"SEND MUGABE TO THE HAGUE" PROTESTS!!!

ZIMBABWE PROTEST: “SEND MUGABE TO THE HAGUE"
___________________________________________________
Dzidzai Foundation, Washington DC, 9 December 2008

For Immediate Release: December 9, 2008

CONTACT:

Denford Madenyika: 202-290-0982

Phineas Chanakira: 919-696-4299

Dzidzai Foundation

info@dzidzai.org

pchanakira@nc.rr.com


Washington, DC - Concerned Citizens and friends of Zimbabwe Activists will protest against the growing the growing humanitarian crisis, continued wave of repression and human rights violations in Zimbabwe at the Zimbabwe Embassy in Washington DC.

WHO: Zimbabwe Activists, Citizens and Friends

WHAT: Protest the growing humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe

WHEN: Friday, 19 December from 2:00PM to 5:00PM

WHERE: Zimbabwe Embassy, 1608 New Hampshire Ave NW, Washington DC 20009.

"If this is not the moment that it is obvious to the international community that it is time to demand what is right, I don't know when that moment will ever come. The people of Zimbabwe have already suffered too much", Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice
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On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 1:24 PM, Rev Mufaro Stig Hove wrote:

The death of Elliot Manyika brings mixed feelings in the political landscape of Zimbabwe. Elliot Manyika, MP Bindura, Political Commissar (ZANU PF) killed by road accidents followed the death of Border Gezi, MP Bindura, Political Commissar (ZANU PF) by road accident ironically on the same Masvingo Road is no coincidence at all. What is of coincidence is that I am the ONLY person who contested against both evil men who died trying to revive an evil political party, ZANU (PF), led by an evil president Robert Mugabe. Is this the end of ZANU (PF)? Is there more infighting internally than what meets the eye? Has God finally answered our prayers? Who is going to be the next ZANU (PF) Political Commissar?

MORE AT

http://zimfinalpush7.blogspot.com/2008/12/battle-of-two-elliots-that-never-was.html

Leaked: The document Tsvangirai refuses to sign!!!

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/mbeki138.18666.html

This is the document detailing the role of a Prime Minister in an envisaged "Inclusive Government" in Zimbabwe. The leaked document was sent anonymously to New Zimbabwe.com, and verified as authentic with several sources.

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has so far declined to sign this document, saying his powers are insufficient.
All but except three of the President's powers as set out in the Constitution of Zimbabwe are now cross-referenced either with the Prime Minister, Cabinet or both (SEE MUGABE'S POWERS BEFORE POWER SHARING). The remaining presidential powers are the power to declare a state of emergency, the power to make pardons and the power to declare war or make peace. Those three, however, still require the president to consult Cabinet.

In the interest of debate, we publish the full document below (Emphasis in the document is as is in the original PDF file sent to us):
...............................

Last updated: 22/08/2008 14:59:11
ROLE OF THE PRIME MINISTER

1. Cabinet is the organ of state that carries the principal responsibility of formulating and implementing the government policies agreed to in the Global Agreement. The Executive Authority of the Inclusive Government resides in the President, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.

2. The Prime Minister is a Member of the Cabinet and its Deputy Chairperson. In that regard, he carries the responsibility to oversee the formulation of policies by the Cabinet.

3. The Prime Minister must ensure all the policies formulated are implemented in accordance with the programme developed by the Ministries and agreed to in Cabinet.

4. In overseeing the implementation of the agreed policies, the Prime Minister must ensure that the state has sufficient resources and appropriate operational capacity to carry out its functions effectively. Accordingly, the Prime Minister will necessarily have to ensure that all state organs are geared towards the implementation of the policies of the inclusive government.

5. The President and the Prime Minister will agree on the allocation of Ministries between them for the purpose of day-to-day supervision.

6. The Prime Minister must ensure that the legislation necessary to enable government to carry out its functions is in place. In this regard, he carries the responsibility of conducting the business of government in Parliament.

7. The Prime Minister also advises the President on key appointments the President is required to make under and in terms of the Constitution or any Act of Parliament.

8. The Prime Minister can make recommendations on such disciplinary measures as may be necessary.

9. The Prime Minister shall serve as a member of the National Security Council and this will ensure his participation in deliberations on matters of national security and operations pertaining thereto.

10. As the work of the Inclusive Government evolves, the President or Cabinet may assign such additional functions as necessary to further enhance the work of the Inclusive Government.

11. The Prime Minister shall report regularly to the President.
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com

REASON WAFAWAROVA's HYPOCRICY EXPOSED AND DEPLORED!

Dear Reason,

I read your article in the Herald of 15 January 2008 with a lot of keen interest.

http://www1.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=29751&cat=10

There is stark irony in the way you write proudly from SYDNEY and how you hate the imperialists, SYDNEY included, with a passion! You seem to parrot the same liberation rhetoric that we all know off, but conveniently ignoring the fact that

It is not the imperialist who advised you, yes you Reason, to start the torture camps at "Border Gezi Training Institutes" were girls were raped and people with divergent views killed. I could have given you a list of victims but that is still early since these victims will disappear. Wait for the New Zimbabwe and you will see!

it is not the imperialists who made Kangai steal from GMB.

It is not the imperialist who made RBZ disburse 7 trillion to a brief case company.

It is not the imperialist who made the outspoken Kadzura be implicated in a Forex scam. Funny because "the economist" Kadzura, used to be very passionate about the same ideologies that you preach today.

It is not the imperialists who caused a near boxing match between Sibanda and Nkomo. A clear manifestation of the side effects of pushing decisions down some throats.

It is not the imperialists who caused a meaningless price blitz that saw goods being sold at below production costs. I will not be surprised if you attempt to justify the blitz.
It is not the imperialists who have ruined our educational system that you dislike yourself to the extend of hoping into bed with a "monster".
...........I could go on and on.

And if I may ask, What in the HELL are you doing in Sydney if you do not believe in a global village as mention by Rtd Major Mbudzi???? Don't we have Universities that can take you all the way to the highest qualification???? You and everyone else knows WHY and please do not give us that rhetoric?????

("Tichafa Nenzara" tichafa.nenzara@gmail.com)

"Decisive time for the revolutionary left in SA"

Munyaradzi Gwisai

http://gracekwinjeh.blogspot.com/2008/01/decisive-time-for-revolutionary-left-in.html

The debate that Brigg's intervention on the Zuma election has elicited is urgent and timely given the very important events unfolding in Africa's most important capitalist state.

The intervention's importance lies in its insistence that the overwhelming Zuma camp victory and the ongoing resurgence of the unions and the SACP show that South Africa is at crossroads. If correct this theses then raises the consequent urgency for the revolutionary left to fashion strategies that ensure its relevance in the unfolding struggles and opens up possibilities for the struggles to grow into social revolution against capitalism itself rather than their containment into another futile reformist Stalinist 'national democratic revolution' or worse still, a neo-liberal Trojan horse as happened with MDC and MMD in Zimbabwe and Zambia.

As other comrades have argued, Dale's rejection of Brigg's position is not sustainable. One cannot just dismiss the 4000 ANC delegates as he does.

The ANC enjoys overwhelming electoral dominance in SA. Its partners include the country's most important trade union federation and a still significant reformist left party, the SACP, in both of which are some of the most advanced sections of the working class. Polokwane must not be seen in isolation but as part of the broader social polarization taking place in SA over the last three or so years and reflected in escalating fights between reformist left sections and neo-liberal sections in not only the ANC but also COSATU and SACP themselves as the Madishe example and the push for a stand-alone SACP show. At one stage the neoliberals had the upper hand and even sought to elbow out the "ultra leftists" from the ANC, but Polokwane shows that the reverse now applies.

In a contest billed as the most fierce in 50 years, so many prominent leaders of the neoliberal camp were booted out. And this despite the overwhelming advantages that the Mbeki camp enjoyed including – huge use of state incumbency, media support and the subjective weaknesses of Zuma such as patriarchy, tribalism, primitive views on AIDS/HIV, strong linkages with crony capitalism and "passive neoliberalism."

The Zuma camp victory is best understood in the context of a general resurgence in working classes struggles and of an artificial anti-poor economic recovery that Claire and Bond have detailed. Briggs is thus correct to argue that the working classes have spoken through the Zuma victory -- 'spoken' mind you and not won!

Similarly there is a clear pattern of a return to serious working class struggle in SA, as shown by the wave of strikes, including the key June 2007 public sector strike and increase of strike days from 500 000 in 2003, to 2.9 million in 2006 and possibly over 11 million in 2007! The rise in workers struggles is mirrored in that of other struggles of the poor. Thus social service delivery demonstrations have jumped to over 20 000 in 2005 - 2007 from less than 6000 in 2004.

True a key factor behind the failure for convergence between the two streams of struggle has been the reluctance of the union elites to encourage such process, but there are other factors and this may be changing as the COSATU and SACP leaders reposition themselves leftward, in response to pressure from below and in order to survive pressure from above from the Mbekiists hence their growing willingness to confront the neoliberal wing as seen in the Mbeki - Vavi - Nzimande fights.

And most significantly for us, this re-positioning of the soft lefts or reformist leftist leaders is winning them big support in the rank and file of the ANC, if not the working class itself as shown in the significant growth in membership of both COSATU and SACP as revealed in their recent congresses. And if in further doubt, one just needs to look at the reception that Nzimande and Vavi received at Polokwane.

Zuma trial key in growing radicalisation

The above radicalization is likely to continue in the next two or so years critically centred on events around the Zuma trial and in the context of a worsening economic situation for the commons. Polarisation in the ANC is likely to worsen as the Mbeki camp seeks to use the trial to stem its decline and forestall a Zuma state presidency at all costs. Its determination has been shown by the new broader charges against Zuma. The Mbekiists will not be lame ducks, but on the contrary are likely to use the state as a bastion for their offensive and with the full support of the bourgeois opposition, business, the media, the judiciary and their regional and international neoliberal allies as they seek the appointment of an alternative and acceptable 'compromise' candidate for 2009.

The Zuma camp now emboldened by its current capture of the party machine is likely to fight back tenaciously and viciously, as Polokwane shows that neither side is taking prisoners. This is echoed in the DA's warning that the Zuma trial could see SA heading for the 'slippery slopes of anarchy' and the declaration of COSATU KZN secretary Zet Luzipho that -"This time there will be blood split in the courtroom" if the trial proceeds. Attitudes are certainly hardening. In their New Year messages COSATU, ANC Youth League and SACP, all insist the 14 August trial be cancelled and charges against Zuma be withdrawn because a fair trial is no longer possible.

COSATU has called upon "the membership of the ANC and its allies to rally around their newly elected ANC President" whilst the ANC YL declared that - "Any further attempt to prosecute cde Zuma will not be met by kindness by those who have showed confidence in his leadership. We will resort to the basics of the movement in ensuring that meet this injustice with people's power."

To succeed against the heavy odds, the Zuma camp and despite Zuma's own conciliatory tone, will indeed have to mobilize massively for people's power, going beyond the ANC and reach out to other sections of the poor including the social movements, and seek to portray the trial as a fight between the rich and the poor. This is why Bond is correct to argue that the fight will increasingly go beyond personalities into economic and social policy issues. The Alliance Summit meeting will be an important indicator.

The growing possibility of a significant economic slow down if not recession in the USA, will hit hard the raw material commodity and speculative based recent economic growth in South Africa, potentially sharply accelerating the social and political struggles in the country including in the ANC. Bond aptly summarises the vulnerable state of the economy as a "parasitical, high poverty, unemployment-ridden, capital -flight prone, elite-oriented economic machine plowing over poor people, whose gains appear only as temporarily restored profitability for big capital and a conspicuous consumption binge for a credit-saturated petite bourgeoisie."
Time for hard choices for the left

The political implications of the above likely polarization and radicalization could be dramatic and far-reaching for the ANC including - an outright split, if accommodation and compromise between the two wings fails; victory of the Zumaiists and resurrection of the reformist left's national democratic revolution agenda, now styled the 'development state'; or following a split or debilitating paralysis due to an inconclusive fight, the emergence of "a new people's party/workers' party", because of the resulting vacuum or as the ANC reformist left enters into alliance with other left of centre radicals and the revolutionary left outside the ANC whilst the neoliberal wing does a similar process with the bourgeois opposition and neoliberal forces.
Whichever way things go, the above opens up immense possibilities for the revolutionary left but only if the right choices are made now.

The two stark choices really are: a) to abstain from the ANC related processes, including the Zuma trial, seeing them as irrelevant or minor things in a bourgeois party and its reformist labour and communist allies; or b) engage with such processes and the reformist left in the ANC, COSATU and SACP on the basis that the crisis of neoliberal capitalism in SA and ANC succession question are opening up immense and unprecedented opportunities for a realignment and regroupment of left forces in South Africa to take on and defeat the neoliberal agenda in Africa's most important state, if not for full social revolution.

Drawing from the experiences of the ISO with MDC in 1999 - 2002 and radical workers in Zambia and Zimbabwe in the MDC and MMD, we think abstention would be a huge mistake. The commons are clearly radicalising in SA and the reformist left leaders are repositioning themselves at the head of this process, even if their ultimate objective is at best to limit such process to reform rather than uproot capitalism if not worse, as shown in how the commencing social revolts find crystallization in a detestable character like Zuma. But that is not unique to SA and indeed has happened many a time before. Thus the 1905 Russian Revolution first crystallized around the leadership of a religious police agent who led hundreds to their deaths in a march to present a petition to "Our Little Father."

In Zimbabwe, a neo-liberal supporting coterie of union leaders around Morgan Tsvangirai were able to position themselves at the head of the mass actions and strikes of 1997 – 98 and subsequently use the moral authority thereby gained to form an ostensibly working people based MDC but in reality one stacked with bourgeois farmers, business, NGO elites and taking instructions from the IMF, London and Washington. With the class on the move, even with misplaced illusions and hopes in the likes of Zuma, Vavi, Nzimande, Tsvangirai or Chiluba, the revolutionary left cannot isolate itself in some purist ideological revolutionary ivory tower or cocoon.

They have to engage with the reformist –led struggles so that they too can get in with the masses moreso to be in a position to expose the reactionary leaders, even if conditions are a pigsty as Lenin called it, when arguing for the reluctant Bolshevik committee men to join the reformist if not reactionary dominated 1905 revolutionary process, as the Mensheviks had earlier done.

To abstain is to surrender leadership of the struggle to the reformists if not reactionaries, with potentially devastating consequences. For us in the end, it was a painful and bitter pill to join and be part of such an MDC, but with some pressure and encouragement from cdes like Cliff and Callinicos of the SWP (UK) we did. I remember very well Cliff's advise that if you want to go fishing you might as well as get a licence from the bailiff if possible.

Despite a determined and very public fight we were ultimately unable to stop the total neoliberal take-over of the MDC and with it the paralysis of the democratic struggles in Zimbabwe, not because we engaged or did not try hard enough, but because our numbers and those of radical unionists were just too small to provide the necessary pole of attraction for radicalizing MDC rank and file activists and act as a counter to the neolibeal right-wingers.

Although today the ISO has survived and has good chances of rebuilding again as disillusionment with the MDC grows, the period of 1999 - 2003 was one of serious missed opportunities for the Zimbabwean working classes. But things could be worse, for the absence of a sizeable and effective revolutionary left pole in a period of economic and social crisis can result in surrender of leadership of the struggles to squabbling reformist or reactionary petite bourgeois leaders who may deliberately or inadvertently stalk communal, ethnic or class tensions to get power and trigger the kind of blood baths we have seen in Rwanda, Cote D'Ivore, Kenya, Pakistan and earlier on Ebert's SPD in the failed 1918 German Revolution.

Conclusion: What form of engagement

Only outlines of the forms of engagement can now be made. Probably most importantly is unconditional but critical support for Zuma in his trial in the mass mobilisation called for by the reformist left of the ANC/COSATU/ SACP. This will be a seminal event which will give the left and social movements plenty of room to work with and gain respect from the reformist left in the ANC Alliance, especially the militant rank and file.

This can subsequently be extended to joint work in other areas, in particular the social service delivery struggles currently being led by the social movements, thereby uniting the two streams of struggle into a mighty river that Trevor Ngwane likes to talk about. Already both COSATU and SACP have talked about the urgent need of building people power committees in the townships whilst COSATU is taking a lead in mobilizing for the WSF Global Day of Action on the 26 th January.

Joint actions in struggle must be accompanied by serious but fraternal ideological criticisms and discussions with the reformist left on key issues like alternatives to capitalism and appropriate organizational forms of the struggle.

In particular our contentions that the national democratic revolution - or developmental state agenda whilst welcome as a reform is inadequate and cannot succeed in isolation of a global socialist revolution besides the real danger of neutralisation by the neoliberal wing in the Zuma camp. Similarly our emphasis on the urgent need to establish both a democratic and anti-capitalist united front of the commons as the way forward as well as within it a mass revolutionary and democratic socialist party for the advanced sections of the commons and not the broad ANC church.

A determined political attack should constantly be made to expose the real dangers of Zuma himself and the neoliberals entrenched around him and the real likelihood of them betraying the masses in future. To argue that only mass action via the self-activity of the commons and a class conscious organ can defeat them.

