salisbury] for
collation. Generals who report directly to the Joint Operational Command have
explained in a series of closed meetings how people will be terrorised and
beaten into voting for Mugabe in a re-run. The details released by our two
informants were from one of the planning sessions. They rushed to Harare
[Salisbury] from a remote rural area this week to reveal the plan. They
disclosed the names, ranks and even the mobile phone numbers of those people from
one province who have been ordered to join the campaign. Wilfred Mhanda, one of
Mugabe's senior commanders from the 1970s war against white Rhodesia, said
yesterday: "The report you have shown me is true. What is explained in the
report is typical of what is already happening in various parts of the country,
and those who know ZANU-PF as I do will not be surprised. What worries me is
there seems to be no way out of where we are going." The scores of names
in the report - several familiar to many Zimbabweans who have been victimised
for their political beliefs - and the province where the meeting took place
cannot be identified to protect the identity of the two men. A senior
politician told security personnel at one provincial meeting: "You have to defend the revolution. If
you don't and [it] is sold through the ballot, we will go back to the bush and
fight. Is that what you want? I don't think so." Select groups have
been told how victory for Mugabe will be achieved in the run-off and in the
recount of 23 constituencies, which the partisan Zimbabwe Election Commission
began on Saturday. State media said the results on the recount were expected in
a few days. According to reliable
sources, sealed ballot boxes have been opened and new seals have been forged. Votes
for the MDC have been taken out and replaced by votes for ZANU-PF. It has been
done so carefully that no one will be able to detect the fraud - the bogus
votes have the same numbers as those issued to voters on polling day and the
number of votes in each box has been carefully reproduced. Also new
pale-blue forms, V11, which were posted outside polling stations with results
of the four elections, have been recreated with forged signatures of the
polling agents and different tallies, favouring both ZANU-PF in the
parliamentary contest and Mugabe in the presidential poll. Chiara Carter
reports that the campaign of terror was verified yesterday in a report by the
Human Rights Watch organisation, which said ZANU-PF was using a network of
informal detention centres to beat, torture and intimidate opposition activists
and ordinary Zimbabweans. A statement issued on Saturday provided a chilling
account of systematic intimidation and violence, including the abduction and
savage beating of opposition supporters in several areas. In the past two days, researchers interviewed
more than 30 people who had been tortured and, because of it, sustained serious
injuries, including broken limbs.Human Rights Watch, a respected
non-governmental group that monitors human rights across the globe, called on
the African Union to step in immediately to address the crisis and protect
civilians.The organisation said its researchers had heard from victims and
eyewitnesses that, in the wake of last month's election, ZANU-PF had set up
detention centres in the opposition constituencies of Mutoko North, Mutoko
South and Mudzi in the province of Mashonaland East, and in Bikita West in
Masvingo. Opposition supporters were being tortured at these camps. The
organisation said ZANU-PF officials were calling the crackdown Operation
Makavhoterapapi ("Where did you put your cross?"). The aim appeared
to be twofold: to punish people for having voted for the MDC, and to intimidate
them to vote for ZANU-PF in the event of a presidential run-off.
- report by Petra Thornycroft, April 20,
2008
People in Zimbabwe queue daily for
fuel. This has been their way of life for several years now. In the days of the
Rhodesian Bush War we had worldwide economic sanctions against us. Back then
Ian Smith's Government issued fuel ration cards and we could only buy fuel
according to our monthly allowances. So a farmer would be allowed more fuel
than a normal urban dweller for example. In this organised way we never had
queues and problems like this.
- AfricanCrisis,
According to the 2008 CIA World Fact Book (released on 17th
January 2008), Zimbabwe has slipped to second to last poorest country on Earth,
just ahead of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It’s GDP per capita
stands at a paltry $500. Furthermore, it ranks third to last in unemployment
rate which stands at 80%. Zimbabwe also ranks fourth to last in life expectancy
at 39.5 years. 24.6% of its population lives with HIV/AIDS, making it the
fourth most infected in the world. Lastly, when it comes to inflation, it ranks
dead last with an estimated figure of 6072%.
- AfricanCrisis,
A reunion of the Rhodesian
Parachute Jumping Instructors took place in Busselton, Western Australia in
January 2008, at which former RPJIs from various parts of Australia and from
South Africa were able to attend. The highlight of the reunion was a sky-dive
undertaken by Mike Duffy proudly trailing the Rhodesian flag.
- report sent by ORAFs (RhAF Association),
Police in Zimbabwe have arrested
two more White farmers for defying government eviction orders, news reports
said on Wednesday. Johannes Fick and Gideon Theron, both farmers in the
tobacco-growing Beatrice district south of the capital, appeared in court on Tuesday,
said the official Herald newspaper.
"It is alleged the two extended their occupation without government
authority," said the Herald. The
two will stand trial in January next year. More than a dozen White farmers have
been arrested since the authorities started enforcing eviction orders in
October. Until then, only 400 or so White farmers were still left on their
farms after Mugabe launched his controversial programme of White land seizures
in 2000. The government had given some of the White farmers until the end of
September to leave. Some of those who have been arrested want to challenge the
country's land laws that they say violate their constitutional rights.
Zimbabwe, once a renowned farming country, has suffered declining harvests
since land reforms were launched.
- SAPA report,
The
ever-escalating cash squeeze and runaway inflation has made a mockery of the
Zimbabwean currency and normal economic activity. A newspaper
advertisement showed a four-bedroom house with a pool and tennis court in
Harare's [Salisbury’s] leafy Glen Lorne suburb selling for just under Z$1
trillion, a whopping $33m at the official bank rate but only $667 000 on the
widely used black market. An identical property cost half the price only a month
ago. Prices of household furniture, groceries and food and rentals have more
than doubled in the past month as businesses seek to eke out a profit and
remain afloat, but at a cost to consumers ravaged by the world's fastest rising
prices. Shops which were emptied of basic goods after Mugabe announced a
blanket price freeze to tame inflation in June, have started restocking but
prices have sky-rocketed.
-
Southern Cross Africa News,
The very first thing you see upon entering Harare
International Airport is a portrait of “His Excellency” the
President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. I recall my very first steps off the South African Airways flight from
Johannesburg last year, seeing that grim visage and understanding immediately
that I was entering a totalitarian state. As a prominent South African told me
before I left for Zimbabwe, a surefire sign that you’re in an
undemocratic country is the proliferation of presidential pictures. Writing in
the Sowetan, a South African newspaper serving the country’s
Black townships, about a recent trip to Harare Airport, Andrew Molefe observers
“To step out of an aircraft at Harare International Airport is to step
into a chamber of horrors. If an international airport is supposed to be the
face of a country, Zimbabwe is slipping dangerously towards the edge of a
precipice. The airport ablution facilities aren’t working. Human waste
greets visitors who need to use the toilets. The taps have run dry.” The
latest bad news to emerge about Zimbabwe is that British Airways has decided to cut all flights to and from the
country due to the fluctuating state of the economy. This is a major
development, considering Britain’s historic ties to Zimbabwe and the
relatively large number of people holding British citizenship who live in
Zimbabwe. BA has also been an important transport method by which Zimbabwean
asylum seekers have made their way into the United Kingdom. To understand the
gravity of this news, keep in mind that the only other time in history that British Airways cut off service to
Zimbabwe was in 1965 after the then “rebel” colony of Rhodesia
declared a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom,
which the British government declared to be an act of treason warranting severe
international sanctions. Things have changed considerably for this service
cut-off, however: Zimbabwe is no longer a fledgling nation, but a failing or
failed state run by a brutal autocrat. For now, the only way Zimbabweans will
be able to travel to England is via Air
Zimbabwe, which, in the words one Zimbabwean, “has developed what you
might call a reputation for being unreliable.” Not only is jet fuel hard
to come by in Zimbabwe - causing flights to be delayed for days - but the
carrier has only one international aircraft, which Mugabe frequently commandeers
for his jaunts abroad, often without advance notice.
-
CommentaryMagazine.com,
Harare, Zimbabwe - Police stopped villagers from
slaughtering and eating a giraffe that strayed into the outskirts of the
capital amid chronic food shortages caused by an economic crisis, the official
media reported Saturday. The adult giraffe was believed to have wandered from
nearby farmland. Wildlife authorities took the giraffe away after police kept a
crowd from killing it "for the pot," the state Herald reported. Zimbabwe is suffering shortages of meat and basic
foods in an economic meltdown that has left it with the world's highest
official inflation - nearly 7,000%. Independent estimates put real inflation
closer to 25,000% and the
International Monetary Fund forecast it reaching 100,000% by the end of the
year. A government order to slash prices of all goods and services by about
half
in June has left stores across the country empty of meat, cornmeal, bread and
other staples and crippled transportation services. The National Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said this month that it was launching a
campaign to raise awareness about the moral and ethical issues surrounding
cases of pets being slaughtered for meat. It said while it was not illegal to
eat dog meat in Zimbabwe, the nation's laws covered the humane killing of all
animals. In recent weeks, authorities also have reported one of the worst
spates of bush fires across the country in recent memory, largely blamed on
people who set fires to flush out the rodents. Roasted mice are a traditional
dish in some areas.
- Article by
Angus Shaw, Associated Press writer,
British military commanders are reviewing contingency plans
for the evacuation of up to 22,000 Britons from Zimbabwe after months of rising
violence and food shortages. The Ministry of Defence has been asked to look
urgently at what logistical help it could provide amid “real
concerns” in Whitehall about Zimbabwe’s slide into chaos.
Diplomatic sources said that the review was focusing on a “civil
contingency plan”, which included seeking help from neighbouring
countries. There is no plan to send in troops. “Military evacuation from
a third country would only be used as a last resort,” one source said.
Under existing plans, Britons would be advised to take routes out of Zimbabwe
into South Africa and to head for a former military base at Artonvilla in
Limpopo province (Far Northern Transvaal). The MoD has been asked to consider
whether it could help in the airlift of Britons from the region. The diplomatic
sources said that if the MoD were unable to do so, chartered commercial
aircraft would fly the evacuees to Britain.
- report posted
by AfricanCrisis,
Zimbabwe has lost over 90 percent of its wildlife since the
government's controversial land grab, with an estimated 60 percent of animals
having been killed by poachers to relieve massive economic woes, according to a
report released by Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force (ZCTF). Johnny Rodrigues,
author of the report, said wildlife had been almost wiped out on Zimbabwe's
former private game ranches in the seven years since President Robert Mugabe
began seizing and dividing the areas into small plots. "Some 90 percent of
animals have been lost since 2000, while the country has seen an estimated 60
percent of its total wildlife killed off to help ease massive economic woes
indiscriminately. There's a lot of commercial poaching, there are people on the
ground snaring these animals," said Rodrigues. According to the task
force, Zimbabwe had 620 private game farms before the land seizures began, but
now has 14. And of 14 conservancies before 2000, only one remains.
"They're telling the world they want the tourists to come back, but the
tourists aren't going to come back because most of the animals you see nowadays
have amputated legs. It's just like a rehabilitation center," he said. The
report acknowledges that the findings are still preliminary - many of the
farmers whose land was seized have left the country, so in some cases the group
had to rely on hazy reports from people still near the former ranches. "We
are not claiming to 'know' how much wildlife has been lost," the report
said. "We have just tried to make the most accurate estimate possible with
very limited data to work with."
Still, the trend is a disaster, because Zimbabwe once had
some of the world's most progressive and successful conservation policies. Rodrigues blamed the government for
killing 100 elephants last year so their meat could be served as part of
Independence Day celebrations. His report exposed that the Zimbabwean
government recently sold ivory to China in exchange for military hardware.
According to the report, of 62 game ranches 59 made massive losses, including
the killings of a total of 75 rare black rhinoceroses and 39 leopards. Most of
the losses appeared among antelope, including 9,500 impalas, nearly 5,000
kudus, and 2,000 wildebeests. The report said "The country's economic
meltdown has had a wide-ranging and devastating impact on what is one of
Africa's premier tourist draws. The numbers help give a rough estimate of the
environmental impact of Zimbabwe's recent descent into economic and political
chaos". The document reported evidence of widespread slaughter of game on
the private ranches occupied under Mugabe's controversial land redistribution
programme. Government regulations meant to shield the animals have been
disobeyed, and wildlife officials have been forced to focus their limited
resources on Zimbabwe's national parks and reserves.
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/viewinfo.cfm?linkcategoryid=3&linkid=8&id=5543
- report sent by
JMK, New York,
Zimbabwe suddenly looks like it has been in a war. The
shops are empty, there is little traffic and everyone is walking
around in a daze. People stop me and ask what is going on? Well just
remember Pol Pot. He came to power in Cambodia in the mid seventies,
launched what they called the Khmer revolution and in a matter of
months they reduced the capital city to a shell occupied by 25 000 people
- down from two million. In the process they had killed hundreds of thousands
of skilled and experienced Cambodians, forced millions into the rural
areas where they were required to undergo re-education and make a
living from subsistence
agriculture. It will take Cambodia millennia to recover after
this rapacious and ideologically driven regime was removed from power by
military intervention. People outside Zimbabwe have no idea of just what
has happened in Zimbabwe in the past month. Conditions have gone from
difficult to impossible. I am not exaggerating when I say there are
no basics - no flour, no maize meal, no cooking oil, no margarine, no
matches, no fuel, no meat, no eggs. On top of this there are
widespread shortages of water and electricity. I simply do not know
how people are surviving. These terrible conditions are being deliberately
created in a Pol Pot style
operation that is supposed to be dealing with run away inflation. Its real
goals lie elsewhere. We now know that this operation was planned a long time
ago -probably as soon as it became apparent that elections would have to
be held in March 2008. This is no knee jerk reaction to inflation, or to
remarks by the US Ambassador about regime change. It began with an exercise to
generate a sudden spurt in inflation. This was achieved when the
State started buying foreign currency on the open market in June, using
freshly printed currency. In a week of frenzied activity the price of the US
dollar went from about Z$70,000 to Z$400,000. Importers and industrialists
were forced to raise prices to cover the replacement cost of stocks. The
State then unveiled its "operation good governance". Under
secret orders, the security forces were instructed to impose
price reductions on all businesses. There was no legal basis for
these instructions -just orders to go into firms on a systematic basis and
order them to cut prices or else. Managers and owners were
specifically targeted to intimidate them into compliance. These have been
arrested in their thousands, abused and held over in filthy, overcrowded
cells with ordinary prisoners. Trillions of dollars of stock values were
slashed from prices, no rational basis for these price cuts were
sought or tolerated. Suddenly firms faced the situation where they
could not restock, could not manufacture and sell for a profit - most
of their established products were now being priced into the
market at below cost. The more you produced, the faster your demise. Fuel
was priced at half its landed cost and overnight some Z$400 billion
in stock values was lost as customers scrambled to buy cheap fuel at
half price or less. All imports stopped. The prices of all staple
foods was likewise set at half or less the cost of production and
when stocks ran out there was nothing to sell. Now many theories have been put
out about this operation - it was popularist is one, "they are
preparing for the elections and forcing firms to cut prices is an attempt to
curry favor with voters". Many actually say it was about
time that business was brought to heel - a reaction to the sharp price hikes