The final point is the urgent need of the fragmented and small forces of the revolutionary left to urgently regroup into a bigger and sizeable entity that alone will give them the critical mass to effectively engage with the reformist left. Without this any intervention by it will be limited, ineffectual and incapable of stopping the Zumaist passive neoliberals or the Stalinist state capitalist project of the reformist left, if not worse. That is the bitter lesson of the Zimbabwean working class and earlier struggles in Zambia and Nigeria.

Yet more than many other place, the commons in SA have traditions and militancy forged by the mighty struggle against Apartheid, that gives their struggles, along with those of Latin America, the potency of igniting much larger regional and international struggles in a decisive all out fight with the forces of global neo-liberal capitalism.

The burden and challenge of the revolutionary left is therefore heavy but possible.

Amandla!

Munyaradzi Gwisai

Munyaradzi plays an active leadership role in the International Socialist Organisation and Zimbabwe Social Forum but writes here in a personal capacity

Congratulations to the ANC and Jacob Zuma!

GLOBAL ZIMBABWE FORUM

Press Statement

19th December 2007


The Global Zimbabwe Forum would like to extend its message of congratulations to the African National Congress on the successful conduct of its new leadership elections.

The success of the ANC's internal democratic process should serve as a beacon of hope to the whole of Africa where ruling parties are well known for not promoting any form of open democratic expression within their rank and file.

We salute the ANC for setting such a high standard for the rest of the African continent.
We would also like to congratulate Comrade Jacob Zuma on his electoral success. We trust that he will be able to add more impetus to the on-going efforts by President Thabo Mbeki to help resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe .

We call for Zuma to be even more clear and unequivocal in his stance against any form of dictatorship and human rights abuse in Zimbabwe .

We also call upon the newly elected leadership of the ANC to revisit the plight of the millions of Zimbabweans that are currently living in South Africa .

In particular we hope that the outstanding issue of the legal status of Zimbabweans will also be decisively resolved soon.

Issued at Johannesburg by

Mr. Daniel Molokele
GFZ Co-ordinator Tel: +27 72 947 4815

Ms. Grace Kwinjeh
GFZ Ghairperson Tel: + 27 79 434 4508

* The GFZ is a global network for all the Zimbabweans NGOs and CSOs that are based among the Zimbabwean Diaspora communities in the world.

WHAT DOES INFLATION LOOK LIKE???

SOURCE OF PICTURES!!!!

CHIEF CHIWARA SAYS, "WE DON'T MIND THE HARDSHIPS, THEY ARE TEMPORARY!"

(EX "THE POST" OF ZAMBIA>> LINK!!!! )

WE don’t mind the hardships we are currently facing in Zimbabwe because they are temporary, a Zimbabwean senior chief has said.

Chief Chiwara of Gutu District in Masvingo Province said in an interview on Tuesday that although many Zimbabweans were facing hardships, changing their leadership was not an option for them.The chief, who is attending the ongoing ZANU-PF extraordinary congress in Harare said he wished all the people in the country could vote for President Robert Mugabe.

“We’ll endorse our president to be the leader for the next term because he is fit and able to lead us. We don’t mind our current hardships because they are temporary. We are struggling but we are also fighting hard to redeem ourselves. Perseverance is the answer,” he said.“I wish all the people could vote for our President because he has fought for our rights for so long.

He’s the only president I’ve seen in Africa who has the love of his people at heart. He’s the only president who has done sense.”The chief said the land reform programme, which saw the 80 per cent of the arable land that was held by only four percent of the white community being redistributed to the landless black Zimbabweans, was the best thing to have happened in Zimbabwe.Chief Chiwara, who was flanked by Herikanos Mudavahvu, a headman in Masvingo Province, said he believed the “temporary problems inflicted on Zimbabweans by Western countries” would be over soon.

Asked what the end to the Zimbabwean crisis was dependant on, the chief said it would be through hard work and self-reliance and not through change of the incumbent regime.“Things will be normal very soon. We are very confident about that. Everything has got an end so we are not worried,” he said.“Our major intentions are to do away with the British government’s imperialism and to work hard so that our country can go back to what it was before.”

Branding former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, incumbent prime minister Gordon Brown and US president George Bush as “devils”, chief Chiwara said the former colonial power ought to do away with Zimbabwe’s internal affairs.“They should just leave us alone. Why are they so interested in our country when we have no interest in theirs?” he asked.

The on-going ZANU-PF extraordinary congress is expected to endorse President Robert Mugabe as the ruling party’s presidential candidate in the March 2008 elections.And if he wins the election, President Mugabe, 83, will continue to be the country’s president until the next elections in 2013.

SUNRISE 2 DOOMED: Cash Crisis and Price madness set to Persist!

By Garikai Chimuka

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor, Gideon Gono has put the nation in a high state of anxiety amidst speculation regarding the launch of a new “real” currency under the misnamed “Sunrise 2”, for its surely “Sunset ” big time in Zimbabwe. Debate has for the past weeks swirled around whether Gono is bluffing or serious. I believe that the current discourse should be focused on sending a clear message to Gono and his political “principals” that without immediate action in addressing the core and root political and structural issues bedeviling Zimbabwe today, his petty project is doomed and the current cash shortages and price madness are bound to persist.

Gono is widely quoted as having said,
“Last time we removed three zeroes and they are now back. This time we will remove one, two , three or four zeroes and they will never come back for good”
This is a huge illusion and the earlier Gono and his political masters avoid the proverbial ostrich mentality of burying their heads in sand and urgently focus on far reaching policy reform, they will never have anyone to blame as their burial by the economic implosion into the dustbins of history is now imminent and there for everyone to see.

Introducing a new currency in an economy where hyperinflation is galloping to stratospheric levels with indications that the rampaging monster has breached the 14000% mark and still rising sharply in the height of paralysis of analysis and policy kwashiorkor by Gono and the ZANU (PF) government is sheer madness. In fact by the time the so called currency hits the streets, it will be as useless as manure .Gono must start to prepare for the launch of another “Sunset 3 “ by February 2008, that is , if he and his masters are still there for it no longer needs a rocket scientist to clearly realize that a single spark will totally annihilate and bury Gono and the sunset party to the sewages of history given that they are now precariously hanging on to their positions without any viable and enduring clue on how to address the plethora of self inflicted problems bedeviling the economy

Governor Gono has been blaming ,”cash barons” and speculators and threatening to turn their money into useless “manure”. This is the height of crass naivety and hypocrisy for it is Gono and the Sunset party s policies that have created these problems that have turned our hardworking civil servants and professionals not mentioning industry workers into professional destitutes expending their mental and physical talent to get a reward of less than $US10 per month which is decreasing every hour.

The RBZ governor can not dream that money can come back into the official system for there is no longer any official system to talk about after his bosses hammered the final nail on the official/formal system through the reckless “ Operation Reduce Prices” How then does Gono expect the manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers to bank money when they are out of business? Shelves are empty and several businesses have closed shop and now the informal traders are the ones that are importing goods from neighboring countries especially cooking oil and soap of all things to keep the country going. They must be hailed for keeping the country afloat otherwise it could have ceased to be a going concern by now.Gono can not expect these honest and hardworking Zimbabweans to deposit their money into banks, when through his short sighted policies, they will not be able to withdraw it given the pathetic withdrawal thresholds that does not make any sense in this hyperinflationary environment. This simply increases the need for people to keep their cash for the huge transaction costs they have to make on a daily basis.Gono should have done better by not limiting the amount of withdrawal long back when people still had some little confidence in the national payment system.

Governor Gono must also cease to pass the buck and play to the gallery. He can not expect well meaning businessmen to act formally when the RBZ is now the biggest player in the forex black market which he and his NIPC sidekick, Goodwills Masimirembwa call illegal. It goes without saying that the sharp decline in the now worthless Zim dollar from January this year has been to a larger extend a result of RBZ forex buying sprees on the black market.Gono was offering ridiculously high prices for the RBZ does not earn but merely prints the Zim dollars and then sell the forex at ridiculously low prices to his bosses for their own insatiable personal aggrandsement thus ultimately punishing the hardworking tax payer who subsidizes the so called chefs. Surely, where under the sun has a central bank stooped so low to the extend of buying forex on the black market under the cover of darkness in a system stinking with corruption? If his sidekick, Masimirembwa demands receipts from all businessman, can Gono produce any receipts for forex bought in dark alleys at a price he does not know?

Gono must forget about personal enrichment and tell his principals to let market forces determine the price of goods and services including forex.He is on record as informing politicians to tell the people the truth that in a hyperinflationary environment , prices can not remain the same. He should sent the same message about forex so that banks can buy at market and sell at those rates not perpetuating opaque system so as to loot money from exporters and the taxpayers. A market driven exchange rate will eliminate unnecessary dealer margins of Gono ‘s boys he has now deployed in full force not least at the Roadpoart and Ximex mall, but at every street intersection in every town and growth points. A market forces driven forex market will also mean that Gono and his chefs will not profit from the easy arbitrage of buying forex at the pathetic 1: 30000 and then offload it instantly at the 1: 1500 000 killing the economy in the process.

Gono has been warned that his illegal quasi-fiscal actives where he is printing quadrillions of dollars without being answerable to anyone except his “principal” will be the economy’s waterloo. He has however been hiding under such nonsense like extraordinary circumstances” and “conviction” to justify his daylight hard looting of national coffers. He pretends that pumping money into the market will boost production. He is attempting to implement what economists term deficit financing. It can only work when the economy is facing short term rigidities of a cyclical nature. In a sinking economy like Zimbabwe where the supply side wheels are literally off, pumping money is a sure way of stoking the inflationary flames for the structural challenges facing the economy are not promotive of production. How does pumping trillions of Zim dollars under fancy names like Barcossi, Plarp, ASPERF etc boost supply side when what industry needs is forex to buy imported inputs? How can production be boosted when all the basics like fuel and electricity are non-existant?Speculators will simply do the rational and take the unsolicited manna from heaven and invest it into the stock, property and forex market without any concomitant supply side response. He has thus initiated a vicious speculative cycle that is sure to consume him sooner rather than later!

This is the same fallacy with the much hyped , “mother of all farming seasons” which by all indications has suffered a still birth. How can you put a subsidized fuel facility in an environment of massive shortages? The fuel meant for farming is flooding the black market at obscene prices relative to its peanut price thus there is no incentive for the recipients to farm when they can make an instant killing. How does distributing ploughs and scorthcats to malnourished and starving rural folk increase production when there is no draught power which has been decimated by his master’s chaotic policies? Does he expect the rural folk to literally harness themselves and pull the ploughs? Its a foregone conclusion that the much publicized “mother of all farming seasons” will be the “mother of all farming disasters” since the turn of the millennium.

Thus given the above, as soon as Gono launches the “real” currency under Sunset 2, it will be a matter of hours before it floods the black market for it is the real and only market in town. Instead of making himself a fool by saying the zeroes will not come back, he must plainly tell his “principals” to abandon their corrupt self serving policies. In fact, he can do himself and the country a lot of good next time when the organizers of the circus called “ million man march” come to collect their undeserved dirty trillions from his office that they would do themselves, the nation and the unborn generations good by marching for the long overdue departure of his boss from State House as a patriotic matter of saving Zimbabwe from the archives of a failed state.

Garikai Agenda Chimuka writes from the Netherlands and can be contacted at garychimuka06@yahoo.com

"ARMED STRUGGLE: THE ONLY WAY FORWARD" says ANONYMOUS ANALYST.

MDC CONFERENCE (HARARE). THE TIME FOR CONFERENCES OVER??

The contributor was responding to my article esp the one on "THE ZIMBABWE INTELLIGENCE FORCES AND THE ZIMBABWE CRISIS"

The idea of an armed input into the present crisis is shunned by many who individually view any such suggestion through contemporary eyes that are unskilled, untrained and often fearful eyes.

We must be mindful and sensitive that previous experience of war / violence and a desire for self preservation has created in the national psyche a sense of extreme fright, individualism and selfishness which is SUSPICIOUS OF CONFRONTATION, AND VIEWS IT AS A GENERALISED WAVE OF MINDLESS DESTRUCTION.

Thus many Zimbabweans are more predisposed to the opposite yet still dangerous extreme of allowing gross abuses rather than resisting them.

When this outwardly noble yet wholly dangerous version of an extremist pacifist tendency is coupled with

1) Individual fear which has bred in many a deep-rooted sense of selfishness that normalizes and justifies a state of high moral cowardice and indifference in the face of gross wrong doing

2) The paternalistic culture of Africa with its entrenched states of denial and unquestioning deference to those in power no matter how bad / destructive they are,

3) The short-sighted life aspirations of many Zimbabweans solely based on chasing the fraudulent ideal of Western capitalist consumer culture and material gain. A mindset which lacks any sense of long term national vision,

4) A corrupt religious dogma that asks the bloodied and starved masses to shun brains and common sense, in favour of raising money and waiting for Jesus to come and solve their maltreatment

5) A misused socialist ideology that has systematically spread fear in the populace by treating all civil and human rights as enemies of the State ,

6) A conniving and manipulative neo-liberal doctrine of passivity and ‘NON-VIOLENT STRUGGLE’ against all vicious dictatorship.

You are left with a critical mass within the population wholly incapable, unwilling and unable to cope with the forces of tyranny and dictatorship ranged against them.

The NEO-LIBERAL take over of the Zimbabwean struggle under the guise of certain colours of DEMOCRATIC FORCES is especially vicious as it forms the back bone of political opposition to the DICTATORSHIP and thus should be carefully noted.

Here CORPORATIST INTERSTS have sold the lie that Zimbabwe’s crisis is all about ECONOMICS rather than a power struggle against TYRANNY, in the form of the people of Zimbabwe versus an incompetent and errant guerrilla movement that took all the trappings of governance without having any real skills or abilities to govern beyond the imposition of brute force. And foreign powers that have funded figures and groups in Zimbabwe to oppose the so called government (DICTATORSHIP).

In this ill-shaped paradigm physical self defense by the Zimbabwe population against regime brutality is tarred as a NEGATIVE and is called VIOLENCE. Not natural defiance to a life threatening event, or self defense.

Thus in Zimbabwe all protest is promoted under the unnatural and unrealistic banner of understanding regime brutality or NON-VIOLENCE, not because the advocates believe in peace, nor because of the lie they tell that people fighting back against DICTATORSHIP will increase Zimbabwe’s suffering…

MURAMBATSVINA was not resisted by the so called opposition, because it was a money spinner in terms of donor funds and the retail value on all the cleared land in prime urban development spots. Zimbabwean refugees make cheap labour for the SADC economies and allow for all kinds of NGOs to get paid.

After nearly 10 years of destruction no genuine opposition to the DICTATORSHIP exists, no NEW LEADERSHIP with new solutions has been pushed to emerge, just the same dead wood. Any who have tried to put forward new ideas have met a ‘brick wall’ of indifference and hidden agendas within these so called DEMOCRATIC GROUPS.

So why is it that the idea of non- violent protest (no self defense in the face of the DICTATORSHIP’S brutality), being touted as the only answer when it has proved to be so ineffectual?

Because a passive population will not QUESTION the SICK DIVERSION being staged at their expense, nor resist the inevitable corporate take over when the ZANU / OPPOSITION political hegemony arrives, as the SOLUTION to all their woes, whereas a militant population properly lead will do so.

These so called DEMOCRATIC FORCES set themselves up as THE ANSWER for the people, yet offer only compromise when the crisis requires TOTAL OVERTHROW of the CORRUPT SYSTEM and replacement with a genuinely progressive alternative.

Time and again they have been exposed as inept thinkers who have received millions in donor funds but who have created naught.

No honest national plan, or policies or liberation strategies, or social safety net.
Just a program of corporate looting called reconstruction created from the political / economic interests of their foreign backers.

In short these are agents, political middle men, a new breed of paid bureaucrats and overseers for foreign corporate masters hoping to use severe national collapse and increased public suffering and death and desperation as a means to seize political power and gain its associated economic perks....(the Zimbabwean economy will remain foreign owned and controlled).

CONTRIBUTOR'S IDENTITY WITHELD

MS PETA THORNYCROFT's INTERVIEW WITH SWRADIO (6/11/2007 and 13/11/2007)

SW Radio Africa Transcript

LINK TO 6/11/2007

LINK TO 13/11/2007

LISTEN TO 6/11/2007 BROADCAST

LISTEN TO 13/11/2007 BROADCAST

(PLEASE NOTE THAT MS PETA THORNYCROFT HAD TO GIVE ANOTHER INTERVIEW ON 11/12/2007 TO CORRECT SERIOUS MISCONCEPTIONS THAT HAD BEEN CREATED BY ZANU-PF PROPAGANDA WANTING TO CAPITALIZE ON HER PREVIOUS TWO! PLEASE CLICK HERE TO LISTEN!!!)

Hot Seat Transcript: Foreign correspondent Peta Thornycroft on media in Zimbabwe
Violet Gonda speaks to foreign correspondent Peta Thornycroft. In this, the first of a two part program, she talks about her award and her concerns on the way the Zimbabwean media has been covering the crisis in the country.

Broadcast 6 November 2007

VIOLET GONDA: My guest on the programme Hot Seat this week is veteran journalist Peta Thornycroft, who has just won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation, the IWMF. Peta is a foreign correspondent for the UK Daily Telegraph and Voice of America. Congratulations on the Award Peta.

PETA THORNYCROFT: Thank you. I also work for Independent Newspapers in South Africa , in fact I probably do more for them now than for other papers because the stories, the story on Zimbabwe has really gone off the boil. Thank you very much.

VIOLET: And I know you have plenty to say about the crisis in Zimbabwe especially looking at the opposition and the media. But could you tell us first a bit about your award, how did it come about?

THORNYCROFT: I got an email from a South African colleague in March this year. Somebody I’ve worked with Maureen Isaacson I’ve worked with for many years and of course I’ve worked much longer in South Africa than I ever have in Zimbabwe . I have no idea, I still have no idea why, I think she might be a member of this organisation or she knows of it and she was determined and so were some of her colleagues, her colleagues in the South African press, determined to put my name forward for this Lifetime achievement award.
So they did and they emailed me and I was in Harare and it was at the time when Morgan Tsvangirai was being tortured.

I was just so busy, I could barely keep up with my work at that stage in fact I couldn’t keep up with it and I just was telling her all the time, I haven’t got time for this, I don’t keep any cuttings, I haven’t got anything I’ve ever done, this is a load of rubbish, I’m not going do this and she just persisted. I didn’t actually, I think I sent her an elderly CV because it was old, its one I’ve had lying around in my laptop for ages and I did send it to her. She then did it all and the next thing is I got an email saying I’d won. In fact when I was in Washington I discovered that it is quite a lengthy process, they get these nominations from all sorts of people around the world and it’s not for one.

So in other words this award was not for reporting on Zimbabwe per say it was reporting for 25years. Tremendously interesting periods of time both in South Africa at the height of apartheid and in the dying days of apartheid and also as we led up to democratic elections in 1994 which was tumultuous. Those were extremely tumultuous days for journalists. So it was broader than just Zimbabwe although I noticed in the promotional material that they put out, that the International Women’s Media Foundation mostly focused on Zimbabwe , but certainly in my CV and the material I sent to them I certainly sent them more of my earlier life as a journalist in South Africa .

VIOLET: Right and what did they actually want to know about Zimbabwe when you were in America , to receive the award.

THORNYCROFT: Well the IWMF produced promotional materials so I did write them some stuff and sent them some copy and struggled to get back copies of things, struggled terribly cause if you didn’t keep your work before the internet you really struggled. And so I told them quite a lot about Zimbabwe since I went up there in 2001. This period, of course I’ve worked in Zimbabwe in previous periods. I told them quite a lot and then I was a member of panels in Washington , New York and Los Angeles . I was on various panels where I was interviewed. Can’t even remember how many times I was interviewed by quite a number of news organisations.

Perhaps the most, the longest and most comprehensive interview was that for National Public Radio in Washington and it went out on a programme called Fresh Air. It was an hour long interview and it dealt with Zimbabwe , and I was able to dispel a lot of myths, particularly myths like trying to equate Zimbabwe with North Korea .

It seems to be in people’s minds that Zimbabwe is like North Korea and so I tried to tell the story of what it was like and a very, very different situation from some of the winners of the courage awards by the IWMF who are working for the McClatchy Bureau an American news bureau working in Baghdad (IRAQ). I mean their stories are how they cope everyday and the bombs, the bombs which not only kill people in the war but have killed their own families, including their children as they try and struggle to get the translations done, get their copies out and they do run a most effective blog out of McClatchy.

It was so extraordinary meeting them. And then Lydia Cacho whose a journalist from Mexico who’s been hunting down these pedophiles in Mexico and she gave us the statistics of journalists killed, arrested etc in Mexico . Mexico is worse than almost any country in Africa for the way it treats journalists. Lydia is constantly under the watch of state guards. I mean in New York , Washington and Los Angeles .

In New York it was the NYPD who looked after her, she had to be provided with two permanent bodyguards because she is under such threat in Mexico she can’t even walk down the streets there without protection and she has nailed a whole lot of politicians. She’s the first journalist to have taken the government to court, to the Supreme Court.

So I mean with these journalist who’ve lived these extraordinary lives I have to say in comparison Zimbabwe seemed very tame when one saw what they are going through. And therefore I had to describe how it’s a very different kind of war in Zimbabwe , it’s the lack of certainty, it’s sometimes just a lack of a story. If you actually think of what’s going on in Zimbabwe today you have to be extremely creative to find a new angle about what’s going on in Zimbabwe today and that’s what I try to tell people and it was against a background I’d used in my speech.

The background I’d used in my speech was that women’s life expectancy is 34 to 38 years and of course the highest inflation rate in the world at over 8000%. And so those were the bench marks I used to show that Zimbabwe , why Zimbabwe has become a world story because there is this feeling sometimes that Zimbabwe is kind of an obsession of the British press.
Certainly the American press knows very, very little about us. There’s the occasional story maybe once a month down a page in the features section in the New York Times. There’s the occasional story on National Public Radio actually normally when I’ve done it, there’s very, very little about Zimbabwe .

They barely know the name and I’m talking about well read people who read two or three newspapers a day and listen to radio stations they know very little about Zimbabwe . And unless the story gets a bit busier I suspect they’re not going to know, ever know very much. And so I was really one of the first journalists able to be, to address an enormously influential and powerful group of people in all three states, in Washington DC , New York and Los Angeles about the situation in Zimbabwe .

VIOLET: I actually understand you met some Hollywood celebrities like Angelina Jolie when you were in Los Angeles ?

THORNYCROFT: Oh I did, I had dinner with Angelina Jolie and we shared jokes and she’s terribly intelligent and my god she was well briefed on Zimbabwe . She really had done her homework before I met her and she had done her homework on me which is all a bit embarrassing. I thought it was a bit overblown and basically I’ve never been a journalist who kind of goes for the limelight or you know in that celebrity sphere that is very American and very different from the upbringing I’ve had in journalism.

Nevertheless, nevertheless it was good to meet her, she’s just done this extraordinary film about Daniel Pearl the Wall Street journalist who was killed in Pakistan . She plays Daniel Pearl’s wife. Her husband Brad Pitt, the night she came to give me my award, was babysitting the kids. He was one of the producers of that film. So a) she had become interested in journalism, b) she has a particular interest in Africa as she has two children with strong African connections. Hers and Brad’s baby was born in Namibia and they’ve adopted an Ethiopian Child. So they are very, very interested in Africa and she’s terribly nice.

I mean she’s just so ordinary. But my god you see the Hollywood press flashing away with their flashes and it’s a totally different world! I mean Christiana Amanpour the chief correspondent of CNN who is a working professional working Journalist turning stuff out day by day, she’s a superstar in Washington and she told me that she really is a superstar I mean in Los Angeles but whereas in London she can walk around and nobody notices her - that nobody has any idea who she is. It’s only really in America where American anchors are superstars and she’s not the anchor she’s the chief correspondent she’s a working daily journalist.

It’s a very different pace of life and different exposure and different resources. Of course the stories in the American press are so much longer. Very long stories, I was amazed by that and very little foreign news in the electronic media. It’s a very different CNN that we in Zimbabwe see if you are lucky enough to have DSTV and ZESA, very different CNN to the one Americans see.

VIOLET: I was also surprised at the lack of international coverage or coverage of international issues in the American media, I’m here in America at school, and there’s nothing, absolutely nothing about what’s happening in many countries especially in Africa and I find that quite disturbing.

THORNYCROFT: Yah in fact the major story is of course Iraq and now Iran and they do, I mean I did see in the New York Times and LA Times, everyday there are two, three or four stories on Iraq because of course they’ve got soldiers there who are dying, American soldiers there. But there’s very little on Africa and as for Zimbabwe there’s absolutely nothing. And there has been stuff on Darfur because it’s a UN issue but it’s a very low priority story in America which is quite nice because people didn’t know anything and they became quite curious about it.

VIOLET: And you know Peta over 30years of covering the situation in South Africa and in Zimbabwe , now what was the role of journalists during Apartheid in South Africa and how different is it now with the way the crisis in Zimbabwe has been covered by the Media.
VIOLET: Well, just to go back to the International Women’s Media Foundation they had of course honored Namibian journalist Gwen Lister and on their board is Ferriel Hafegee (sp) who is the editor of the Mail And Guardian on their board, so there is an African flavor to IWMF and they have done training programmes in Africa for women journalists especially the most recent one being how to report HIV/ AIDS which they did last year and I know they are anxious to do very more in Africa and you certainly are going to be seeing them around Southern Africa I’m sure next year.

I mean the difference in reporting South Africa and Zimbabwe from my point of view and the various times that I’ve been there is that leading up to the end of apartheid it was real hard news and it was shooting in the streets and it was everyday. I mean between 1991 and 1994 and the elections, more people were killed in civil society in that four year period than in the whole of all the previous years of apartheid put together. I mean it was between a 150 and 300 killed a month and then one looks at Zimbabwe ’s statistics in over seven years its about 350 to 400 deaths that have been attributed to political strife in that period so it’s an entirely different scale to what happened in South Africa , it’s an entirely different kind of war.

There were many press in South Africa , those were the freest years that South African press has ever had between 1991 and 1994. There was easy access to everyone because everyone wanted to be elected, everyone wanted to put their points over. But then as a background to that of course you had the constitutional negotiations which went on at CODESA forever and ever and ever. The most boring stories for those poor daily reporters that they had to do. That’s why these particular negotiations going on now between the MDC and ZANU PF - when I knew that that was coming, I knew I also had to find something else to do to cheer my daily diary up because I know about constitutional negotiations and reporting them. They are difficult, everyone is doing deals in secret.

Even if CODESA was done in public, it wasn’t really, they all went off in secret to go and knock out a deal on one of the weekend retreats and we are going through the same thing on a much smaller scale in Zimbabwe and its extremely boring stuff to report. But back in South Africa as they were negotiating the constitution there was of course this appalling violence, I mean it was appalling. This isn’t happening to any kind of the same extent in Zimbabwe . I mean of course it’s a different kind of story - violence in Zimbabwe seems to me to be the dismantling of an entire economy, which is violence isn’t it? It’s making it impossible for people to feed themselves. That is extreme violence.

VIOLET: You’ve been particularly concerned with the way the domestic media has been covering the crisis in Zimbabwe . Can you tell us more about this?

THORNYCROFT: Domestic media I think here let’s define this we mean Zimbabwean journalists basically writing for Zimbabwean audiences whether they be inside the country or outside the country is that correct?

VIOLET: That’s right.

THORNYCROFT: Ok, in other words I as a foreign journalist I have a very different audience. I have an audience in the UK which is a very different audience from the one in South Africa , which is a very different audience to the African Service of VOA. I’m doing three different audiences more or less whenever I do a story. But I think the domestic media first of all the state stopped the Daily News, I mean the state has stopped newspapers from telling that story, and so if one looks back at the Daily News with hindsight being the perfect science and I don’t think we realized it at the time, but I think the Daily News if I look back now, it was an MDC supporting newspaper. Just as the Daily telegraph which I work for in the UK is a Tory supporting newspaper. I think we didn’t say it at the time frankly, and maybe it wasn’t important but the Daily News supported the MDC.

And since its demise and naturally because of its demise a whole lot of other publications have arisen on the internet, you yourselves in London have emerged as a result of the repression, the failure of people to be able to get news from home so people like you and studio 7, ZimDaily, Zimonline, The Zimbabwean and Nyarota’s one - The Times of Times of Zimbabwe I think it is, NewZimbabwe.com. Naturally those would emerge because it’s so hard to get information from Zimbabwe apart from the Herald and then once a week The Independent and The Standard level of news. And then of course The Financial Gazette which there is a question mark over whether it is in fact owned by people who are aligned to the government or not . So I’ve been very disappointed with lots of the external media. ZimDaily I suppose I now view ZimDaily as an essential part of my life in covering Zimbabwe because it makes me laugh and the way they…
VIOLET:(interjects) It makes you laugh?

THORNYCROFT: Yah makes me laugh, I have shrieked with laughter at some of its stories and the way they have been hounding the Chefs’ children - who are in universities and colleges overseas - and some of the comments that followed on their website made me scream with laughter. So I do not take it seriously as a news outlet, its kind of a sideline.

When this really became quite difficult was when the MDC broke into two factions in October 2005 and with the exception of NewZimbabwe.com and I would say SWRadio Africa mostly – although there were individual people at SWRadio Africa who seemed to choose one faction over the other - but what was distressing was that all of those publications chose to support the Tsvangirai faction, which there’s nothing wrong with that except in that they weren’t therefore giving the other faction’s point of view and for any comment that was going on whether it was on the economy, farming etcetera nearly all of that media (independent) would always quote from the Tsvangirai faction.

So they could not call themselves independent because if they had been monitored as independent publications, say they were funded by public funds, they wouldn’t have been allowed to do that. BBC could never have done that because it’s funded, it gets public funds. So it was a pity that people when their emotions were high they couldn’t get good coverage on a daily basis inside the country. Remembering that the Independent and the Standard newspapers actually got a very small population inside Harare basically and a small urban population.
The combination of the external media reached quite a high proportion of Zimbabweans that are either living in South Africa in exile or the UK, some inside the country but the message got around, so I think it was very sad that message that got around at that time. New Zimbabwe.Com as I saw them, tried very hard to source things with named sources or else one suspected that the sources that they didn’t name were real people.

I used to wonder sometimes with some of the other publications where on earth they got their stories from. And I think the foreign press just ignored it. We ignored the stories I think we hardly ever picked up a story from those outlets and quoted from them without doing work ourselves and checking if they were true. And often when I checked the stories out they weren’t true.

VIOLET: But have things changed now? Do you think the media coverage is better now, it’s more balanced?

THORNYCROFT: Yes, as I said something like ZimDaily I take just as an essential part of the light heartedness one of the few light hearted things about Zimbabwe , I love ZimDaily. Its not news, it’s something else, it’s an aberration but it’s an amusing aberration. Zimonline has tried to be, to do better sourcing recently. And I think Zimonline has often tried to be good but I’ve never used them as basis for a story nor have I used actually any of the alternative publications – there is an old fashioned word we used to use in South Africa , as a basis for a story ever, because I’m always worried about the sourcing. Except I have used the New Zimbabwe.com because they very often have named sources. There are far too many stories on Zimbabwe that go out without named sources.

And so one gets this extraordinary exaggeration. And The Zimbabwean newspaper which is mostly run by very experienced journalists who have had a lot of advantages in their lives, I’m quite shocked really at the standard of some of the reporting that goes out on The Zimbabwean - that it just doesn’t fill the basics on the hard news pages. Their stories often do not have the basic requirements needed for a news story and it’s the type of paper which really looks very nice and useful to people living in the UK – I haven’t often found that some of the sensational front page stories stood up to any kind of professional scrutiny.

And I think that’s a pity.

I think we need really good media, I think we need really good and accurate sources and we’ve all made mistakes and it’s so easy to make a mistake because we work in a hideous situation where we can’t get statistics, we can’t get comments from the government, we can’t trust any of the statistics. We have a hideously partisan state press in the Herald and the ZBC and you can’t use them as a resource. It’s very hard to balance our stories in the way we’ve all been taught to balance our stories - that there are always two sides to the story. How easy is it to get a quote from ZANU PF? It’s damn nigh impossible!

So there are great hazards in it but I do think it is recently been getting better. Maybe people have got more resources, maybe the story has changed maybe its because the MDC faction loyal to founding president Morgan Tsvangirai is going through such trauma itself that some of his most loyal journalists in these various organizations, like Studio 7, etcetera who’ve always been very loyal to him are beginning to question their loyalty. I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s the answer but it does seem to be getting a bit better maybe there are more resources as well.

VIOLET: Now Peta let me pause here because we’ve run out of time but we are going to continue with this discussion next week and I’d like to hear your thoughts on the turmoil you made reference to that’s in the MDC, and also to hear your thoughts about the third way and ZANU PF. Thank you very much for the time being.

THORNYCROFT: Oh not at all. Thank You.

Comments and feedback can be emailed to violet@swradioafrica.com

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SW Radio Africa Transcript

Foreign Correspondent Peta Thornycroft on MDC

Violet Gonda brings the final episode of the Hot Seat interview with veteran Zimbabwean journalist Peta Thornycroft. In the first segment she talked about her concerns on the way the Zimbabwean media has been covering the crisis in the country. In this final part the award-winning journalist gives us her frank assessment of the state of the MDC.

Broadcast 13 November 2007

See part one broadcast 6 November 2007

VIOLET: We welcome journalist Peat Thornycroft on the programme Hot Seat again. Now Peta when we ended the discussion last week we were talking about the turmoil in the MDC. What are your thoughts exactly on what is happening in the MDC right now

THORNYCROFT: Well, I think one has to really go back to the beginning of the MDC as journalists and look at how we covered the MDC, certainly how I covered it from July 2001. I’m afraid to say I was very neglectful of looking at the MDC. My excuse is that it wasn’t such a big foreign story, it was more of a domestic story - the opposition - but I bitterly regret that I didn’t do more work in finding out about the various fault-lines in the MDC, which I have subsequently discovered were there right from the very beginning and I was totally unaware of it. I had no idea until I think it was July 2005. I had no idea.

And the domestic press, certainly The Daily News and what else was there apart from the Daily News? What ever else, what ever other domestic media there was, also didn’t investigate the MDC - almost at all. And because of the polarization any criticism that appeared in the Herald or on ZBC I think we all dismissed as propaganda, and that’s also a natural thing that would happen. I saw that happening in South Africa as well. Nevertheless if we’d been on our toes, a bit smarter and not so anxious and longing for the end of ZANU PF we would have and should have seen that the MDC was in trouble almost from the day it was launched. And so when it split in 2005 it was not a surprise.