caused by the first stage of this operation. It is too
early for that to be the real reason; they see it as one
outcome, but with little long-term value in their strategy. My own
view, based on what I know about the background, is that this is a
carefully planned and ruthless exercise to reduce the urban
voting population, undermine the remaining support base of the MDC and
take full control of the population and the economy in time for the
March 2008 elections. The dismantling of the commercial farm industry has
reduced the voting population on commercial farms from 2 million to about
600,000 and all of them are now under the control of either the State
or ZANU- PF elements who can dictate how they vote. These resettled
areas are virtually no go areas for the MDC. In Communal areas the food
supply has been brought under control and direction, as has all other
essentials for survival including the right of abode. Traditional
leaders are tightly controlled by the State and are now under close
supervision by resident CIO operatives who watch their every action. They
have been through three elections and now believe that they
can control the vote in these areas by these means. They are probably
right. So the remaining threat is the urban vote. Now in the majority, with over 6
million people living in urban areas, the towns and cities are
the last remaining centers of opposition. So like Pol Pot, the powers
that be, in this case the small coterie of leaders surrounding Mugabe
and the people involved in the Joint Operations Command, have decided
to do some surgery. When this operation is concluded they hope to have
reduced the urban population by as much as half, destroyed or taken over all
major firms in the private sector and facilitated the takeover of all
other surviving firms by loyal ZANU-PF supporters. They are
deliberately halting food supplies to the cities, destroying jobs and
the transport industry. They will then take the pick of the
commercial and industrial infrastructure that remains - intact, almost
as if a neutron bomb had been used, and move on from there. The remaining
urban population would then be in the same position as the population in
the rural areas - under tight control and able to vote only under
supervision. Then ZANU-PF can allow an election to take place - probably in
March as planned, even with observers for the last few days of the
campaign and during the vote itself. ZANU-PF feels confident that it can
win a clear majority - even a two-thirds majority vote under such
circumstances. The only other issue is what happens to the three million
Zimbabweans displaced by this ruthless, but clever scheme. Most of them
will swim the Limpopo or cross the border at Beitbridge. Once in South Africa,
or Botswana, or Zambia or the UK or the USA, they will settle down,
breathe a sigh of relief to be somewhere where sanity prevails and try to make
a living, any sort of living. They will gradually be assimilated and will
start sending small sums of money "home" to
keep their relatives alive in Mugabe's national detention camp. Most importantly, they will
not be able to vote. What remains of Zimbabwe will be a sea of poverty and
subsistence activity
with Party controlled islands of prosperity. A few foreign firms
will be allowed to exploit our resources under close supervision and
control and the output used to support the lifestyles of the new
elite who will continue to enjoy the luxury and pleasures that
have become their norm in recent years on the gravy train. It has
nothing to do with price control.
- report by
Eddie Cross, Bulawayo, forwarded
For Rod Swales and many of Zimbabwe's 4,000 White farmers
forced off their land by President Robert Mugabe's chaotic and violent land
reforms, the chance to start afresh somewhere else was too good to pass up.
Neighbouring countries welcomed them with open arms and furnished them with
land, while the agricultural companies provided them with cash incentives. But
five years later, 52-year-old Mr Swales is back in Zimbabwe at the forefront of
a new wave of pioneers. Far from being deterred by the country's downward
economic spiral, the farmers are convinced that it will hasten the end of Mr
Mugabe's rule, and speed the day when they can set up in business once again.
"I do believe the wheel is turning and sanity will prevail at some
stage," Mr Swales said. "I speak to various ZANU- PF moderates and
all of them advise us to be patient, there will be change, this thing can't
continue."Mr Swales believes Mr Mugabe's regime is nearing the end, that
an economy battered by inflation reported to have hit 13,000 per cent in June
and where supplies of even basic foods such as maize flour and cooking oil have
dried up, must surely soon collapse altogether. But Mr Swales admitted that the
prospect of getting his old farm back up to production would be daunting.
"Two weeks ago I went out to see it. It's an absolute wreck. It's the
closest I've come to crying for some time. The barns, the roofs, the sheds,
everything had been stripped. It will cost an untold figure to put that right and
make it productive again. "But
we are resilient people, we've hung in through wars and we'll hang in through
this."
- Sunday
Telegraph,
Zimbabwe has imposed tight profit margins for businesses,
stepping up a price rollback programme that has led to empty store shelves,
long petrol queues and renewed fears of a total economic collapse. Mugabe
ordered that prices for a wide range of foodstuffs and consumer items be
slashed two weeks ago, accusing businesses of raising prices as part of an
effort by Western opponents to overthrow his 27-year-old government. On
Wednesday state radio reported a government taskforce overseeing the
anti-inflation price scheme had set the price mark-up from producers to
wholesalers at 5% and at 10% for prices from wholesalers to retailers. Industry
and Trade Minister Obert Mpofu, who chairs the taskforce, also has revoked
permits of private slaughterhouses and transferred all the country's
meat processing business to the larger state-owned Cold Storage Company (CSC),
it said. Mpofu moved against the abattoirs - which handle about 40% of the
country's meat business - because they had stopped meat supplies. "In view
of this, the government has thus, with immediate effect, revoked the licences
of all private abattoirs," he was quoted as saying by state radio. The new
measures came as the government increased police patrols to enforce the price
controls, which analysts say may provide temporary relief to a long-suffering
population but is bound to worsen Zimbabwe's economy. Zimbabwe is struggling
with chronic shortages of food and fuel and inflation of 4,500%. Last month the
government ordered businesses to roll back prices on bread, beef, mealie-meal,
milk, oil, and salt, sugar and other basic commodities in an effort to stem
inflation. The forced price cuts, however, have sparked a wave of panic buying
around the country, leaving many urban shops empty of basic goods that were
already in short supply as a result of the country's eight-year recession. Long
petrol queues have resurfaced in the capital Harare, and hordes of shoppers
sometimes lay siege outside supermarkets in the hope of new deliveries of
sugar, cooking oil and bread - the most desired products. A Reuters
correspondent saw dozens of shoppers jostling outside a shop in the city centre
after rumours that a bread delivery van was on its way. "I have to buy
because I didn't get any yesterday," one man said. "And now when I
have any money I am in the habit of buying anything that I think I
need because there is no guarantee that these things will be available in the
future," he added. Zimbabwe's central bank has increased the daily cash
withdrawals that
individuals and companies can make from Z$1.5m to up to Z$20m to help people
cope with the rocketing inflation. Private economists say the actual figure is
probably double the reported government rate of 4’500% for May. Critics
accuse Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980, of mismanaging what was once
one of Africa's most prosperous economies and suppressing political dissent.
The 83-year-old Zimbabwean leader denies he has run the economy into the
ground, blaming the problems instead on what he calls sabotage by Western
opponents who are punishing him for seizing and redistributing White-owned
farms to Blacks.
- Reuters
Report -
In Mugabe’s
Zimbabwe terror is so endemic that not even the daughter of a former prime
minister known as a supporter of Black rights is immune from rape. Judith
Todd’s father, Sir Garfield Todd, was Rhodesia’s last liberal
leader and she was imprisoned, force-fed and exiled under Ian Smith’s
rule for her efforts to promote Black majority rule. She returned to head a
development agency working particularly with the [terrorist] war veterans who
had fought for [Mugabe’s] Zimbabwe.
But when she criticised Mugabe’s regime she was detained and raped
by a senior army officer. It was, she said, an example of the culture of fear
used to preserve Mugabe’s rule.
- Daily Telegraph,
[ We await Ms.
Todd’s admission of her grave errors in siding with such evil terrorists
during the 1960s. - Ed.]