I remember I was down in Bulawayo in early October 2005 when I realized that an actual split was coming and that was because I had interviewed the Mayor of Bulawayo and I asked him what he would do if the MDC called for a boycott of Senate elections? And he said to me, ‘We’ll have to field independent candidates because we cannot have ZANU PF taking our space. We down here we have a different experience of ZANU PF a longer experience of ZANU PF than people in the rest of the country.

We’ve earned our place, our MPs have earned the right to be MPs for a long time and we want them to stay. We don’t want ZANU PF to have any position in the whole of Matabeleland particularly Bulawayo .’
And I remember thinking to myself ‘oh oh, this is a tricky situation,’ because in Harare we knew that people were so against the senate elections, participating in the senate elections. So clearly there had been inadequate consultation within the MDC. I reported that only I think for V.O.A because quite frankly the other newspapers were not, you know it was again a very domestic story, very domestic story. Then we came across the violence in the MDC. I found that out in July 2005 and it wasn’t particularly nasty, dreadful life threatening violence but it was completely against the public perception that the MDC had put-over of itself as being almost Gambian in its passive resistance and its pursuit of democracy using only peaceful means.

Not only was this violence violence but it was also against its own members and I found that deeply shocking. I then discovered that this has been going on and that the first violence, I found out, was in 2001. So now we come to a situation of 2005 and then the party split, dreadful accusations went on – most of the accusations were made against the Mutambara faction although it wasn’t called that faction at the time it split - It seemed to have been loaded against the then Secretary General Welshman Ncube. I was told by senior members of the party he had a farm here, a farm here, he had a supermarket there he had a shopping mall there, he had this and that.

So I went and investigated it and wrote the story in the South African press about the farm which they seemed to just ignore, fair enough. But all of this venom that I was getting from the Tsvangirai faction was aimed at Welshman Ncube. To this day I keep on saying to myself, have I missed something? Have I missed something? What has he done? What has he done? But still I keep on wondering if I just missed something. It seems to me that now there’s terrible anguish against ehm em em em…

VIOLET: Lucia Mativenga?

THORNYCROFT: The new secretary general, what’s his name?

VIOLET: Tendai Biti.

THORNYCROFT: Tendai Biti is in deep problems now. And I can tell you this from Johannesburg that there’s huge turmoil in the MDC in Johannesburg . I think they are reacting to Tendai Biti because they are looking to him for money. The MDC is a source of some kind of employment and resources over the last seven years when there had been no jobs and no resources. So the MDC is one of the few ways that people can get some money in the bank. So it’s a job, it’s a resource. As it is for the MPs - they’ve got jobs and clearly what we’re seeing now is this jockeying for positions ahead of the elections next year. It’s about jobs. It’s not about ideology, it’s about jobs and I think that’s the shock to us. Perhaps we were just naive.

VIOLET: So Peta what exactly are you saying here? Are you saying the MDC got it wrong and that the opposition party is not the party that people thought it was?

THORNYCROFT: I wonder if we ever knew what it was. We just accepted it, didn’t we? I wasn’t there in 2000, I went to one of its rallies in 2000 and I came in July 2001 and I think I just accepted that the MDC had been cheated at the elections and that this was a party that had the majority support in the country and it was only long afterwards that I discovered that in fact of course ZANU PF had enormous support in certain rural parts of the country.

I first saw that demonstrated to me in the March elections of 2005, I was actually astonished by that and it is in my copy. I then saw it again demonstrated in the Budiriro by-election when 4 000 people continued to vote for ZANU PF and it was quite a peaceful by election. They were just as short of fuel, water and electricity as all the other people in Budiriro.

And I think that I realized that I hadn’t taken into consideration that ZANU PF was an old established party, which despite its appalling lack of democracy and its top down style of doing business - because of the liberation struggle and the propaganda it’s been able to feed everyone - it does genuinely have support. And that the MDC as the farm workers disappeared and as the farmers disappeared a great chunk of its support went with it. I think that was important and I think that we didn’t see it and we didn’t sort of realize it at the time, I didn’t realize it at the time. So when the break came (the split), I mean it was deeply shocking, it was amazing, it was amazing when the Tsvangirai faction seemed to think that it was a triumph and not an absolute shattering disaster from which they would probably never recover . I’m sure the MDC will never recover that from that split.

VIOLET: From the October 12 2005 split?

THORNYCROFT: Yah yah, I mean wow it has been……

VIOLET: Do you think what is happening now is linked to the troubles in the MDC that erupted on October 12 2005 ?

THORNYCROFT: Of course it is, of course it is and it’s also connected with the poverty in Zimbabwe that people are desperate for jobs and desperate for resources. The MDC does get funding from all sort of quarters. Let’s face it, if you going to go to a rally you used to get money. I have seen it being handed out. People got money to just go to rallies, they get money. I’m not saying its paid participation, they might be organizing, putting flowers or whatever it is but an MDC political event provides resources.

And an MDC job as an MP - however poorly paid the MPs are - it’s cheap fuel, it’s a new car every five years, its very low forex rates. Yes there are great advantages in life being an opposition MP. And that’s why there’s this fight over why they can’t get the corporation agreement between the two factions of the MDC to work because it’s about jobs.

And I’m afraid to say that there was an agreement in April and I saw the agreement. Tragically it didn’t translate into an effective agreement in May when Sam Nkomo was sent in to renegotiate the terms of it. And so it fell aside. So we are going to have a situation as far as I can see that certainly in some key constituencies you are going to have MDC from both factions standing against each other in the elections, dividing the votes and handing victory in that constituency to ZANU PF.

In Johannesburg here I tell you what is going on – and there is a huge number of MDC people here. There’s a fight going on here that one lot of MDC supporters says Morgan Tsvangirai and Roy Bennet have to go, Roy Bennet being the National Treasurer and Tendai Biti has to go as well. In their place they want Tapiwa Mashakada and as President of the MDC this faction is saying they want (Lovemore) Madhuku in Morgan’s place.

It’s very serious here in Johannesburg and they are complaining about Biti saying, ‘he’s just as bad as Welshman Ncube was when he was Secretary General and he’s keeping all the money.’ You know if one suspected that Ncube was short of money when he was Secretary General and so is Biti short of money. But this is now translating itself into Johannesburg .

If the stories coming out of London in the MDC are true (infighting), although I have no experience of what’s going on in London and what is happening with the MDC Women’s assembly. I think you have to look at that party and say my God what is that party? What is it - just a few months before the elections?

VIOLET: It’s really sad that things have come to this because at the end of the day it’s the ordinary people that are suffering and they really do not deserve this confusion that is happening in the pro-democracy movement. But on the other hand some may say Mugabe has skillfully dragged this crisis on for the last seven years, for too long. To some extent when things go wrong in the opposition it seems people forget the problems created by the regime. Now do you think people have considered these other risks? That the regime is armed, it has torture chambers against an opposition which does not even have a military wing. What can you say about this?

THORNYCROFT: No I think that the MDC is being absolutely tormented; we’ve seen it with our eyes. We have seen it before the 2002 presidential elections in particular it has been tormented. Whatever rural structures or peri-urban structures it set up were destroyed. We saw its urban structures being destroyed in April 2007, we saw that. We were there and we witnessed it and we wrote about it and ZANU PF has all the power but there does seem to me, and I don’t know how you’d quantify this - a failure across the top echelons of the MDC of those people who are prepared to actually take risks and they have to take risks. So why aren’t they when there’s now some little spotlight on the country because of the on going negotiations? Where are they in Mashonaland West, Central - the three Mashonaland provinces?

And I go on and on about this and I was there just a few weeks ago, driving there with a very good cover and nobody knew I was a journalist and I was able to speak to people and they were very open and chatty with me. I mean the MDC just hasn’t tried to go into most of those places. And will they ever or are they going to just remain an urban party you know an urban party in Harare , some in Manicaland…

VIOLET: (interrupts) But isn’t it a fact that some of these rural constituencies are no go areas for the MDC so…

THORNYCROFT: (interrupts) I want to see them, I want to know that it’s still a no go area. You know I need to know that they have tried to go there and that they got chased away. And there are still enough reporters on the ground in Harare , and we’ve all got quite skilled at doing this so that we can be witness to that. And if it is really that they can’t go into Mash West or Mash Central and parts of Mash East - into those big rural areas and the communal areas - if they can’t go there then we need to be writing about that.

VIOLET: And you know Peta, politics aside, is the Lucia Mativenga issue central to the politics of gender in the country? I mean should this be viewed as part of the patriarchal system alluded to by some of the women in the MDC like Sekai Holland and Grace Kwinjeh?

THORNYCROFT: I think it would, the MDC is still a very young party. I mean seven/eight years old. It was inevitable that there were going to be splits, strains etcetera. I actually think whatever is happening in the Women’s Assembly, in the fight between Lucia Mativenga and Teresa Makoni is probably duplicated in other political parties everywhere around the world especially in their infancies. The problem is that Zimbabwe is in a particular fix at the moment that it’s facing crucial elections next year. Perhaps under a new constitution, which may deliver what Mugabe is desperately hoping for, which is free and fair elections, genuinely free and fair elections because the MDC is so weak.

And so there are demands on the MDC to be at its very best - to fight the election not as two factions but as together to try and fix these internal problems that they are having or avoid them, suspend these problems until after the elections because there is this moment in time. I don’t think that these eruptions that are going on are particularly significant because they happen in all parties as they are starting up. They haven’t yet got the mechanisms in place to deal with them in an emergency.

I think one of the sad things we saw over the negotiations in South Africa that was clear to me - was that whereas the Mutambabra faction was able to understand what was going on with the 18 th Constitutional Amendment - somebody, or whoever was responsible for explaining it to Morgan and his people didn’t get around to it until the last minute and there was a lot of misunderstanding and of course a lot of misunderstanding by the civics.

And you know I had to say to the civics, why was there a misunderstanding, why didn’t they bother to go and find out, what did they want, do you need an invitation to find out what was happening? Why where they just hanging about and not making it their business to know every little bit that was going on in the negotiations so they could see the 18 th Constitutional Amendment for what it was which may be quite different to the way they reported it or had analyzed it…

VIOLET: (interrupts) But I think to be fair it has been quite difficult…

THORNYCROFT: I think the MDC’s had a hard time Violet, I really think it’s had a hard time.

VIOLET: Is there a trend , sorry to go back to this particular issue, is there a trend, is there an issue regarding women and politics in Zimbabwe because if you go by the reports that we are seeing some women have come out complaining about these problems . Is there a trend regarding women and politics in Zimbabwe .

THORNYCROFT: I don’t know. I absolutely have no idea. I think that’s a question that really needs to be given to Zimbabwe ’s journalists who are reporting it in a domestic way and who know the MDC much better than I do. As I say I only got into really reporting the intricacies in the MDC almost by default because it’s not really a foreign story. The MDC is only a foreign story if Morgan gets tortured or if they win all these elections.

The actual fighting and infighting within the MDC is largely not a foreign story but unfortunately it wasn’t covered well by the domestic press in the early days. It’s much better now. We get much more information now than we used to. I think you need to ask them I mean I’ve read what you’ve read about the lack of women representation in the MDC. I don’t know if it’s true or not. I just simply don’t know.

VIOLET: Peta let’s move on to ZANU PF. We hear there’s infighting in ZANU PF but there’s no evidence of this, and there’s still no indication of where ZANU PF is going. What are your thoughts on this?

THORNYCROFT: I think there are indicators that they are fighting. I mean I think they’ve been good reports I think in The Independent newspaper and elsewhere about the extremely tumultuous politburo meetings. We have a situation where a former prominent banker James Mushore who fled the country and would not have come back into Zimbabwe without believing that he can face up to the allegations against him without ending up in the slammer. He’s still waiting to be freed and he happens to be a relative of retired army general Solomon Mujuru in the Mujuru camp.

This is part of the successive struggle and I think we now got a situation where we we must all pretty much expect that Mugabe is going to be the ZANU PF candidate to stand next year and that he’s going to serve a full term in office for five years. And so he’s managed to crush, it would seem to me, those in the Mujuru faction and perhaps those who might have supported say Gideon Gono as the Prime Minister. We’ve heard a lot about that or even Simba Makoni as the Prime Minister, which would have gone down well in the world. Those seem to have gone.

It seems to me that Mugabe has managed to finally bring a fractured ZANU PF under his wing with, once again, excluding the voice from the floors. This fracture within ZANU PF is a fracture at the top not a fracture at the bottom. ZANU PF has long been a party of the chefs not the people. Whereas I would think that MDC some of its problems is actually the people who are looking for jobs are a lot more involved in their party than the people in ZANU PF are involved at the lower level in their party. ZANU PF is just a joke of a party.

One of the tragedies I think in the negotiations facilitated by the South Africans is that they have not ever understood the nature of ZANU PF. It’s thought of, I imagine, the South Africans think that ZANU PF is sort of like the ANC perhaps not quite like the ANC but after all it fought the liberation war. But it’s completely a different type of party. And ZANU PF has always been run on fear right from the beginning, certainly since in 1980 and people tell me even before then when you think of what happened to people being looked up in Mozambique during the struggle. That it’s been dominated by one man for over thirty years and he’s going to carry on for another five years.

Regardless, that some of the better informed and the more literate, economically literate members of ZANU PF sit in the Mujuru faction. I think we have overwhelming evidence that ZANU PF has been incredibly divided. That even though Mugabe is going to be endorsed as the candidate that he is going to be endorsed with a lot of the senior members of ZANU PF being extremely unhappy, that they could not find a solution to Mugabe, an alternative to Mugabe being the ZANU PF candidate.

VIOLET: A couple of weeks ago I interviewed Professor Jonathan Moyo on this issue and he also spoke about the Third Way. Now newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube also talked about this so called alternative movement that will bring together you know elements from ZANU PF, the MDC and civil society. Does it sound like a viable option to you?

THORNYCROFT: I read it too and I wondered who the moderate members are of ZANU PF. I understand that Trevor Ncube was asked that question in London when he made that speech. I think to the Oppenheimer Society and he mentioned Emmerson Mnangagwa being a moderate member.

I can’t see any Third Way happening because I think that people like Munangagwa know that they just have to hang on, it will only be just five years and then he will take over from Mugabe and unless the Mujuru faction joined up with Trevor Ncube - I think Ncube himself sees a role for himself, perhaps with some from the MDC. He made that remark about 6 weeks ago and I haven’t heard of anything happening since then. Not any discussions other than discussions of what he said. I think it’s too late ahead of these elections for any Third Way.
VIOLET: On the issue of elections, it seems there’s a crisis in the MDC; no one really knows what is happening in ZANU PF - as you say Mugabe will probably stand again; there’s this talk of the Third Way -although at present it’s not even known who’s behind this and who the actual leaders are. Now elections are around the corner do Zimbabweans have a bleak choice at the polls?

THORNYCROFT: Say that again do Zimbabweans ….?

VIOLET: Have a bleak choice at the elections, at the polls?

THORNYCROFT: An enormously bleak choice and I think it’s terribly bleak. We don’t yet know what kind of elections we going to have. We know they are going to be Westminster-style elections and I think anyone who has seen what proportional representation has done for diversity in South Africa’s parliament will be very sad that the winner takes all solution could not win the day. That Tendai Biti and Welshman Ncube could not win that round.
We still don’t know what the electoral laws are going to look like. They’re about a month behind in their negotiations not because of any crook-ery, I think because Biti had to go overseas for something, ZANU PF had to do something, and then Welshman Ncube had to go somewhere and then there was some holidays and there’s some visits and now of course we’ve got the tragedy of Patrick Chinamasa - one of the ZANU PF negotiators’ son having died in America.

And so I think they’re about a month behind. That would take us then; we’re talking about now nearly the middle of December before we can expect points one to four. Points one to four being the legal requirements for new laws for elections and in that time we have then got the ZANU PF extraordinary congress.
So unless ZANU PF agreed to delay the elections so that if there are reforms people can get confident that these reforms will work. Its going to be very shoddy isn’t it, it’s very shoddy. They may even have it all down on paper but not any time to get used to it.

And they’ve got a terribly bleak choice haven’t they? I mean they’ve got the same old guy whose led them into poverty, who allowed the country to be dismantled. We’ve seen the best and the brightest of all flee Zimbabwe for better pastures and I doubt whether any of those will come back. And they’ve got a country that is a wreck, literally a wreck! That is what there is to show for 28 years of ZANU PF rule.

But on the other hand you’ve got these two MDC parties which, one of the factions is fighting with itself, and the other faction seems to only operate in Bulawayo or in Matabeleland. I keep on getting notes saying that they are down to Insiza etc etc. I’m sure they would do very well in Matabeleland but I haven’t seen Arthur Mutambara hanging about in Rafingora either and I’m wondering when he’s going to make it and it would be nice to see Welshman Ncube in Mashonaland West too. I just think they all going to concentrate on their familiar stamping ground so that they can keep the positions they already have.

So that they don’t lose more seats because these seats are jobs they see themselves as an opposition party now and not a party that’s there to win any national elections that’s what it has got to. I feel, I wonder if Zimbabweans would be bothered to vote. Would you really be bothered to vote when the choice is so bleak? I can’t imagine it.

VIOLET: It’s a difficult one. Finally Peta do you think the West has made a huge mistake where Zimbabwe is concerned? If so how?

THORNYCROFT: Well (pause) I think there are two ways: I think when the MDC started in 2000, what a pity that they where addressing people in Sandton mostly white people in Sandton north of Johannesburg instead of being in Dar es Salaam or Ghana or Abuja. They failed to make contact with Africa for so long, they were in London, we’ve just seen it again, Morgan Tsvangirai’s just been in America. Why isn’t he in Cairo? Maybe he needs financial support and he can’t get it outside of America or the UK and the same would go for Mutambara.

They have not done enough in Africa and that was also one of the reasons for the split, I must say, as those reasons emerged. Please remind me of your question again.

VIOLET: The International community, you know what about……

THORNYCROFT: The international community, you then had Tony Blair in about 2004 making a dreadful statement about how he’s working with the MDC, when he must have known that would feed into, that would be absolutely marvelous for ZANU PF. And you saw the State Department in America say it was working with the MDC.

Yeah it wasn’t particularly helpful but actually I think the West at least fed Zimbabwe. Thank God they provided the food for Zimbabweans. There is not going to be an Ethiopia-type situation. Zimbabwe is not particularly hot story apart from inflation and I think it’s a symbolic thing for the British. Zimbabwe was a colony - there was the Rhodesian war.

There is a kith and kin element in it, whether we like it or not there is a kith and kin element in it. I think Claire Short made a terrible mistake in 1997 when the Labour party came to power and that letter she wrote to Zimbabwe saying; ‘Land in Zimbabwe has never been part of our problem.’ Of course it has been.

And so they have withdrawn, the West have withdrawn haven’t they? Gordon Brown is going to be exiled from his own continent in December, he has to stay in London. He can’t even go for the two hour flight from London to Lisbon because he’s got himself into a corner saying he won’t go there when Mugabe is there. Somehow those are battles that were okay, but I think it’s become a domestic issue for Gordon Brown, it affects his votes and it’s got nothing to do with the reality of Zimbabwe.

And the West is obviously simply hypocritical. It depends on if you have got oil and you haven’t got oil, how your foreign policy is handled. I think the West is an ex-player in the Zimbabwe situation. And if there ever is a solution it has to come out of Africa and one doesn’t have great hopes over that. One doesn’t have great hopes over the South African foreign policy successes, so far they’ve had very few. One would hope that this time they’ll do better.

There are five points on the agenda for the negotiations. The first four are legal points, the fifth point is the political climate. Will Mbeki deliver on that? Because that’s going to be up to him to deliver. If they really get a new constitution or new electoral laws through parliament in the first week of January, will Mbeki have the guts to stand up and say to Mugabe; ‘we can’t possibly have elections in March, we have to delay these elections until June and if you don’t then I’m afraid SADC is not going to support you.’

Are we going to see that? Those are great unknowns. I mean how we can possibly have an election like we had in 2002 and the voters roll in 2005? For a start for example I’ve been cut off the voter’s roll. There are a lot of people like me. For no reason my name’s just been taken off.

VIOLET: Even though you’re a Zimbabwean citizen?

THORNYCROFT: Yah, I’m a Zimbabwean citizen absolutely.

VIOLET: Well I guess the struggle continues and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens now in Zimbabwe.

Thank you very much Peta Thornycroft.

THORNYCROFT: Okay Violet thank you.

Comments and feedback can be emailed to

violet@swradioafrica.com

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SW Radio Africa Transcript

HOT SEAT TRANSCRIPT: Foreign Correspondent Peta Thornycroft responds to critics
Journalist Peta Thornycroft returns to the Hot Seat with presenter Violet Gonda, to respond to what she calls misconstrued criticisms in the state media over her comments about the MDC on the last programme.

Broadcast on 11 December 2007

See part one broadcast 6 November 2007

See Part two broadcast 13 November 2007

Violet Gonda: We welcome journalist Peta Thornycroft on the programme Hot Seat. The state controlled media is guilty of publishing gross inaccuracies relating to an interview I did with Peta recently. The Sunday Mail and Herald newspapers have been using selectively, parts of the interview I did with Peta for its normal propaganda war against the MDC. Peta you made some very strong statements about the MDC and the private media in Zimbabwe, and it seems you have fallen into this trap where it appears the state media is using the interview I did with you to annihilate the opposition. What can you say about this?

Peta: It's not a trap Violet. I knew they would do this when I agreed to the interview in the first place. That is how the state media works in Zimbabwe and in any other police state. That doesn't mean to say then that I should then be terrorised into silence. You asked me for an interview and I gave you an interview. In fact I don't mind in the slightest what the Zimbabwe state media says about me, even if it misquotes me as it does or leaves stuff out.

It is biased, unprofessional, and worst of all in some ways incredibly boring. However unbalanced their reporting of what I said was, it was I think a whole lot less boring than the usual claptrap that fills the columns of the world's most boring newspaper, the Sunday Mail. It surely would win that award.

What a relief then to read what I say, even if vital information I said was left out, compared to old man (Dr Tafataona) Mahoso says. I say old man maybe he is as old as me. He could win international awards for the world's most boring columns. Every week he trundles out this crap that no one in Harare anyway believes. Because if they believed what Mahoso wrote then, a majority would have voted for Robert Mugabe and not Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC in 2000, 2002, and even 2005.

Whatever Mahoso and the ladies and gents churn out from the Herald is ignored by the people in Harare . Even now, even in its divided state, the MDC will still win most of the seats in Harare . That is if there are any people left in Harare by then and they are not all sitting in Johannesburg and Hillbrow ( South Africa ). And that is even if Mugabe cheats as he did in 2002. Let's open a booking on that, let’s take stakes, let’s open the booking Violet. I will go for at least 100 to 1 that the MDC will win most of the seats in Harare next election, whenever that may be.

So because a journalist who works for the foreign press criticises the opposition the following happens in any police state and Zimbabwe is no exception. The state uses that criticism to justify its brutality against a bona fide opposition group. The Sunday Mail only used part of what I said. I criticised the MDC, as any normal journalist would do, does do, all over the world every day, in every kind of analysis, comments, editorials, programs etcetera.

But I also put it in a context, and I said that the MDC had been tormented by ZANU PF. I used the word tormented more than once. That was left out. I also never said that the foreign or local press had "lied" about the MDC, and the word “lied” was used to indicate it was a quotation.

Violet: I will come back to that issue of the quotation that was used in the Sunday Mail headline – which said: “We lied about the MDC”.

I will come back to that but I want to go back to the issue of the MDC. You and many others have criticized the MDC for lack of organization, showing lack of strategies, that the MDC failed to stop the violence etc etc. But it appears there is this assumption that the opposition has been operating under normal conditions. Do you agree that the MDC has been operating under extraordinary odds in Zimbabwe ?

Peta: The opposition in Zimbabwe right from independence has operated under abnormal circumstances, starting with ZAPU. Let’s not forget that. Then ZAPU was annihilated. The Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) had a hard time too, but not as hard as the MDC because the MDC got so close. The MDC operated under appalling circumstances. Its candidates for elections, its candidates for heavens sake, were arrested, beaten up, humiliated, etc. We journalists saw that, we have pictures, we have proof of that.

What ZANU PF, using state resources, did to the MDC in 2002 as the main focus was unique in Southern Africa . That was why all the journalists burst out laughing when the South African observer group made its ridiculous claims about the elections in Meikles Hotel just after the results were announced. The South Africans had approved violent elections in Zimbabwe the kind of elections they would never have approved of at home.

Violet: And back to that issue of the headline in the state controlled media where the Sunday Mail story implied that journalists including yourself “lied about the MDC” when covering the opposition. What more can you say about this.

Peta: I never used the world lie but the Sunday Mail used the word in the headline in quotes, implying I said it. That is how any court of law would interpret that sub editing and it was wrong. In fact I said I didn't know, and when I discovered the MDC had been beating people up, I wrote it immediately. In fact I wrote it the same week I first heard about it.

To this day, opposition MP from Bulawayo South David Coltart does not know how I got the statement about the violence he left for the NEC meeting because he was in Australia at that time. I wish I had known about it earlier. If I had I hope I would have written it, because it would have been news and in the public interest.

I also wish I had known about Gukurahundi much earlier than I did. I wish I had known much, much earlier that many senior members of ZANU PF are cruel, and that they are not revolutionaries. They are incompetent, unable to earn a living, and therefore dependent on Mugabe’s patronage. I wish I had known that sooner. But in all cases when I found out these things I have written them.

I have been writing about ZANU PF's atrocities since 1983, and when Andy Moyse then began editing Parade a year later, we were the first non ZANU PF publication in the country. Does anyone remember that? Does anyone remember the stories that we were doing at that time? That was a long, long time ago that was right there at the beginning. We were there, I was there right at the beginning and I didn’t change. I did just what journalists do.

Violet: Did you write about Gukurahundi at that time?

Peta: Andy Moyse only came in as editor at the end of 1984. It had already been going on for two years by then. But we certainly did. We wrote about Gukurahundi at the end of 1984 and 1985. You will have to go back and look at those editions to look at what we did at that time, at what Andy did at that time and of course we were being helped by journalists on the ground in Matabeleland . We were very careful about how we put the stories together. Although there was MOTO which was a monthly publication, Parade was the only place you could get much information on what was going on in Matabeleland at the time.

I left the Herald in the middle of 1983. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I said to Farai Munyuki; ‘Come on send me down to Matabeleland if there is anything going on, it’s a racist old world, the world will believe me they won’t believe you when they say there is nothing happening.’ And he came back to me and said the management said it was too dangerous for me to go to Matabeleland .

And it was shortly after that I broke my contract with the Zimbabwe Newspapers, although it wasn’t the only reason, and I think I was the only one who ever did that. I broke my contract with the Zimbabwe Newspapers and I had to pay them back all their money. They had paid for me to bring my furniture from South Africa and they took that out of my pension money. So I certainly left Zimpapers bankrupt. So that’s how it was.

But, yes, I wish I had known about the MDC earlier and I would still have found it more difficult because I didn’t work for the domestic press. In essence the Daily Telegraph did cover the story in July 2005 but it didn’t carry on with it because we did that. For example, when the first guys were beaten up and it was reported in the Telegraph in 2005, we never then reported when (MP) Trudy Stevenson was beaten up because we had already done one of those stories. And just because we were white the Telegraph wasn’t going to run the story again. We did that. So that’s why I am saying it was a domestic story more than a foreign story because any domestic newspaper would have wanted the first story, and the second story and whatever stories there were.

Violet: Can you also expand on what you meant about the turmoil in the MDC in Johannesburg and the issue of money regarding Secretary Generals Tendai Biti and Welshman Ncube?
Peta: When the MDC split I tried to find out the truth of some of the accusations I was hearing about the reasons for the split. One of the reasons that I was hearing and which was published all over the world and which attracted my attention was about Welshman Ncube, where he was accused of being incredibly rich. Some of his accusers said he owned as many farms as some of them had owned before the land invasions.

Obviously those accusations were coming from white people. That he owned shopping malls etc. So I started to investigate. And then the grassroots people were telling me that he must have been abusing the party's funds because he was not giving them any. So I asked more. And clearly the MDC had become a source of income of survival for so many people at a time when Mugabe's economy was failing even more than usual and there were less and less jobs. So people were frantic. People depended on the MDC for something to keep them alive. Ncube as Secretary General had a budget; there was less money for the party's activities at the time. If you could remember he had to retrench people from Harvest House.

There is no question in my mind that some of the controversy around Welshman Ncube does originate from that grassroots fear when he cut off the money because he had no money.
Then I heard, in Johannesburg , the same accusations being made against Tendai Biti, that he was taking the money, when of course, he had to match income and expenditure as Secretary General just like Ncube.

That was what I intended to say as I gabbled away in the first interview. It's a tough job being Secretary General of a party in a country in economic collapse, when people are so desperate, and when the MDC used to be flush with money and is no longer flush with money. Although, I have to say, it does seem that one faction, that is the Morgan Tsvangirai faction, obviously does have more money and more new vehicles than the other faction. And I am not sure why that is. Whether or not the other faction is more successful at raising more money or where it’s all coming from at a time when seriously, in the last 10 days in Zimbabwe , the wheels are coming off like never before.

Violet: So let me see if I understand you here Peta, do you regret making the comments you made about the MDC?

Peta: No, because I was telling the truth. We published with verification, we had named sources, which is unusual for Zimbabwe copy these days and photographs of people using their real names and that was two and a half years ago.

As I said before I wish I had known earlier, that's all. I also said that the MDC were tormented, that MP's were savagely beaten, so were supporters, that Tsvangirai, Ncube and Renson Gasela were charged with state arranged treason weeks ahead of the presidential poll in 2002. We all knew it was a state plot using taxpayer's money. They endured this with grace and conviction and they were eventually acquitted, not because the Zimbabwe judiciary is all good. No, it’s just that it’s not all bad all the time either. I have great sympathy for the MDC and particularly for Morgan Tsvangirai. It’s a young party and it has faced extraordinary odds, extraordinary difficulties.

Nevertheless if one is honest, one just has to say it has wasted so many, many opportunities. And many, many people suffered intensely to help the MDC. MDC leaders themselves have suffered intensely. And it is a very, very broad church, as Oliver Tambo once said of the ANC which let us not forget began in 1912. So the MDC had to cope with the working class, leftists, intellectuals, peasants, white farmers, black businessmen, bankers, you name it. All wanting one thing only - CHANGE. They weren’t after ideology.

They were after change and all wanting it perhaps for different reasons. So it was an incredibly difficult constituency that Morgan Tsvangirai had to lead but let us be honest after the first flush of 2000 and after they were charged with treason – and I believe that was a very important moment, there seemed to be a dearth of leaders.

And there seemed to be that other problem in Zimbabwe that if you are Ndebele, you can’t be a leader in a Shona area and for me as a whitey I just can’t understand it. I just don’t understand why there is this fixation over it. It’s Ndebeles who told me that they knew they could never be leaders of the MDC because they were Ndebele. They told me that. That’s why the criticisms or accusations that Welshman Ncube was trying to take over Morgan Tsvangirai’s job were so absurd to me. And it’s written in that memorandum that David Coltart wrote in 2005 that was read out at the NEC meeting in June 2005 where he says two things:- There are only two names in Zimbabwe which have political resonance and recognition around the country – Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai. And it’s absurd to think that Welshman Ncube would be after his job.

Violet: How would you answer those people who say you seem to sympathise more with the Mutambara led MDC or that you are biased towards them. How would you answer that?
Peta: I don’t know how to answer it. I don’t know how to answer it because I am a journalist and I write what I see. Whenever I am accused of that, and I have been accused of it a lot, I say; ‘Why would I do it?’ I had a long conversation recently with one of my friends who is in the wires in Harare, about the various accusations that have come our way and both of us say the same things – ‘Why would we do it?’ ‘In whose interest would it be if I was to serve the Mutambara faction?’

I have known for example William Bango (former journalist now Tsvangirai’s spokesperson) longer than probably anyone in contemporary politics in Zimbabwe. I would consider him a personal friend actually – one of the few political figures who is actually a personal friend. I wrote what I wrote because I was there. I knew what happened in the vote (for participating) in the senate elections. I knew what the results were; we were getting sms out of the (MDC) NEC building. I heard what Morgan Tsvangirai said – about the constitution, the vote and that it didn’t matter if the MDC split.

I heard that and I reported it and I was shocked as anyone else.


I have followed what has happened with the code of conduct that was negotiated in South Africa and with the coalition agreement and I was staggered by why it wasn’t carried out. And for me of course it was also the violence. I refer back to the violence because the MDC – and there was a misprint in the transcript of the first interview I did – where I said the MDC was almost a Ghandian party. In other words after Ghandi.

It was a Pacifist party. It was going to effect regime change via the ballot box. It was never going to use violence or armed struggle or anything unconstitutional in its efforts to win elections and I just reported it as it happened. I happened to be, I think, one of the few foreign journalists who persuaded my employers in South Africa, Washington and London that the fight in the MDC was worth covering because they weren’t particularly interested in it.

So I reported on it. I also wrote some editorials – two or three I think in which I reminded readers …
(interrupted)

Violet: How do you see the MDC’s chances in a free and fair election?

Peta: If it was really free and fair elections, if there where six months for Morgan, Mutambara, Welshman and Biti to go into the deepest heartland of the communal areas in Mashonaland East, Mash West and Mash Central and say to people, especially the younger people;-‘Are you pleased with what you’ve got? You’ve got no fertiliser, there is no fuel, you can’t get into town to see your families, they can’t get from town to see you. Are you happy with life? We are the party that can offer you change.’ Do you think they will still vote for ZANU PF? I doubt it. I think the MDC would actually walk the elections.
But ZANU PF has a generation of supporters that will support that party until they die because of the liberation struggle and because of its role in their lives. It’s changed their lives completely even if they are having bad times at the moment. But if you look at the average age of Zimbabweans where many are under the age of 19, I think Mugabe would find it extremely difficult – with a free media and people able to listen to other points of views and able to read other points of views. Able to meet opposition politicians, without worrying about meeting the police at open rallies, who can point out to you exactly why your life has deteriorated, why you can’t get school books, why there is no muti (medicine) in the clinics, why you can’t get vaccinations, why there is no anti retroviral drugs. How on earth would ZANU PF in a free and fair election ever be able to provide an argument good enough against the MDC? The problem is that I wonder if we will ever see that in our lifetime.Violet: You also criticized the private media heavily on how it has been covering the MDC. How do you define the position of journalists in an oppressive environment, especially those in the private media?