Zimbabwe's beleaguered currency has lost half its value in
three days, black market dealers said last night, prompting predictions that
the country was plunging into an economic meltdown that its veteran leader
Robert Mugabe would not survive. According to the government in Harare
[Salisbury], one US dollar is worth 250 Zimbabwean dollars. But the free market
rate yesterday reached more than Z$300,000 to one US dollar. "It's gone
crazy," said one illegal trader. "People are holding out for the
highest bidder and mentioning as much as 400,000-1, which could be tomorrow's
price. It's changing by the hour. Rates have doubled since the start of the
week." While Mugabe's demise has been predicted time and again over the
years, analysts believe that the financial crisis now threatens his hold even
on the loyalists who have kept him in power for so long. John Makumbe, a senior
lecturer in political science at the University of Zimbabwe, said: "It is
the economy that is going to bring the regime down. "I don't think it's
very sustainable. Right now the transport sector is grinding to a halt. A lot
of people are now in abject poverty. With a million dollars you will be lucky
to buy two or three items." A six-mile minibus ride into the city centre
could cost a tenth of someone's monthly wages, he said. "I don't think
Mugabe will last long if the situation is not arrested by an injection of
foreign currency or some alleviation of the cost of living." Christopher
Dell, the outgoing US ambassador to Zimbabwe, predicted inflation could reach
1,500,000% by the end of the year. He told the Financial Gazette in Bulawayo: "The first phase of Zimbabwe's
liberation [from Mugabe's rule] is coming to an end as the economy is
collapsing around us and the second phase to define the future of Zimbabwe past
a few old men is coming in the next few months." Splits are now emerging
in Mr Mugabe's ZANU-PF party and last week a "coup plot" was proclaimed
by the authorities, who charged six people with treason. One of the defendants
said the accusations were an attempt to cover up internal divisions. But on top
of its abysmal handling of the economy, which has been shrinking for the last
eight years, the Harare government itself bears direct responsibility for the
collapse of the currency. While accusing Britain and other countries of seeking
to destroy Zimbabwe's finances, the central bank has printed vast amounts of
Zimbabwean currency to buy illegal dollars in a desperate attempt to pay off
the foreign debts of state-owned fuel and electricity companies. More notes
have been printed to pay salary increases for soldiers and policemen, even as
senior ZANU-PF officials were able to buy US dollars at the official rate and
resell them at vast profit. Last month the Central Statistical Office announced
that inflation had reached 3,713.9% a year in April - a calculation of unusual
precision for an economy in chaos. According to NMBZ Holdings Ltd, a local bank,
the figure for May had risen to 4,530%. Other estimates put it as high as
9,000%. The official Chronicle newspaper
yesterday blamed Britain and the United States. "The plan is to topple the
government before the March 2008 general elections, which the West knows the
opposition could never win," it said.
- Daily
Telegraph,
Mugabe has been told by
his own intelligence chiefs that he will lose if he sticks to his insistence on
standing again in Zimbabwe’s presidential elections next year. The
83-year-old, who has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980, was given the warning last
month. He is said to have been livid. Happyton Bonyongwe, Mugabe’s
intelligence chief, told the president that voters were so disenchanted with
his government that he faced “grave embarrassment”. Bonyongwe
presented a report compiled by the intelligence services warning Mugabe to find
an alternative candidate to represent the ruling ZANU-PF party, as he would be
defeated and gravely embarrass himself because of levels of social discontent
that have reached boiling point. The report was presented to a meeting of the
joint operations command, which brings together senior representatives of the
police, army, prison service and the Central Intelligence Organisation. It said
support for the president was at rock bottom because of severe economic crisis,
with ordinary Zimbabweans struggling to survive in the face of inflation of
more than 3,700%, unemployment at 80% and shortages of basic foodstuffs and
fuel. “Mugabe said he was not giving up on next year’s polls as
this would be a victory to our colonisers [Britain], who want to rule us using
their puppets in the MDC,” said one of those who attended the meeting.
- Sunday Telegraph,
Despite an undertaking from Peter Chingoka, the then
interim chairman Zimbabwe Cricket , that the report on the investigation of
charges of financial maladministration would be made public, no one apart from
ZC and ICC have seen it. Chingoka announced sixteen months ago that an
independent auditor "of international repute" would be asked to
undertake a thorough investigation of the board's affairs following serious
allegations from a number of stakeholders that large sums of money were
unaccounted for. However, the audit was ultimately entrusted to Ruzengwe and
Partners, a small Harare-based outfit. And the terms of reference were drawn up
by the interim board, the body at the heart of the allegations. "Their
report will be there for all to see," Chingoka said at the time. Unfortunately,
although the initial report was delivered to the ICC in November, nobody
outside the ICC and ZC has been allowed to know what it contains. Few expected
anything sensational. When the audit was announced, Clive Field, the former
players' association chief executive, was sceptical. "In the time which
has passed since these issues were highlighted last year, it seems to me there
would have been ample opportunity to sanitise the books," he said.
"All we could originally hope for was that the audit was done quickly.
"A senior administrator said that ZC had "appointed a small
one-partner local firm who had little chance of investigation the affairs as it
was too complex. It would need the assistance of an international firm, as
funding included sponsorship worldwide ... as the rights to the various tours
would have been put together and sold by Octagon CSI and others and would need
the international resources to follow through the paper trail and establish
where the funding ended up." The ICC remains tight lipped, only saying
that Sir John Anderson, the chairman of New Zealand Cricket who is overseeing
the process, is still in dialogue with Ruzengwe and Partners. It is hoped that
things will be sorted in time for the ICC's AGM at the end of June. What the
ICC cannot say is whether the audit will be placed in the public domain.
Against this backdrop of secrecy, Zimbabwe Cricket's coffers are about to swell
by another US$11.5 million from the World Cup. Given the virtual total secrecy
with which ZC operates, the ICC owes it to the game, to all those who worked
tirelessly to build Zimbabwe cricket, and to the thousands of local cricketers
who are scraping by with almost no equipment, to make public the report. We
were unable to obtain any response from Zimbabwe Cricket. The board refuses to
answer any questions from Cricinfo as it objects to our coverage of cricket in
the country.
- CricInfo,
Zimbabwe is back at another crucial junction in its short
history. At home the economic and political crisis intensifies by the
day. Inflation in April was probably over 8,000% year on year, the
currency has slipped to new lows and is trading about 30,000 to 1 against the
US dollar. Severe food shortages are evident and prices have skyrocketed.
- report sent
by Eddie Cross (Bulawayo),
Pressure is growing for the ICC to take action against
“Zimbabwe Cricket” from an unlikely, and usually low-profile, group
- the game's statisticians. Until this year, despite increasing reporting
restrictions, the Zimbabwe board, aided by dedicated volunteers, has always
supplied scorecards of first-class and List A matches to the media. But many of
the old statisticians have been driven away, while others have been ostracised
by the board. Last year there were increasing problems with the accuracy of the
data, and often queries had to be flagged with ZC when cards did not add up or
data was missing. These were almost always resolved. However, this year ZC has
failed to supply any data, even to its domestic media or on its own website,
which is increasingly inaccessible and which has not been updated for several
weeks. No cards have been provided for Faithwear
Cup matches, the country's List A competition, which took place more than
five weeks ago. A source close to the board said that it was unlikely that they
would be made available as in some instances the cards had been lost, while in
others the data was so poor as to be almost unusable. "Releasing them will
be more than embarrassing," he admitted. Cricinfo has made several requests for the information, and the ICC
and the influential Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians have
also contacted ZC. In almost all instances, the board has failed to even
acknowledge the mail. A few cards for the Logan Cup, the first-class
competition, have been obtained, but in every instance this has been through
volunteers or Cricket Kenya, who have a side in the competition. This will be
the first season in the 103-year history of the tournament that scorecards have
not been available. The board only published the fixture list on the morning of
the first round of matches. Bill Frindall, the BBC statistician, told Cricinfo that "this situation sadly
comes as no surprise". He added: "The ICC should threaten ZC with
suspension of their membership and the withdrawal of first-class and List A
status. They should also withhold Zimbabwe's 2007 World Cup fee which is bound
to end up in the hands of their puppet administrators. No doubt the ICC will
prevaricate as usual. What a pity those ludicrous multi-national matches of
2005 [the ICC Afro-Asia Cup and Super Series] were not staged in Harare. The
scores would have been lost forever. It highlights the growing shambles that is
ZC," one administrator in Zimbabwe, who did not wish to be named, said.