Peta: It’s terribly difficult to get fairness and balance in a report when one can't even get comment from ZANU PF, when sources are frightened to be identified. So as a journalist, within the family of journalists, I would indeed again criticise the Daily News for not telling us about the MDC's warts, and at the same time cheer them on, cheer on the memory of Geoff Nyarota for his magnificent efforts, his magnificent editing. Cheer on Strive Masiyiwa for being determined to use some of his wealth to help Zimbabweans get information.

And the Daily News operated in appalling circumstances, watched all the time, under scrutiny and then bombed. Its journalists arrested, beaten and terrified. It doesn't matter that it supported the MDC, it was privately owned, and it can support whoever it likes. I regret it wasn't more critical of the party, because that is the press's function.Violet: Why is it Peta that people have so much difficulties dealing with the press?

Peta: There is no tradition of a free press in Zimbabwe from the time Ian Smith came into power. It was completely controlled first by Ian Smith and then there were these brief little moments at independence, and in the transition there were these brief little moments but there is no long term tradition of a free press in Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans have had to fight for every spare centimeter of free press they’ve got and it is difficult, isn’t it, the circumstances under which journalists operate in Zimbabwe.

So because there is no tradition and people have no tradition of reading criticism, the people who make the criticism are then accused. So if you don’t agree with ZANU PF, you are an agent of the West. That’s what I am usually called by ZANU PF. Or if you don't agree with the MDC then you are accused of being ZANU PF. That’s what we do. We accuse each other. We don’t sometimes go and look at what is actually being written and of course if it’s not well written or well sourced it’s right for us to be suspicious.

So it’s a question of history, it’s a question that takes a long time. For example you can see what is happening at the moment in South Africa in the succession struggle in South Africa with newspapers trying very hard to put both candidates points of view – both Mbeki and Jacob Zuma’s point of view, even though one knows that one particular newspaper supports one candidate slightly more than it supports the other candidate.

I am not sure if any of the press are particularly keen on either of the candidates but that is what they have in front of them. And I am watching very interesting stuff, if you go into the internet have a look at how they are dealing with it. We don’t have that tradition in Zimbabwe. It is very, very difficult and it has to begin.

One was hoping that if the negotiations lead to the implementation of the new electoral laws, the amendment to the Electoral Act where you read those clauses about the media then maybe we could start. Maybe we could start because Zimbabweans have no experience of tolerating a diversity of opinion in a free media, in a free society.

Let’s for example take your situation Violet and what the Herald wrote about you and I have known you personally for many years. I know you didn't get funded by x, y and z as you were accused in the Herald this week. I know you paid for your studies yourself in the UK, I remembered that. And I also know you chose to go to the BBC for your attachment during your studies for your work experience just as learners used to be seconded in Zimbabwe when there was some training going on.

So when I read that in the Herald this week I had to smile because I had been accused of working for the CIO, Frederik de Klerk's NIS, Ronnie Kasril's NIA, the Nigerian Intelligence Community, the ANC, the CIA and MI6. I don't think I have been accused of working for the KGB. The one I regret is MI6. Had I worked for them I would have a pension now and I wouldn’t be yakking away on SW Radio Africa.

Violet: (laughing) you would have had a pension?

Peta: (laughs) Unfortunately they never even tried to recruit me. Nor did any of the others. The other thing I am ashamed of is that I have never been offered a bribe as a journalist.

Violet: (laughing) Well Peta I am running out of time but there was one other question I wanted to ask you about. You have been following the negotiations in South Africa very closely. What’s the latest on the talks?

Peta: The talks have been held in Johannesburg since December the 4th and they ended yesterday. From what I understand from African diplomats was that because of the ZANU PF extra-ordinary Congress Nicholas Goche and Patrick Chinamasa were called back to Harare. So they didn’t quite finish what they were doing but they got 99% of the work done and most of the legal work is done.

I think the situation now is the unspoken question of what will happen now and I fear that Mugabe will insist on elections being in March and that the elections go ahead before the new constitution – that has been agreed – is put in place. Now President Thabo Mbeki, who has facilitated these negotiations on behalf of SADC, that is what he used to lure the MDC into supporting Constitution Amendment no.18 - was certainly that there was going to be a new constitution before the elections and that there would be time for these new electoral laws, which many political commentators have said are significantly improved, not perfect as they can be ruined in the implementation but they are significantly improved and that there would be time for a normalization of the country and for people to get used to and trust those elections.

What I am predicting is that – and this is after talking to a couple of African diplomats who have been watching these negotiations closely – is that if Mugabe insists on election in March, if the constitution is not in place before the elections, the MDC or the most important members of both factions of the MDC will boycott the elections.

Violet: Well Peta we have to end here unfortunately. Thank you very much.

Peta: Ok thank you Violet let’s wait for Chapter 5 of the Herald.

Violet: (Laughing) Bye for now.

Peta: (Laughing) Bye.

Comments and feedback can be emailed to violet@swradioafrica.com

'I am ashamed of my African leaders' says Tanonoka J Whande

Mmegi, Botswana Friday, 23 November 2007

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TANONOKA JOSEPH WHANDE

And what a shame it is, indeed!

African presidents are busy buying suits and bow-ties to impress those who make suits and bow-ties when they attend a summit where, in spite of the continent's wealth, they are going to beg like no subway beggar has ever begged before.

It is a shame.

In a published letter to Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva, (Mmegi, November 16, 2007), I pleaded and urged Silva and his government to justify their invitation of Robert Mugabe in contravention of European Union travel bans on Mugabe and his lieutenants because of their deplorable human rights violations.

I pointed out that since Portugal had chosen to invite Mugabe, Portugal should put Zimbabwe on the agenda and, thus, possibly offer an effective alternative to Gordon Brown's stand of isolating Mugabe.Portugal, of course, is barren of human rights decency in foreign lands and is doing things that fly in the face of the EU and thereby neutralises the EU's policies.But I am, however, humbled that, early this week, the EU itself leapfrogged over Portugal and demanded that Portugal, which holds the EU presidency, puts Zimbabwe on the agenda.Many people feel rewarded, especially me.Even then, for now, I dare stand and demand for Mugabe's complete isolation. There should not be any letting up until the dictator is uncoiled.

The EU says 'No Mugabe' on its soil because of the transgressions he is committing against innocent people but Portugal says 'yes.' It is clear to me that African dictators are not the only ones who violate constitutions and collective agreements.ZimOnline reported that the European Union had "agreed to have the human rights situation in Zimbabwe put on the agenda for a summit with African leaders set for next month."It went on to say that EU foreign ministers met last Monday in Portugal to discuss, among others, the 8-9 December Europe-Africa summit and resolved to give a "clear and tough" message to President Mugabe on his government's human rights record" and then further quoted an EU official as having said that Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands had pushed for "a real discussion on human rights and governance in Zimbabwe" during the summit."We will organise a debate (at the summit) so that Mugabe can receive a clear and tough message," an EU official said.

That's all I wanted.

Thank you, Lord!

I, however, feel extremely embarrassed that Europeans have to arm-twist Africa's inconsiderate presidents into taking note of the atrocities being committed in an African country called Zimbabwe. The EU is trying to do something to bring some relief to the long suffering Zimbabwean people while those occupying state houses across Africa appear to approve of sadistic practices of their fellow heads of state.

I declare that African presidents are a horrible and ghastly disgrace and I wish they could boycott the Portugal summit for whatever reason because none of them represents or espouses African people's attitudes.Africans are not sadists nor are they warmongers but our so-called presidents are a totally different species, offering the world a false picture of Africa.African presidents are collectively responsible for the deaths and mayhem in Zimbabwe, Darfur, DR Congo and elsewhere on the African continent for, if they do not wish to assist, they should leave those who have the desire to assist to do so.

When my life and family are under threat, shall I, being African, insist on the unwilling African president Thabo Mbeki to rescue me while a foreigner is already doing something to save us before being even asked?Two weeks ago, Mbeki said he was quite satisfied with the negotiations that he is chairing between Mugabe and the opposition. That is very encouraging; wouldn't you say, especially considering the deaths and violence being perpetrated by Mugabe on defenseless people? On Wednesday, Mbeki said he would make a whistle-stop visit to Zimbabwe en route to Uganda for the Commonwealth meeting.

He said he would be talking to Mugabe's representatives and those who represent the opposition. To Mbeki, Zimbabwe is an afterthought. I was under the impression that serious negotiations were being held in South Africa.Three days ago, South Africa's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aziz Pahad, parroted his master's voice and said that South Africa "is happy with the progress that has been made regarding efforts to resolve the problems currently facing Zimbabwe."While Africa, and, indeed, the world, is still trying to clear the unpardonable cobwebs from the atrocities of Rwanda, where men, women and even children along with priests and nuns went mute and attempted to cover up atrocities, we now have South Africans actively denying and covering up the maimings and political murders in Zimbabwe.

What progress are the South Africans always spouting about that we don't know of? Or are they saying they are satisfied with the daily political violence and death toll? What kind of progress is it when the other half of the negotiating partners does not report any such progress but complains?The day Pahad made that obviously false statement of satisfaction, Zimbabwean parliamentarian, Nelson Chamisa, spokesperson for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) expressed his party's concerns over current talks being brokered by South Africa in a report he presented to the on-going ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly meeting in Kigali.

So why are the South Africans, yes, including their president, lying about the situation over these talks?

And a day before Mbeki and his crony lied to the world about progress in Zimbabwean mediation talks, Zimbabwe's main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had urged Mbeki to pressure Robert Mugabe to end political violence and repeal tough security and press laws. It is surprising that so late into the negotiations, the MDC is still begging for an end to political violence and the repeal of repressive laws.

No talks should have been started while such serious curtailments existed. However, I am curious to know what 'progress' Mbeki and Pahad are talking about?Portugal and South Africa, two countries that have always connived to save renegade leaders in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, should be warned not to play exterminator games with Zimbabweans whose lives are already at stake.South Africa should be aware that Zimbabweans view it, especially Mbeki, as a co-oppressor with Mugabe. Zimbabweans are well aware that it is South Africa, especially Mbeki in his personal capacity, that stands between meaningful assistance to end the repression, mayhem and killings in Zimbabwe and the continued suffering and murder of the innocent people in our country.SADC, and indeed the world, rightly defer the Zimbabwean issue to South Africa.

It is protocol. It is diplomacy and it is getting more and more people killed in Zimbabwe because South Africa, because of Mbeki, is impotent and is preventing the emancipation of the Zimbabwean people. Without South Africa manning the doors, freedom could long ago have poured into Zimbabwe. Without South Africa protecting a murderous dictator, the issue could have been laid to rest a long time ago.

I salute the European Union and I deplore so-called African presidents who, with a colonial mentality of always imitating what former colonisers did, are still at the stage of oppressing their own people. I chide all African presidents for their short-sightedness. I rebuke them for bringing shame to the continent.Oppressing the 'natives' appears to be the only thing these presidential charlatans learned from the former colonisers. I do declare and say that I am ashamed of all African leaders.

Robert Mugabe is twice the man they are, for Mugabe parades his evil and frolics in it proudly and publicly yet the other African leaders try to hide their evil but expect the world and the people to applaud just because, in every respect, they are all a few thebes short of a pula.African presidents should wake up and rescue Africa.

Whatever happened to our pioneering spirit? Where is that individual and personal initiative so prevalent among early pioneering leaders that we used to see as we tried to dislodge colonialists?We have always given our support to our leaders, mostly against our will, but look at what they are doing to Africa against our will.

I am a son of Africa and am totally ashamed of all my African leaders.God have mercy!

Tanonoka Joseph Whande is a Botswana-based Zimbabwean writer.

"Smith was a killer" says Zambian Founding President, Dr Kenneth Kaunda!

Friday November 23, 2007

By Brighton Phiri in Livingstone

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"I can’t mourn Ian Smith because he was a killer", said Dr Kenneth Kaunda yesterday.And Dr Kaunda said former African leaders were ready to serve as peace mediators if called upon by the African Union (AU).Commenting on the death of former Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smithwho died in South Africa on Tuesday, Dr Kaunda said Smith was not worth mourning by Africa because of the atrocities that he inflicted on its citizens.“He is gone. There cannot be mourning on our part. How can we mourn a man who is a killer?” he asked.

Dr Kaunda said Smith’s death should assist all those demonising Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to reflect on their views because the man who detained and killed many Zimbabweans had died on the Zimbabwean soil.“His death should serve as a reminder for those demonising President Mugabe that Ian Smith has died on the Zimbabwean soil. This is the man who threw comrade Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo and several others into prison for 10 years without trial,” Dr Kaunda said.

On Africa’s conflicts, Dr Kaunda said former African heads of state were ready to be assigned by the AU to resolve some of the conflicts that had engulfed the continent.“It all depends on the AU. If the AU thinks that there is something that we can do to help, we are ready to contribute towards resolving the conflicts on the continent,” he said.On the outcome of the former heads of state workshop on HIV and AIDS, Dr Kaunda said resolutions would be presented to the full council of the Africa Forum, a grouping of former African leaders.

He disclosed that the leaders present during the workshop had identified poverty as the main contributing factor to increased cases of HIV and AIDS.“We have all accepted that poverty must be defeated first. For as long as we are still wallowing in abject poverty, we shall face some serious difficulties in eradicating the AIDS pandemic,” said Dr Kaunda.

Those who attended the workshop included former Burundu president Pierrie Buyoya and his wife Sothie, Malawian former president Bakili Muluzi, Tanzania’s second and third presidents Hassan Mwinyi and Benjamin Mkapa, former Organisation African Union secretary general Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim and Africa Forum executive secretary John Tesha.

"The EU must not make Mugabe a martyr" says Garikai Chimuka!

Wednesday 21 November 2007

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HARARE - The current standoff between the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU) as regards President Robert Mugabe‘s participation at the EU-AU summit to be hosted by Portugal in December 2007 has raised a number of interesting points.

As it is now clear that Mugabe will attend and the summit will still go on even if Prime Minister Brown does not attend, focus has now shifted as to how to send a clear message to Mugabe that the EU does not tolerate what is currently happening in Zimbabwe.

Some quarters are suggesting that the EU is considering calling for a formal debate to send a clear message to Mugabe that they do not approve of the human abuses currently taking place in Zimbabwe.

In whatever way the EU chooses to communicate this message to Mugabe, it must be wary of not elevating Mugabe to a martyr, for this is what he is exactly looking for. Mugabe’s strategy at the summit will be to be the point of focus through his predictable, familiar and now monotonous anti-British and anti-EU rhetoric.

Given that he has dismally failed at home where his self-serving policies have spawned an economic crisis never seen outside a war zone, his approach will be to shift focus from the domestic problems he has created in Zimbabwe and then use his usual land rhetoric to blame Zimbabwe’s problems on Britain and the EU.

Such has been the distinction of Mugabe ‘s policies in Zimbabwe that he is attending the summit with the “ impressive” CV of mis-running a country to the extend of –

• Stratospheric inflation which is nearly 8 000 percent
• Unemployment which is “officially ” 90 percent
• 90 percent of the people living below the poverty datum line including civil servants like teachers, soldiers, policemen, nurses,
• A worthless currency made up of “bearer cheques” and not real money that is in short supply
• A country where more than a third (about four million people) continues to leave the country in droves.

Mugabe believes that he can play the victim and gain sympathy from other African countries and those uninitiated about the realities of the genesis of the Zimbabwean crisis given its various manifestations.

So if the EU formally introduces debate on the human rights situation as has been suggested in some media reports, Mugabe will simply outsmart them by deflating the discourse from human rights to land issue.

He will carefully erase from his presentation the fact that he only resorted to his land reform agenda when it became clear that he was going to be defeated in the 2000 elections.
He will carefully forget to tell his audience that the so-called land reform was and is still a smokescreen to hide human rights abuses, racial cleansing through grabbing property and thus creating and perpetuating racial xenophobia, rewarding his cronies through state sponsored looting like what again happened in June when he launched a crusade against businesses.

He will thus pretend to be the only evangelist for land reform in Africa, across the developing world and in Zimbabwe and he will conveniently forget to say that before the farm invasions started in Zimbabwe, there was already national and international consensus on carrying out an orderly land reform exercise that could have maintained productivity and property rights.
It is in this context that I strongly believe that the best position for the EU to take at the summit will be to focus mainly on the issues on the agenda and totally ignoring Mugabe as if he were not there.

This does not however mean sweeping the Zimbabwean issue under the carpet but rather quietly coming up with decisive actions behind the scenes with other African countries to decisively settle the Zimbabwean issue once and for all rather than allowing this circus to go on.
If Mugabe realises that he has been ignored, he will try by all means to initiate a propaganda war himself.

The EU should proactively work with the other progressive African countries to make sure that he is not given the time to grandstand on any issues at the summit for given the way he has ruined Zimbabwe, he clearly does not have anything to offer to the future of both the EU and the AU or the EU and AU of the future.

Thus the EU-AU summit must get down to serious business focusing on the future, a better future for the people of the two blocs. This way it will condemn Mugabe to the dustbins of history and surely at 83, the man belongs to the past and will only be a passenger in a forward looking summit.

Perhaps such treatment may now dawn upon Mugabe for him to consider his now long overdue retirement from national politics given the real fact that he is now at the sunset of both his biological and let alone political life for whether he likes it or not, human beings can never be recycled!

Garikai Chimuka

Chimuka can be contacted at garychimuka06@yahoo.com

"OUR POLITICS MUST MATURE" SAYS MS SEKAI HOLLAND (HOVE)

Sekai Holland responds to Chaibva article

By Sekai Holland

Our politics as a people must mature for us to walk away from Rhodesia where many, including Robert Gabriel himself in statehouse still seem to be stuck to the new Zimbabwe, our destination. When someone writes their view on any subject we must learn in the new Zimbabwe we aspire towards, to respect that view as sincere.

We must strive to learn to address issues raised, fairly and squarely, without character assassination! The current 'kusvibisana' ukungcolisana' 'to soil one another' Mugabe Harare politics will not take us far on the very thorny, still long political road to our new Zimbabwe. Let us learn to debate points made, give one another respect for the views we hold, without suspecting that there are ulterior motives why people hold views they do.

Let us appreciate our background. We as a society have lived in an unhealthy, smothering environment, where authorities in our country have no respect for the truth. We have been subjected to and fed with hearsay, rumour, innuendo and downright lies by our ruling party for nearly 3 decades. They have deprived us as a population of factual data and information to empower us to make informed decisions on any subject, including ones that touch our own very lives.

Until we understand this reality and begin to talk to one another as people, as citizens of one country which we all love and want to work for, for our own enjoyment, then we as Zimbabweans prolong our time of living in the current crisis, the unprecedented forced emigration. We postpone the opportunities to really hear fellow citizens' voices, always clear, to guide us safely to best solutions for our way forward. I have a simple explanation about 12 October, 2005, which I have related to all and sundry as I myself sought guidance to understand what took place on that day.

During the time of the crucial October 12, 2005, I was in Bulawayo after our Mother died on August 25, 2005 and as the eldest in our family had to stay for months with all my siblings after her burial to settle issues after such a life changing event for families. Basically my story is that late one night around 11 pm, on October 10, 2005, I received an unexpected call from Mr Nyoni of our Bulawayo MDC office. His message was that I collect an air ticket for Harare the next morning. That 11 October morning I was at the Bulawayo MDC office early to collect my ticket for a Harare flight on October 12 as per our conversation.

On arrival we met outside and I was told that our Secretary General had advised that I catch the Blue Arrow bus on October 12 at my own cost to be reimbursed in Harare! In my state of mourning, I quickly realized that the usual internal party nonsense I was having a rest from during this period was still at work. Without pursuing the issue I told the secretary who came out to my car outside our MDC Bulawayo office to give me the message that I would not get to the meeting in Harare on time as the Blue Arrow bus she was advised to tell me to catch, would get to Harare in the afternoon after the October 12 meeting was over.

I drove to Botswana immediately for the night as it was our family shopping day for household supplies. The morning of October 12, I rang the Secretary of Policy and Research Trudy Stevenson to ask if I could cast my vote by proxy. She kindly explained to me the very detailed legal manner in which I had to do that. In short I had to send a signed copy of my vote by fax. An email would not do as my signature would not appear on that.

The vote was simple, I was advised. It was whether we would as MDC participate in the Senate elections or not.

So it was that when Trudy in passing asked me which way I intended to vote, I stated that it was my understanding from our MDC sitting Parliamentarians at various gatherings that I attended before our family tragedy struck, that the senate was too expensive on the people, that we as a Party would vote 'No'. I believed that this was the Party position. I must say at that time I was surprised that Stevenson even asked me that question. We ended our conversation amicably as she herself did not say anything further to my reply. There was a problem with a working fax machine in both Francistown and Harare at that early hour.

I rang the Women's Assembly Secretary Lucia Matibenga to see if she could go to where there was a working fax machine to receive my vote in fax from me in Francistown where I was ringing her from, as per our Policy and Research Secretary's constitutional set rules. Matibenga advised me to ring the President and talk to him first, so that she could wait in his reception area early to receive my fax in our President's office. I rang the President who to my surprise was adamant that there was no need for me to cast a vote as there was not going to be a vote taken at the meeting that morning.

The National Executive Committee (NEC) he reminded me works through 'Consensus'. I told him that it was my understanding from my colleagues in the NEC that I cast my vote by proxy for the vote to be taken at that morning's meeting. Inspite of his advice I wrote out my vote against 'Participation' following the consistent advice of our Parliamentarians in the NEC and in the Parliament itself. Eddie Cross had also written an excellent article on the subject along the same lines. I was later advised that proxy votes were not counted in the October 12 meeting. Grace Kwinjeh our Brussels representative and other colleagues abroad sent their votes through my Harare computer and asked these to be taken to Harvest House on voting day.

Basically the 'kusvibisana' 'ukungcolisana' 'soil one another' Mugabe Harare politics has to stop. Zimbabweans have tried in a dignified and organized manner to find the way forward as civil society, hence the formation of the MDC. We must respect this process of sorting ourselves out through 'debate', 'consensus' and 'consensus building' among ourselves and as a society. We must continue to find our way to understand roles played by one another in different situations on our long painful journey from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, to get our bearings right and get home.

The 'MDC top 6' was not, and where they as individuals in politics have gone to in their separate ways have not displayed 'gender consciousness'. Women are regarded and treated as juniors. Most male leaders in Zimbabwe in most of our work situations/places require education as did western males (who were educated by their Feminist movement over decades) to recognize this terrible short coming, for us to get our political settings right. Women at least are beginning to overcome obstacles in our way to our own emancipation. The Matibenga case is a litmus test for men and women and how we interpret why what is happening, is being done in this manner, we must allow to be heard without insults on personalities.

Deal with the issues raised. I was raised in a family where the Ndebele proverb was always put before us when we faced a problem, and that was: Kwakhiwa ngomlomo - kuwiswa ngomlomo Muromo unovaka - muromo unoputsa (Shona) Your mouth/words build/s – your mouth/words destroy/s (English) This positive proverb is an important pointer to how we should conduct our work to solve our national crisis. As I continue to receive intensive treatment of the serious Mugabe regime inflicted injuries with colleagues on March 11, 2007, here in Australia, I am sad that the political quagmire that led to our torture continues. Encouraging however is that able women and men are urgently working on strategies to get us over this prolonged crisis.

My contribution to our own internal crisis has led to a questioning of my intentions. That is sad. As an MDC Founding Mother I too without failure have continued to pursue an understanding of what the real cause of the October 12, 2005, departure of founding leader Gibson Sibanda and the colleagues he brought with him into the MDC, as per the agreement when the Party was founded. As a matter of fact, when I was admitted to Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, as I lay delirious with pain the first issue in my mind was to invite colleagues that left on October 12, 2005 to my hospital bed to tell me the reasons why they left MDC. I am grateful I did so because with the present Matibenga debacle in our own faction, I am able to remember the response given to me so carefully then by Professor Welshman Ncube when he accepted my invitation to Milpark hospital.

His answer at that point to me sounded nonsensical. With our experience today I have a place to begin to understand the dynamics in our party among the male leadership in the last 8 years. Gabriel Chaibva's response to my statement is a typical blind point scoring approach without delving into the points made. As a society we must learn quickly that each person in politics has a role that they perform. Some of us do so honestly. I have consistently invaded old friends and colleagues in their offices to pursue old political questions to understand my own way forward. Each of us must understand that our personal perspective of specific events is not necessarily the correct one.

I learned that years ago. Depending on where people are when historic events such as October 12, 2005, take place, our perspectives differ, hence the need for constant dialogue among ourselves as activists, to get to the truth of events that we participate in, so that we make principled and improved decisions for our progress each time. To me, forever, the tragic events of October 12, 2005 are associated with our Mother's passing. I was not in Harare on that historic day to participate in that debate and sad outcome. I have concluded from subsequent conversations with colleagues who were present in that meeting that my presence would not have changed that outcome.

Like many Zimbabweans I have been sad that that day October 12, 2005 took place. It is not an event for point scoring, but one we as a people should strive to comprehend so that as a society we empower ourselves to move on together, with direction. From the improving quality of debate recently my hopes are that we will eventually get it right through enlightened dialogue. We must talk to one another as equals, with respect for one another, for us to move on, to liberate ourselves as Zimbabweans.

Sekai Holland Sydney , Australia . 16 November 2007

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MRS HOLLAND WAS RESPONDING TO THE LETTER BELOW!!!

Tell the truth, Sekai Holland

LINK!!!!!!

EDITOR — We are tempted to write by Sekai Holland’s article, which appeared in several publications including The Financial Gazette (November 1-7 2007): “Male chauvinism and MDC’s Top Six”.In one paragraph Madame Holland said Ms Lucia Matibenga and Nelson Chamisa had saved Morgan Tsvangirai by mobilising consultative meetings around the country “... when Tsvangirai was nearly toppled on October 12, 2005 by his top six colleagues...”Such an irresponsible statement coming from Madame Holland especially as she was privy to the developments, which occurred on October 12, 2005, shocks us.

Mrs Holland knows, as much as we do that the October 12, 2005 debacle was caused by none other than Tsvangirai himself and that there was absolutely no attempt whatsoever, real or imagined to topple him.

It is people like her who continued to feed Tsvangirai with the false notion that October 12 was a boardroom coup and have in fact peddled such imaginary thoughts.For the purpose of this discourse it may be helpful to revisit a few facts about what happened thereon. The founding fathers and mothers, daughters and sons of the MDC had realised that democratic deficits in Africa and Zimbabwe in particular had been a result of the absence of a culture of democratic collective leadership. Leaders had been allowed to make unilateral decisions and to this end they employ violence, tribalism and intimidation as tools for political organisation. In an attempt to curb this cancer, the top six of the MDC was charged with the responsibility to guide the leader in their collective and in their majority of opinion.

This collective spirit of the top six would then form the basis of action by the president at every turn. On October 12, the top six were unanimous in their resolution to participate in the senatorial elections except for Tsvangirai alone who chose to present a minority view to the National Council.

In the spirit of the founding principle of the MDC, the simple thing for Tsvangirai to do would have been to recommend the collective decision of the Top Six, which was to participate in the elections. He had no choice but alas, he thought otherwise. However, his minority view to boycott elections was resoundingly defeated 33-31 and then Tsvangirai stood up and declared “… I don’t care if the party breaks into pieces. We will not participate in the elections.” It is not the intention of this statement to interrogate the wisdom of why he did that.

That matter remains in the domain of another interrogation. Tsvangirai then walked out and refused to recognise all attempts to reconcile the decision of the National Council with him. We warned then of the dangers of politicians succumbing to the whims of a leader who clearly was lost and was contemptuous of the party’s procedures, institutional structures and the party constitution. We advised against being pliable to a leader who was showing total disrespect of party’s founding values and principles.

Such leaders were reminiscent of Africa’s despots. It would be very interesting for Madam Sekai Holland to demonstrate how the Top Six had “nearly toppled” Tsvangirai. We suspect that Madam Holland has a very short memory and poor recollection of events. We note with grave concern that Mai Holland had been one of those who had chosen to ignore and had completely discarded the MDC constitution and rules of procedure. We are therefore not entirely surprised by her remarks.

The Top Six of the MDC comprised of people of high integrity and loyalty to the party’s values and principles and they would not have attempted unconstitutional means of dealing with problems in the party. These were deputy president Gibson Sibanda; chairman the late Isaac Matongo, secretary general Honorable Welshman Ncube, deputy secretary general Gift Chimanikire and treasurer general Fletcher Dulini.

If Holland is now experiencing problems with Tsvangirai, let her not try to bring in people who had nothing to do with the behaviour of Tsvangirai. Vakapembedza gona nerinobata mai! (They celebrated witchcraft, which then implicated their mother!)

Please let us learn to tell the truth. We wish to state categorically that it is not our intention to be embroiled in the Matibenga saga but we shall continue to make corrections whenever necessary.

Gabriel ChaibvaSecretary for Information and Publicity, MDC.

PRESS RELEASE ON THE NEED FOR THE MDC(TSVANGIRAI) TO RENOUNCE VIOLENCE:

THE ZIMBABWE JOURNALISTS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

19 November 2007

Press Statement: the MDC must denounce violence against the Media

THE Zimbabwe Journalists for Human Rights is shocked by the thuggish behaviour of youths aligned to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) under Morgan Tsvangirai after they beat up freelancer Frank Chikowore and South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) reporter John Nyashanu at Harvest House while carrying out their journalistic mandate on Sunday 18 November 2007.

The overzealous youths accused the two journalists of negative reportage on Tsvangirai in respect of the ongoing disputes within the Women's Assembly.

The journalists were among a dozen others who were at Harvest House to cover Tsvangirai's meeting with his provincial executives to brief them on the ongoing talks with Zanu PF and the preparedness of the party ahead of the 2008 elections. It is ironic that during the meeting he reiterated his party's demands for access to the public media while demanding that the independent media must be allowed to operate.

It is alarming that a party that constantly denounce the ruling Zanu PF, the police, and other security apparatus of the Robert Mugabe regime for being violent with its opponents, the MDC has become an equal partner in attacking the freedoms of the media.

The ZJHR holds no brief for the MDC or Zanu PF but stands for the rights of journalists to discharge their mandate without fear or favour. An attack on any journalist carrying out his duties is an attack on the freedom of the press. That is unacceptable and we denounce the use of violence to settle differences in opinion.

The MDC President and his National Executive Council must discipline their youths and all other structures to respect the independence of journalists to write factual and truthful news without resorting to violence to coerce our members to write favourable articles. That is not our responsibility to create positives out of negatives.

Journalists, working for the State-controlled or private media should denounce whoever wants to coerce them to write favourable articles about certain issues.

As the nation prepares for the harmonised Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Government Elections, the safety of the media is paramount.

Both Zanu PF and the MDC cannot be entrusted to guarantee the safety of the press. The ZJHR urges journalists to maintain their neutrality in cases of intra-party disputes as this trend creates unnecessary divisions within the media and the party concerned.

We therefore recommend that journalists take a principled stand against political violence and avoid risky political situations. The ZJHR will continue to lobby all stakeholders to seriously look into the issue of the security and safety of journalists ahead of the harmonised elections in 2008.
Options available for the media include;

Boycotting the MDC press briefings until the party makes a firm commitment to the security of journalists attending their functions.

Continue to play a watchdog role of all political parties without being silenced by acts of thuggery and intimidation.

Advocate and lobby Parliament for a policy framework that guarantees the safety of journalists covering the 2008 elections.

For more information and comments please write to thezjhr@yahoo.co.uk or call us on 0912 869 294, 0912 266 430.

The MDC Must Denounce Violence against the Media

Under pressure: Morgan Tsvangirai.

By Sebastian Nyamhangambiri

THE Zimbabwe Journalists for Human Rights yesterday said it was shocked by the "thuggish" behaviour of youths aligned to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) under Morgan Tsvangirai after they beat up freelancer Frank Chikowore and South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) reporter John Nyashanu at Harvest House while carrying out their journalistic duties on Sunday.

The ZJHR said in a statement last night "the overzealous youths" accused the two journalists of reporting negatively on Tsvangirai in respect of the ongoing disputes within the Women's Assembly.

The journalists were among a dozen others who were at Harvest House to cover Tsvangirai's meeting with his provincial executives. The MDC's founding president whose party has been plagued by a number of problems with individuals within the party accusing him of being dictatorial, was briefing the executives on the ongoing talks with Zanu PF which are being held under the chairmanship of South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki.

Tsvangirai was also talking about his party's preparedness ahead of the 2008 elections.
The ZJHR, which has been joined by others such as the Association of Zimbabwe Journalists in the UK (AZJ-UK), in denouncing the violence perpetrated against the two journalists and the need for the MDC and all political parties in Zimbabwe to leave journalists to do their work with fear, favour, harassment or intimidation ahead of the crucial elections next year, is calling on journalists to boycott MDC press briefings until the party makes a firm commitment to the security of journalists attending their functions.

The journalists, the media group says, should continue to play a watchdog role of all political parties without being silenced by acts of thuggery and intimidation while watchdog groups will continue to advocate and lobby Parliament for a policy framework that guarantees the safety of journalists covering the 2008 elections

"It is ironic that during the meeting he reiterated his party's demands for access to the public media while demanding that the independent media must be allowed to operate," read the statement.

Tsvangirai even said his party was going to report to Mbeki that Zanu PF was upping the violence against its supporters but did not say a word about the journalists who had been attacked by the youths loyal to him.

AZJ-UK secretary, Sandra Nyaira, said: "An attack on one journalist is an attack on all. We should set aside our differences as Zimbabwean journalists and continue to campaign for our freedom wherever we are.
We all have one goal, to have a conducive media environment in which we can operate so whether you are Zanu PF, MDC, NDU, Zanu Ndonga or Zapu 2000, no one should be allowed to continue to harass or assault the already weary Zimbabwean journalist."

"It is alarming that a party that constantly denounces the ruling Zanu PF, the police, and other security apparatus of the Robert Mugabe regime for being violent with its opponents, the MDC has become an equal partner in attacking the freedoms of the media," the ZJHR said.