"They can't even sort the basics, so it doesn't take too much imagination
to work out what a complete mess other things it is responsible for are. The
game is dying on its feet. If people don't even know that matches are happening
locally, what hope is there?".
- Cricinfo,
Mugabe declared
yesterday that he had overcome alleged British-backed efforts to topple him.
Mugabe, 83, described the opposition Movement
for Democratic Change as “the shameless local puppets” of a British
conspiracy. Earlier he said a two-day general strike called by unions this
month was part of “the offensive of [Tony] Blair’s final
push”. “The man is about to retire and wants a last push in
Zimbabwe,” Mugabe told hundreds of children and teachers during a speech.
He said that Britain wanted to make Zimbabwe a colony again.
- Daily Telegraph,
Zimbabwe is to set up a new radio station to counter what
it perceives as propaganda from outside countries against Robert Mugabe, the country's
president. Zimbabwe's information minister made the announcement after talks on
Friday with Rasoul Momeni, Iran's ambassador to Harare [Salisbury], in a deal
to
refurbish public broadcasting studios in Bulawayo. Iran has already funded the
upgrading of studios in the capital, the new station will cost $39.6m. In the
face of growing criticism of his human-rights record, Mugabe has in recent
years increasingly turned to other countries, including Iran, for help.
- report sent
by Bob Vinnicombe, NSW, Australia,
Young women used iron rods to beat pleading grandmothers and
called them whores, while a policewoman shouted "Now go for the
heads!" This is how a prayer meeting in Harare [Salisbury], Zimbabwe,
turned into an "orgy of violence", says William Bango, 53, a senior Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
member and spokesperson for party leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Bango told Beeld
from his Johannesburg hospital bed how he, Tsvangirai and other MDC members
were beaten with "unheard of cruelty" by Zimbabwean police on Sunday
March 11. Bango described seeing a grandmother, 64-year-old Sekai Holland,
repeatedly
hammered with a pole by young women who called her "one of Blair's
whores". The assault took place at the Machipisa police station, where
Bango and
other MDC activists were taken after police banned a prayer meeting in
Highfield township. "We were ordered to lie on the ground. Then the orgy
of violence began, with the usual accusations that we were the puppets of Tony
Blair and the Whites, and that we wanted to give our land back to the
colonialists." The beatings lasted for three-quarters of an hour. They
even dragged Tsvangirai from his idling car, and began hitting him. The woman
in charge shouted: "Now the ribs! Now the buttocks! Now go for the
heads!" Ironically, Zimbabwe was sliding back steadily to the "iron
age" just as South Africa was getting ready for 2010 Soccer World Cup, he
said. "But South Africa can't exist as a supermarket in the desert. The
entire tournament will suffer if there's a thug in the neighbourhood."
- Beeld,
Today the Rand went over 3,000 to 1 [to the Z$], the US$
went to over 30,000 to 1 and the price of beer, bread and fuel doubled. I raised
our salaries by 50% two weeks ago and I am going to have to find another 100%
next week. People cannot afford even the basics, money has no value and
everybody is talking about prices and the specter of economic collapse. The
government simply does not know what to do next - a 400% salary increment to
teachers is now virtually wiped out just weeks later. They have imposed
price controls only to find that market prices have soared to, in some cases, 5
times the so-called controlled price (bread is now about Z$4000 a loaf - the
controlled price is Z$825) even though the latter was fixed just two months
ago. When the State tries to enforce prices on traders, the product just
disappears overnight. I have not seen a bottle of vegetable oil in 4
months. The only product that is occasionally available is imported from
South Africa. State institutions are not able to move with the kind of speed
that is needed to survive in this situation. All of them are reeling under the
strain - foreign exchange is unobtainable except on the parallel market and
there the prices rise daily. They cannot generate enough local currency to pay
for the currency they need - and it has to be in cash. Maximum withdrawals
from the banks are Z$1 million - that is not enough to fill your tank at
Z$17,000 or Z$18,000 a litre. The total collapse of these institutions is now
almost inevitable - they simply cannot pay their bills and cannot buy the
essentials they need to operate. People must be close to saying that it is
simply not worth their while going to work. I run a retail operation and have
watched my sales rise from about plus 1000% up at the start of last year to
4,800% this month. That just about tracks the sort of inflation that
ordinary people now face in their daily lives. In this situation we must
remember that this affects everybody. Pretty soon we are going to face
complete stock outs of essentials and only those who have foreign exchange will
be able to get them. The quality and delivery of all services is about to
crash.
- report sent
by Eddie Cross, Bulawayo,
At long last, President Robert Mugabe's stranglehold on
Zimbabwe may be loosening. Throughout his 27 years of dominance, the old
dictator's opponents have always risked assault, torture or worse. The
bludgeoning meted out to Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, and about
100 of his supporters after they tried to hold a prayer meeting on Sunday, was
entirely standard. Violence of this kind has been enough to suppress Mugabe's
critics outside the ruling ZANU-PF party. Meanwhile, his skilful manipulation
of factions within the ruling party has always thwarted any internal challenge.
But there are growing signs that Mugabe is finally losing his grip. Never in
its 44 year history has ZANU-PF been as divided as it is today. Mugabe appears
to be in a state of open warfare with both his party's main factions. One is
led by Solomon Mujuru, a retired general and former army commander who wants
his wife, the vice-president Joyce Mujuru, to succeed Mugabe. The other major
faction is dominated by Emmerson Mnangagwa, who has served in the cabinet since
1980 and was once a favourite for the succession. But he had a spectacular
falling out with the president. In the past, Mugabe always would have been
clever enough to ally with one faction against the other. At the very least he
would have turned them against one another and kept each permanently
off-balance. But today, both the Mujuru and Mnangagwa groups appear to have
become united against him. There is no other explanation for Mugabe's apparent
failure to extend his term of office. Last year, he announced that he would not
bother seeking re-election when his present term ends in 2008. Instead, he
would simply amend the constitution and postpone the next election until 2010.
But this proposal seems to have been dropped. Both major factions have an
interest in Mugabe stepping down next year and opening the way for their
champions to seize the presidency. They appear jointly to have thwarted the bid
to rewrite the constitution. Having been defeated, Mugabe is now talking about
standing for re-election next year. Two factors are eroding Mugabe's position
every day. First, he is 83 and his mental powers are visibly failing. While
physically fit, the edge has come off Mugabe's mind. Second, Zimbabwe's economy
is in meltdown. At first, this national calamity did not threaten his grip on
power. On the contrary, by driving the black middle class out of Zimbabwe and
leaving the rest of the population destitute and with no thought except
day-to-day survival, economic collapse probably reduced the chances of popular
unrest and helped Mugabe. But the crisis is reaching such proportions that the
Zimbabwean state itself is disintegrating. Mugabe can no longer afford to pay
his security forces. The police and the army rank-and-file are just as
desperate as everyone else. This combination of discontent within and without
ZANU-PF is unprecedented. Mugabe's final days may be upon us.
-
Daily Telegraph,
The conditions Mugabe rendered in Zimbabwe do not merely
stem from idealistic economic and social policies gone awry. He has undertaken
a campaign of violence and starvation against political opponents, the fallout
of which is killing tens of thousands, if not more, every year. In 2005, there
were roughly 4,000 more deaths each week than births, a rate that the famine
has surely increased. As early as 2002, the BBC was reporting that people in
Matabeleland, the southern region of the country where the minority Ndebele tribe
lives, were starving. That same year, on the eve of a massive drought, the
Minister of Zimbabwean State Security said, "We would be better off with
only six million people. We don't want all these extra people." Today,
according to the World Food Program, 38% of Zimbabweans are malnourished. The
fallout has rippled through society: Zimbabwe has the world's highest inflation
rate (1,600% annually, expected to hit 4,000% by the end of the year) and an
HIV prevalence of at least 18%, and probably higher. It also has the lowest
life expectancy, by far, in the world: 34 for women and 37 for men. Last year,
42,000 women died from childbirth. The weekly death rate exceeds Darfur's.
- The New
Republic,
The situation in Zimbabwe has deteriorated sharply in the
past few days. The government has imposed a ban on public meetings, the
strikes are continuing with the state- run hospitals now completely paralysed.
Doctors and Nurses refuse to go back to work. The universities are due to open
on Monday but staff are on strike and there are no signs of
compromise. Students plan to join the strike on Monday in support of their
lecturers and demanding attention to the stark conditions under which they are
living. The ZCTU has announced a national strike in a month's time and the
State Security Minister has threatened them with dire action. Now a form of
curfew is being imposed on the high-density townships across the country in an
effort to bring the situation under control. These are clearly signs of
panic in the realms of government. Tomorrow should be the start of a 4-month
freeze on prices and wages - however I understand the proposal has been
abandoned as being simply unworkable. No statements are forthcoming from
the authorities and, to say the least, there is considerable confusion in
business and Union circles. The Governor of the Reserve Bank speaks of a
"Social Contract" but none exists. However the most serious indicator
of collapse is in the open market price of foreign exchange. Driven by the
frantic efforts of people to buy foreign exchange in any form for a variety of
needs from education fees to water chemicals for the cities and those who want
to externalize or even protect their assets. No one wants to hold local
money - and the options are the stock market, foreign exchange and assets such
as property or simply business stocks. Today was no exception - the US$ went to
7,500 to 1, the Pound to 14,200 to 1 and the Rand was at 1,100 or 1,200 to 1.
These are dramatic devaluations in a matter of a few days and importers simply
do not know what to sell their imported products for when it comes to replacing
their stock. Fuel distributors closed their outlets today while the
adjusted to the new situation. We bought fuel at Z$6,600 and watched as
the company ratcheted up its price to Z$7,500 while we were present. That
seems to be the price at the moment. Bakeries are all over the place -
most are charging double the "controlled" price. This means a new
surge in inflation and it is now clearer than ever that the government has lost
all semblance of control in the economy. Gold sales are declining even
more rapidly as mines close down in the face of unrealistic prices and exchange
rates. Food is now being imported to meet all our basic food needs - local
stocks are exhausted. I watched a special programme last night on SABC about
the plight of the border jumpers. Anyone watching that could not help but
be moved by the plight of the people affected by this crisis in Zimbabwe. To
see them risk crocodiles, armed gangs, the SA Police and Army and thirst and
exposure to get away from Zimbabwe and try to make a living, any sort of a
living, in South Africa was heart wrenching. A White farmer described finding a
dead woman next to a game fence with a baby that had lived for 3 or 4 days
after the mother had died of exposure. If someone with power does not do
something to get this situation back under control, they better prepare for a
real flood of refugees into South Africa - because the situation in Zimbabwe is
simply no longer tenable.
- report sent
by Eddie Cross, Bulawayo,
Inflation in Zimbabwe
has reached such proportions that it destroyed the value of a new national
currency before a single one of its banknotes had been spent. The world’s
highest inflation rate, which rose to a record 1,594% yesterday, rendered the
new money worthless before it could be distributed. Mounds of banknotes - all
paid for in scarce hard currency - are lying unused in warehouses.
Mugabe’s regime ordered the new money from a German company in 2004. At
the time inflation was a relatively modest 400% and Mugabe was anxious to avoid
the impression of economic chaos. Jonathan Moyo, then information minister,
disclosed that Mugabe personally insisted that a banknote of 1,000 Zimbabwe
dollars could be the highest denomination of the new currency. Yet by the time
the new currency had been designed, printed and delivered Z$1,000 had a
purchasing power of about nine pence. Today it would be just enough to buy a
box of matches. Rather than release a currency whose largest banknote is
roughly the value of one tomato, the Reserve Bank in Harare [Salisbury] simply
stockpiled the useless money. At present prices in Zimbabwe are doubling roughly
every 30 days. By next month the new currency’s largest banknote will be
worth about half a tomato.
- Daily Telegraph,
It is now certain that 2007 is going to be much worse than
2006. Inflation is going to be higher, the economy will almost certainly
shrink - for the 9th year in a row and the flood of economic refugees into
other countries will, if anything get worse. Shortages will be more
widespread and this will create additional problems for those of us who live
here. I predict that the coming agricultural season will be much worse
than in the past year. Output across the board will be lower - without
exception. Then there is the situation in ZANU-PF. Mugabe is no longer
functioning effectively as Head of State - he is working very short hours and
for whatever reason is already in a state of semi-retirement. He has moved
to his new home in Harare [Salisbury] and goes into the office late in the
morning returning home before mid-day. Few people are seeing him and it is
clear that government is confused and divided - no strong central direction is
apparent. Everybody is doing his or her own thing. Then there is the
succession debate. Rumours abound about Mugabe's future plans - they all
point to him stepping down and it would appear from our sources that the debate
on whether to allow him to remain President until 2010 has been
quashed. It would appear to us that he is now committed to retirement in
March 2008, if not sooner. A recurrent ZANU-PF nightmare is that he might
become incapacitated sooner than March 2008, leaving ZANU-PF unprepared for the
succession battles that will follow.
- report sent
by Eddie Cross, Bulawayo,
|
A scene
from the Rhodesian Pioneer Club’s
highly successful 2006 July Braai, which was held at their new home in
Trentfield, Nottinghamshire, on the banks of the River Trent. The July Braai
fulfils three roles; firstly it’s a great weekend for everyone
involved, secondly it’s a huge fund-raising event for charity work,
which as the situation in “Zimbabwe” deteriorates ever deeper
will become all the more important, and finally it is a chance for everyone
who had to leave their beloved homeland, to re-kindle the spirit and
brotherhood of the Rhodesian nation, and ensure that it is not lost on the
future generations who will now be raised overseas. |
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Zimbabwe's prisoners face acute food shortages and are
going weeks without soap or toilet paper, reported a parliamentary committee on
Friday. Some inmates have resorted to using pages ripped from Bibles to wipe
themselves clean, said the report, which sounded the alarm about deteriorating
prison conditions amid Zimbabwe's worsening economic crisis. The report found
that malnutrition and disease were widespread in Zimbabwe's overcrowded jails,
designed for 16 000 people but holding many more. Prison authorities have
insufficient funds to buy food, which lead to the spread of
malnutrition-related ailments such as pellagra, intestinal disorders and mental
disorientation. Water and power outages were also common, said the committee,
and sanitation facilities were in urgent need of repair at most facilities. The
report said blankets in the prisons go unwashed for months. The Harare
[Salisbury] Remand Prison had its water supply cut off for failing to pay its
bills. Cooking pots and other kitchen implements at the prison were filthy and
"not fit to carry food for human consumption". When Chikurubi maximum
security jail ran dry, water was ferried in by chain gangs wielding buckets,
said the committee, but 73 inmates had diarrhea as a result of the shortages.
Zimbabwe's economic meltdown has been blamed on disruptions to the
agriculture-based economy, linked to years of drought and the seizure of thousands
of White-owned commercial farms for redistribution. Inflation is at 1043%.
There are acute shortages of hard currency and petrol. The report found that
prison authorities could often not take inmates to court for scheduled bail
hearings and trial appearances because they did not have petrol. According to
the report, five of the eight vehicles belonging to the Harare [Salisbury]
Remand Prison had broken down and could not be repaired due to a shortage of
spare parts. Few of Zimbabwe's families could afford to pay the bail of more
than $Zim 200,000, leaving many of the accused to languish in jail, said the
report. Delays in the court system also meant some prisoners remained in
custody for more than five years.
- www.news24.com,
A contingent of 40 members of the Rhodesian Services Association attended the ANZAC Day parade with
the Hobsonville RSA (Returned Servicemen's Association) in Auckland, New
Zealand recently. ANZAC day is the local equivalent of Poppy Day and there were
hundreds of memorial parades all around Australia and New Zealand. Hobsonville
RSA invited the Rhodesian group to join their parade some ten years ago, and
attendance has been growing ever since. A wreath was laid commemorating all
Rhodesian's contribution in not only the two world wars, but in many subsequent
conflicts in various parts of the world.
- report sent by John Pringle (New
Zealand),
The average Zimbabwean woman
is dying at 34, according to figures released on Friday in the World Health Organisation (WHO) annual
report for 2006. Zimbabwean men can expect to live only to 37. While the WHO
linked the shocking statistic to the high incidence of HIV-Aids, many doctors
complained that it was also because of the collapse of the health system in
Zimbabwe, which is struggling through its worst political and economic crisis.
“The life expectancy for women in Zimbabwe is not only about HIV-Aids.
Many women are dying during pregnancy, or during or after delivery. It is
shocking,” said Peter Iliff, a doctor and a member of the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human
Rights. The report, based on figures available for 2004, said that in a
single year Zimbabwean women’s had become, on average, two years shorter.
Mugabe’s policies have seen the country’s economy shrink by more
than 40% in the past six years and inflation has soared, becoming the highest
in the world. The price of bread rose by 60% overnight on Friday after official
statistics confirmed that inflation was close to 1,000%. Zimbabweans battle
with chronic shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency, and with a crumbling
infrastructure and the poor medical services highlighted by the life expectancy
figures.
- Sunday Telegraph,
In one hand Frank Wiggill holds his monthly pension
statement and in the other a 500 gram packet of salt. It is the only thing in
the supermarket that his pension will buy, unless he prefers to splash out on
two eggs. When Wiggill retired after 38 years as an engine driver on the
Zimbabwean railways, he looked forward to enjoying his twilight years in
comfort. Instead he and his wife Jeanette depend on monthly food parcels from
well-wishers and handouts from their son in South Africa. The collapsing
currency combined with the world's highest inflation - estimated at more than
1,000% a year - has cut their pension to 13p a month. "It's
embarrassing," said Wiggill, 79. "I worked all my life and here I am
living on food parcels of milk powder and toilet paper." His monthly
pension of Z$49,000 is less than the cost of a newspaper (Z$50,000) or a loaf
of bread (Z$70,000). It would take him two months to buy a pint of milk
(Z$89,000) and nine months to afford the cheapest pack of four toilet rolls
(Z$440,000). "The pension is a laugh," he said. "It must cost
them Z$25,000 to post the statement." This month the Wiggill’s
received nothing. Deductions for three items on prescription (Z$30,000 a time)
after Wiggill cut down a cactus and got poisonous sap in his eye left him
Z$41,000 in debt to the pension company. At the same time the monthly rates on
his bungalow have increased to Z$679,124. Water and electricity are extra.
- Sunday Times, March 26, 2006
At least 15 men have
been arrested by Zimbabwean police amid allegations of a plot to launch an
armed rebellion against President Robert Mugabe. A cache of weapons was
reportedly seized and those held included some senior officials of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
An MDC member of parliament Giles Mutsekwa, a former officer in the Zimbabwe
National Army, and Brian James, the treasurer of the MDC’s Manicaland
province, in eastern Zimbabwe, were arrested last week. Roy Bennett, a former
opposition MP, who spent six months in prison last year, has been named by
police as being “wanted for questioning” in connection with the
alleged plot. Police claim they unearthed a cache of weapons in Mutare [Umtali]
and linked the haul to a Britist-based group, the Zimbabwe Freedom Movement, which the authorities claim has strong
ties to the MDC. A clutch of automatic rifles, AK47 rifles and some weapons
more than 40 years old were allegedly found, along with thousands of bullets
and a two-way radio system at the Mutare [Umtali] home of Michael Peter
Hitschmann, who police said was a member of the ZFM. Mr. Hirschmann, who
claimed to have served in the Rhodesian Army during the 1970s Bush War, is
alleged to have made a confession to police about the ZFM, its members and
links.
- Daily Telegraph,
The corpses of at least 20 newborn babies and foetuses are
found each week in the sewers of Zimbabwe's capital, some having been flushed
down toilets, Harare [Salisbury] city authorities said, according to state
media yesterday. Town Clerk Nomutsa Chideya said the babies' remains were found
among a wide variety of waste and garbage cleared by city council workers
unblocking sewers and drains in Harare [Salisbury]. "Apart from upsetting
the normal flow of waste, it is not right from a moral standpoint. Some of the
things that are happening now are shocking," the Herald, a government mouthpiece, reported Chideya as saying. Acute
shortages of revenue and petrol in the nation's worst economic crisis since
1980 have crippled public utilities and garbage collection services across
Zimbabwe. Hospital fees and charges for scarce medicines have soared. Church
and charity groups blame economic hardships for an increase in back-street abortions.
Inflation is running at 613%.
Associated Press report, February 18, 2006
Mugabe has reversed his land policies and has offered some
white farmers their land back. With the fastest-shrinking economy in the world,
Mugabe has had to backtrack on six years of chaos and his own determination to
rid Zimbabwe of all White farmers. At the beginning of 2000, in an orgy of
violence, Mugabe seized the land, homes, equipment and infrastructure of about
4,000 White commercial farmers who produced nearly half Zimbabwe's foreign
currency. In the process Mugabe rewrote property laws, changed the constitution
and nationalised more than 20 million acres. About 1,5 million people lost
their homes and jobs. The economy collapsed and continues to contract, while
inflation powers towards 1,000%. The ruling ZANU-PF's all- powerful politburo
has been informed and selected journalists in the state-controlled media have
been briefed on how to spin the dramatic policy reversal. As of now, so the new
policy goes, the 5% or about 250 remaining White farmers still on small
portions of their land will immediately be offered state leases for their own
land. Some will be hoping that their full land holdings will be restored as a
second stage. Then the leases will be extended to some farmers who have already
been evicted, particularly where there is no activity on that land. Some fled
to Britain, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa. The government will admit,
in the next few days, that it has only used about 50% of the land it seized. In
reality, land economists say nearer to 80 to 90% of the land is lying idle. In
anticipation of this change of policy, the Commercial
Farmers Union - which has already advised some members to apply for leases
- issued a rare statement calling for a "moratorium on land and
agricultural policies". It said all those in agriculture should get
together and "rebuild the entire industry to return as the principal
employer of labour and generator of food and foreign exchange. We have the
energy and capacity to help bring Zimbabwe back once again to be the bread
basket of the sub-continent". Behind closed doors last week, the
International Monetary Fund told Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa that land
seizures should halt immediately and that without increased agricultural
production there was no chance of halting Zimbabwe's slide. But some white
farmers are cynical. "The government vastly underestimates the damage of
its insane polices," said one of Zimbabwe's former top cereal producers.
"They probably believe that allowing some of us to return will turn the
economy around in a single season. We won't be able to do anything without
international finance, and we won't get that until there is political
reform," he said.
- Cape Argus,
The effective
nationalisation of Zimbabwean cricket in Harare [Salisbury] has further damaged
their Test credibility and, according to the players, carries ominous
similarities with the demise of farming. The government dissolved the Zimbabwe
Cricket Board, setting up an interim panel for six months, and they announced a
cull of administrators along racial lines. Gibson Mashingaidze, an army
brigadier and chairman of the Sports and Recreation Commission, said that he
was unconcerned about the possible repercussions. He said that White and Asian
directors were left out for “their racial connotations and having their
own agendas and not government policy”. The brigadier, speaking on behalf
of the sports minister, added “We’re prepared to be chucked out of
the Test status. The government are saying we are starting afresh. We are not
bothered. Those who want to stay in can stay, but those who want to go are free
to go. They can go to India, Canada or wherever. We are not bothered.”
Clive Field, the Zimbabwe players’ representative, said “This
smacks of what happened on the farms. The government said they would simply
re-populate the farms with new farmers. They didn’t have the technology,
they didn’t have experience, they didn’t have capital. Look where
our farming is now: we’re importing food. I think cricket will go along
the same lines very quickly.”
Field said that he expected players to leave the country in droves.
“It might be the end of cricket [in Zimbabwe], because you can’t
just produce cricketers out of a hat. The senior guys aren’t happy with
what was said today, and the more junior players don’t see a future in
the game here.”
- Daily Telegraph,
|
The Hon. Ian Douglas Smith being awarded with the Order of the Flame Lily. The citation on
the scroll reads: "... in recognition of his upholding of the ideals
upon which the nation of Rhodesia was founded; his courageous leadership in
the face of adversity; his wisdom and statesmanship in the transition to
international acceptability; and his care and concern for the people of
Rhodesia to this present day." |
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The big Rhodesian-Zimbabwean Reunion opened at the Shamwari
Club near Hillcrest in Natal with a flag raising ceremony on Sunday 6th
November 2005. The skirl of bagpipes drew the crowd to the flag staffs, where
representatives of the former Rhodesian security forces raised the flags of
Southern Rhodesia and Rhodesia. When the bagpipes ceased, the bugler sounded the
reveille for the opening of this momentous week, as the rain started to pelt
down. At the lunch, people met old friends - some for the first time in many
years. Monday saw the usual crowd at the bar, as people started to arrive from
all over the world. By Tuesday celebrations were in full swing with the
"English Pub Evening" in true English style, and entertainment being
provided by Tony Darrell and his band. Wednesday morning was beautiful and
clear - ideal for the few staunch fishermen who rallied at the Inanda Dam for
the bass fishing competition. By breakfast - bacon, wors, eggs and rolls - not
many fish had taken the worm. However, by the second session these well
seasoned fishermen started to catch large mouth bass, but none weighed so much
as a kilogram. As usual many large ones got away! Still, it was an enjoyable
day, which ended with a couple or more chibulies at cut off time. That evening
a John Edmond Concert was held, with John live on stage, accompanied by his
lovely wife, Teresa, working the instrumental backing. Songs old and songs
new, mostly about days of yore, had the folk singing and clapping. It was
an evening filled with nostalgic memories of Rhodesia for the more than 400
people present. On Thursday morning the reunion golf day was held, and was
a great success. Johnny Haswell entertained with his humour during the prize
giving. That afternoon John Edmond did a special show for the pensioners, some
of whom were bussed in from afar, so that they could participate during
daylight hours in the reunion. In the evening the BSAP Regimental Association gathered at the Tudor Rose Pub in
Hillcrest while the usual crowd kept the Shamwari Club pub open till late.
Friday the 11th started with the commemoration of UDI at 13.15 hrs. After
replaying the address to the nation delivered by Prime Minister Ian Douglas
Smith exactly 40 years previously, John Redfern proposed a toast to Rhodesia.
In the evening the "Come as You Were" party took place. A couple of
the ‘young ladies' were dressed in their school uniforms from yesteryear
– wearing their hair in pony-tails. One guy was wearing his camo with a
Corps of Engineers stable belt and beret. Lew Lloyd-Evans wore his No.6
Rhodesian rugby jersey - albeit somewhat tight on him, and there were many others
among the 600 people present who ‘dressed for the occasion'. Needless to
say, the evening was a great success. The pub did run out of Castle Beer and
Coke for a short while, despite plenty of movement between the cold rooms and
the bar all night long. People partied until 03.00 hrs the next day. Apart from
the liquids, Erica and Roy provided tasty meals throughout the evening.
Saturday started with a "Remembrance Parade" organised by the SAS Association, attended by
approximately 400 people who gathering for a memorial service at this SAS
Memorial at the Flame Lily Park in Malvern. Wreaths were laid by
representatives of the various Rhodesian forces, as well as the British SAS,
South African Special forces, and the Flame
Lily Foundation. The lunchtime gathering at the Club was well attended,
while preparations were in being made at the International Conference Centre
for the Gala Dinner. Over 800 people sat down to an excellent meal, with a
starter of line fish, followed by shank of lamb and ending with mango cheesecake.
The speeches were exceptional, with Peter Rawson acting as MC. Richard Wood,
with his excellent wit and dry sense of humour spoke on the security forces of
Rhodesia; Ann Grant spoke on the women of Rhodesia, and provoked a tear or two;
Doug Watson dealt with the sportsmen and women of Rhodesia, John Haswell closed
with his own special brand of humour. Between the speeches and during the meal,
the building of Kariba and scenes from Rhodesia were displayed on the big
screen. John and Mary Redfern were presented with an award for their valued
contribution towards the interests of Rhodesians over the past two decades, and
John Edmond was made a Member of Honour of the Flame Lily Foundation in recognition of outstanding support in
furthering the objects of the Foundation, and his dedication in "keeping
the flame alive" by bringing Rhodesians in various parts of the world
together. After the speeches, John Edmond entertained the audience with his
songs and music that put them in dancing mood for the rest of the evening.
Between dances, SAS group photographs were taken and some RLI veterans tried
their best to entertain the crowd with their rendering of "When the Saints
Go Marching In". The closing ceremony on Sunday the 13th was well
attended, with the lowering of flags to the strains of the Last Post, and the
Rhodesian National Anthem being played on the bagpipes. The consensus was that
it had been a great week, as words of appreciation were declared to all those
involved in the organisation. The event ended with the raffle of an iced fruit
cake in the shape of Rhodesia, donated by Pet Bester, and the issuing of other
wonderful prizes.
- report by Liz Archibald of the Rhodesian
Association of South Africa Durban Branch, November 2005
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The UK
Branch of the BSAP Regimental Association
held their 58th Annual Regimental Dinner at the Victory Services Club in central London on Friday 30th
September 2005, at which the Guest of Honour was General Sir Michael Walker
GCB, CMG, CBE, ADC Gen., the Chief of the Defence Staff. Pictured above are
[left] a scene at the top table. Seated from left to right are: Peter Phillips
(Chairman of the UK Branch of the BSAP
Regimental Association), General Sir Michael Walker and Barry Henson (BSAP Regimental Association
representative from Cyprus); [middle] assembled members of the Association
enjoying the sumptuous dinner, with some of the many Rhodesian flags on display
in the background; and [right] General Sir Michael Walker with Alan Harvey, an
official guest representing the Springbok
Club.