"The ZJHR holds no brief for the MDC or Zanu PF but stands for the rights of journalists to discharge their mandate without fear or favour. An attack on any journalist carrying out his duties is an attack on the freedom of the press. That is unacceptable and we denounce the use of violence to settle differences in opinion."

The MDC President and his National Executive Council, said the journalists, must discipline their youths and all other structures to respect the independence of journalists to write factual and truthful news without resorting to violence to coerce our members to write favourable articles.

"That is not our responsibility to create positives out of negatives.

Journalists, working for the State-controlled or private media should denounce whoever wants to coerce them to write favourable articles about certain issues."

As the nation prepares for the harmonised Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Government Elections, the safety of the media is paramount.

Both Zanu PF and the MDC cannot be entrusted to guarantee the safety of the press. The ZJHR urges journalists to maintain their neutrality in cases of intra-party disputes as this trend creates unnecessary divisions within the media and the party concerned.

"We therefore recommend that journalists take a principled stand against political violence and avoid risky political situations. The ZJHR will continue to lobby all stakeholders to seriously look into the issue of the security and safety of journalists ahead of the harmonised elections in 2008."

Meanwhile the MDC has since vowed to launch an urgent probe into intra-party weekend violence which saw the two journalists being targeted.

The National Constitutional Assembly and Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition have today warned that the MDC had diminished its democratic credentials by using violence to resolve internal disputes.

NCA chairman Lovemore Madhuku was quoted as saying said Tsvangirai has made "so many mistakes that make him unfit to govern and to be President of this country".

The party's organising secretary, Elias Mudzuri, who disputes the violent youths are Tsvangirai's supporters claimed "hired" elements were behind Sunday's violence targetting supporters of Lucia Matibenga, the former head of the party's women's wing ousted in favour of one of Theresa Makone, the wife of Tsvangirai's advisor, Ian.

MDC launches probe into weekend clashes

UNDER FIRE: Tsvangirai
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• Violent clashes at MDC headquarters
• Chamisa rants at media as pressure piles on Tsvangirai
• Tsvangirai fights for political future after NEC humiliation
• Lovemore Moyo: MDC standing committee 'empowered to fire Matibenga'
• Thokozani Khupe: Zim women bear brunt of national crisis
• Dr Alex T. Magaisa: Matibenga and power politics in the MDC
• Obert Madondo: Tsvangirai must go
• Tsvangirai calls crisis meeting over Matibenga
• Sekai Holland: Male chauvinism betrays MDC
• MDC edges closer to fresh split
• Grace Kwinjeh: Dongo and Matibenga - history repeating itself
• High Court orders MDC congress to determine Matibewnga's fate
• MDC accused of lying over cause of Tsvangirai aide's death
• Minister promised action on violence: MDC
• Tsvangirai 'breaking MDC constitution left, right and centre'
• Mohadi summons Tsvangirai over violence claims
• Sparks fly as UK MDC executive deposed
• Zimbabwe withdraws terror charges against MDC activists
• 'Disorderly conduct' charge for Tsvangirai
• MDC committed to Mbeki mediation - Chamisa
• Misihairabwi & Stevenson: Blame it on the woman!
• Paul Themba Nyathi: What is the role of 'The Zimbabwean' in fight for democracy?
• MDC says death threats made against MP
• Mutambara: Embracing legacy of Zimbabwe's heroes
• Last MDC activists held over bomb attacks freed
• Zim opposition needs leadership renewal -analysts
• 'We'll confront and decimate Mugabe, Tsvangirai'
• Mutambara: Tsvangirai 'weak and indecisive'
• Police faked evidence against alleged bombers
• Statement regarding MDC unity negotiations
• MDC says emigration hurts prospects
• Harare rally ban further extended
• 5 MDC petrol bomb suspects freed
• Mutambara gets passport, off to Europe
• Mutambara's passport seized ahead of London trip

• Courage Shumba: MDC losing moral and political authority to oppose By Torby Chimhashu

Last updated: 11/20/2007 02:48:24 A FACTION of Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on Monday vowed to launch an urgent probe into intra-party weekend violence which also targeted journalists.

The announcement came as two groups aligned with the party – the National Constitutional Assembly and Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition – warned the MDC had diminished its democratic credentials by using violence to resolve internal disputes.

NCA chairman Lovemore Madhuku said Morgan Tsvangirai, who leads a faction of the divided MDC, had made "so many mistakes that make him unfit to govern and to be President of this country".

Elias Mudzuri, the organising secretary of Tsvangirai's faction of the MDC, claimed "hired" elements were behind Sunday's violence which targeted supporters of Lucia Matibenga, the former head of the party's women's wing ousted in favour of one of Tsvangirai's allies, Theresa Makone.

Several people were reported injured when youths aligned to Tsvangirai attacked Matibenga's supporters who were marching to the Harvest House party HQ in Harare where Tsvangirai was meeting district and provincial officials.

Two journalists, Frank Chikowore and John Nyashanu, had to beat a hasty retreat. Chikowore, a freelance journalist, said the youths charged at him "menacingly", intent on preventing him from interviewing Matibenga. Nyashanu, a correspondent for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), said he fled in his car when Tsvangirai's shock troops "charged at me like lions…I had to retreat to my car at the speed of lightning."

Mudzuri said: "I have heard that there was violence around Harvest House and I think our people, if they are ours, if they are our members…that must be condemned in its fullest form if anyone committed violence.

"The worst thing is we cannot accept violence especially against women or even men. Anyone who committed any form of violence is subject to disciplinary action and we will take disciplinary action on all our structural members."

Mudzuri appeared to reject accusations that Tsvangirai's supporters were behind the violence.
He said: "To me they are hired thugs. MDC is a general term; anyone who supports MDC becomes covered by that but when it comes to our membership if we are particularly saying so and so is so and so, then we investigate and deal with that."

The refusal to accept responsibility riled civic groups.

Pedzisai Ruhanya, the senior programs officer at the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition said: "The youths who are allegedly abusing people, who are allegedly doing all sorts of violence do that in the name of the president. They are saying those who are complaining about the procedural manner in which the Lucia Matibenga case was dealt with are disrespecting their leader Morgan Tsvangirai."

Ruhanya, a former reporter with the banned Daily News newspaper, said it was futile for the MDC to disown its own supporters.

He said: "It would be a lie to say these youths are not from the MDC.

These youths are members of the MDC, so there is no question about the identity of the youths who assaulted the women and the people who assaulted journalists.

"I think this incident demystifies the position that the MDC has always tried to put across that they are a democratic party because if they are a democratic party, they must understand the role of the media in a democratic country or in a democratic environment.

"The role of the media is not to be a lapdog of those who are in power or those who have power; like what the MDC is, the role of the media is to report accurately the way they see events unfolding not to report what the MDC leadership wants to hear."

Analysts have warned that the MDC could disintegrate further just a few months before synchronised presidential and parliamentary elections set for March 2008. The party already exists in two factions, with the other group led by former NASA rocket scientist Arthur Mutambara. The two groups share an almost equal number of MPs in parliament following the October 2005 split, partly blamed on violence by Tsvangirai's loyalists on officials who disagreed with him.

The NCA's Madhuku said the 2008 elections were Tsvangirai's last chance saloon.

"Tsvangirai would have failed as a leader (if he loses)," Madhuku said in an exclusive interview with New Zimbabwe.com. "The only honourable thing to do would be to step down and allow a new leader to take over at the MDC or risk losing credible people. If he refuses, surely he would have authored conflict."

"In any case, three quarters of his executive does not agree with him anymore"

LOVEMORE MADHUKU

Madhuku, a constitutional law expert, said it was unlikely there would be any political party entering the political arena between now and elections.

He said: "There won't be a new force or the third way. The MDC of Tsvangirai will go into the polls as it is – divided. I think Tsvangirai knows he would have failed the struggle if he refuses to step down. In any case, three quarters of his executive does not agree with him anymore."
The NCA chief said Tsvangirai had now become a "difficult candidate" to replace President Robert Mugabe following his blunders, the latest being the violence against party members opposed to his leadership style.

Said Madhuku: "If he can't respect his colleagues and members of the party, then there is no need for his people to have confidence in him.

"You have the MDC on one hand complaining to South African President Thabo Mbeki of violence against its members by Zanu PF. On the other hand, you have violence within the MDC perpetrated against the same members of the same party by thugs within the same movement.
"It's like taking two guns and you give one each to Tsvangirai and Mugabe and then decide to be killed by the one held by Tsvangirai, fully knowing that both are killers.

"Whichever gun fires at you, it will kill you. So violence is violence and it does not cease to be that because it is coming from the MDC. If you condemn violence in its strongest terms, then it must be stopped in totality."

Madhuku refused to accept that the current clashes in the MDC were a result of infiltration by the intelligence services, arguing that such activities have always been there in any political party.

"The intelligence works on what it finds. If it finds you have a weakness for money, they corrupt you. In the MDC they have found intolerance and people anxious to use violence. People can get away with being violent against each other," Madhuku said.

Report received by Rev Hove from friendsoflucia@gmail.com

Dongo and Matibenga: history repeating itself???

By Ms Grace Kwinje

LINK!!!!!

"I APPEAL to my fellow war veterans not to let your suffering be used by selfish and greedy politicians who caused your suffering. This will not benefit you at the end of the day. Comrades, you should stand up and be a watchdog of the government. If you do not, you will have fought for nothing," freedom fighter and former independent MP Margaret Dongo.

But after first being elected as an MP in 1990, Dongo almost didn't make it back into office. She lost in the 1995 elections as an independent candidate after rampant voter fraud in her district was engineered to ensure her defeat.

When she set a nationwide precedent by taking the government to court, many called Dongo "mentally unbalanced" and said she was simply carrying a grudge against President Robert Mugabe.

(Extract from The Republic of Dongo: Parliamentarian Margaret Dongo, By Joyce Jenje-Makwenda, Zimbabwe)

HISTORY has a way of repeating itself in mysterious ways. The Secretary General of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Tendai Biti, recently signed a letter dissolving the Women's Assembly of the party.

The same heroic Biti 12 years ago, joined other activists in fighting Zanu PF's intransigence, when the party fired vocal politician Margaret Dongo from its ranks. With the support of pro-democracy activists, Dongo challenged Zanu PF in the Harare South constituency and the courts and won.

Activists united in Harare South to campaign for Dongo for many reasons, with the main one being she had been a voice of reason within the Zanu PF structure, saying things "Mugabe's wives" (her crude description of Mugabe loyalists)could not say.

"I'm saying this because I was in that parliament. I endured a lot of hardship under a one-party monopoly. You stand up and try to reason with him, and one tells you, ‘You are a bitch, go and cook in your house.’ Or tells you to sit down, that you are a minority..." said Dongo in an interview with Frontline World.

Thus she became a symbol of defiance against a system many feared and at the time thought was invincible, as has been the case with most post-colonial African states. She lit a candle of hope that the one party system could be challenged and dismantled, bringing the possibility of new political organisations with a different value system to that of Zanu PF.

I want to posit here that the Harare South battle should therefore be viewed in the context that it was an extension of the whole process that led to the formation of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) in 1998 and subsequently the MDC in 1999.

It is, however, important to rewind this particular tape a little bit to understand the dynamics that played themselves out at the time within Zanu PF and their relevance to the political discourse today, within the MDC. I will use various theoretical positions and traditions to explain Dongo's battle in view of what Lucia Matibenga is up and against in the MDC vis-à-vis the question of intra-party democracy and women's empowerment as a pre-requisite of good governance.

Writing in the Financial Gazette of 11 October, journalist Clemence Manyukwe gave an account of some of the victims of Zanu PF's internal dictatorship, among them Dzikamai Mavhaire and his famous "The President must go" speech, Frederick Shava, and Edgar Tekere. While all these have since been neutralised or silenced, none made a mark in our collective conscience the way Dongo did.

The battle in Harare South was important and still has a relevance to us today especially for those whose political activism was then propelled by Dongo's victory. What was the principle behind the overwhelming support for Dongo's battle against the Zanu PF 'chefs'?
It was a brutal and lonely fight for Dongo. Zanu PF put all its resources in campaigning for Vivian Mwashita who had been Dongo's best friend. They had the control of the media, government resources, top politicians went into Harare South to de-campaign Dongo. Senior Zanu PF female politicians for their own political survival took sides with the men.

It is against this background that Matibenga's battle in the MDC is important for us activists who were inspired and greatly influenced by Dongo in our political activism. The above scenario is repeating itself in a rather bitter manner. Reading Biti's statement after the High Court ruling on Matibenga's challenge of her committee’s dissolution, in which he claimed “victory” and “vindication”, my heart sank. The statement represented several tragedies and dangers for those of us who have been engaged in the protracted struggle for democracy.

While our interpretation of the judgement passed by the High Court is that only the Women's Congress can dissolve its leadership, the MDC leadership seems to have their own.
The first concern is to do with moral leadership, what lessons can the MDC learn from the “struggles within the struggle” during the war of liberation as documented by the late Masipula Sithole?

Sithole does not rule out the possibility of conflict in political organisations, however what matters is how the leadership responds and handles the conflict. The 70's “struggle within the struggle” claimed lives, one of them the highly esteemed politician Herbert Chitepo. How were these developments a precursor of the kind of party Zanu PF is today? Dictatorship? Violence?
"The Zimbabwe liberation movement has been torn apart by tribalism and regionalism, but rarely will this be admitted in public by the leadership and organisations in question, preferring distant Marxist ideological explanations.

Those who may be tempted to think ideology is the answer to tribalism and regionalism will do well to remember that in both 'bourgeois' and 'proletariat' societies, national cohesiveness and consciousness are achieved through power sharing and management of representative institutional structures," wrote Sithole.

In a prophetic letter after the assassination of Chitepo, his brother Ndabaningi said: "I cannot be indifferent to the death of a man such as Chitepo for political expediency. It is immoral and wrong. I am in this struggle because of moral quality otherwise I would have nothing to do with it."

Is there a moral value in Matibenga's struggle within the MDC? The late Sithole answers this by saying: "In the long run, morally right actions will triumph over politically expedient actions. Just watch and see."

Indeed we have not only watched but many of us are victims of that Zanu PF system of dictatorship and tyranny which birthed itself during our liberation struggle.
"The uneasy feeling one gets in supporting Matibenga's cause is of being at war with the leadership with the consequence of serious political backlash"

Still on the leadership question, writing after being sacked as South Africa's Deputy Minister of Health, Nozizwe Madlala–Routledge said in an article entitled ‘Seeking servants of the people: “When we choose leaders, we need not give up our own power by putting them on pedestals that distance them from those that they lead. We need not accord them hero worship or fear them so much that we cannot tell them what we think or feel, that we can only tell them what they want to hear. We need not allow them to think they have the last word and that they may not be challenged. True leadership is about giving people the feeling that they can be heard, regardless of who they are and how junior they may be."

The uneasy feeling one gets in supporting Matibenga's cause is of being at war with the leadership with the consequence of serious political backlash. I want to argue further that the MDC is faced with these problems because of the failure to dismantle the exhausted patriarchal model of liberation as espoused by Horace Campbell and others; a model whose main characteristics are sexism, dictatorship and cronyism.

In the same the way the nationalists integrated themselves into the colonial systems, the MDC and other social liberation movements such as the Movement for Multi-party Democracy in Zambia have become hybrids of these models.

Of this system, Campbell says, "instead of liberation becoming the foundation of a new social order, the militarist and masculinist leadership turned the victory of the people into a never ending nightmare of direct and structural violence."

The failure to break from colonial and nationalist politics can be described as another instance of what Frantz Fanon called “false decolonization” or “political decadence”. Fanon said: "In its beginnings, the national bourgeoisie of the colonial country identifies itself with the decadence of the West. We need not think that it is jumping ahead; it is in fact beginning at the end."
Fanon goes further to say, (and this explains the prevailing status of the MDC): "It is already senile before it has come to know the petulance, the fearlessness, or the will to succeed of youth."

And so Biti goes further to state in his statement: "Contrary to the opinions of others, the decision was not based on patriarchy, chauvinism or contempt of the feminist movement."
What Biti seems not to understand is that the authority he has to actually write this statement derives itself from patriarchal privilege, one that he and his cohorts do not have the ideological sophistication to articulate in order to dismantle it. That is the tragedy. Thus the commission investigating the conduct of the women's assembly for instance is made up of three men in a party that is blessed with so many well meaning and capable women. Biti sees nothing wrong with this. Not to mention again that the National Executive and National Council of the party were never informed of this decision.

In fact, like Dongo and Mwashita in Zanu PF then, MDC women are placed in the ridiculous situation of acting like wives in a polygamous union. Those in such unions will tell you that when you “talk too much'” you are denied conjugal rights and other benefits until you behave. And so measures are put in place in the MDC system to regulate the behaviour of leaders especially how women respond to patriarchy and chauvinism.

Even more telling is the fact that their opinions are regarded as those of “others; they are not part and parcel of the party's common vision and understanding, of what constitutes intra-party democracy on the one hand the emancipation of women on the other.

The fact is that the 'feminist movement' is just another and not part and parcel of the revolution as advanced by great revolutionaries like Oliver Tambo or Thomas Sankara who said: "May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half of the people are held in silence.” Or Samora Machel who said: "The idea that we can wait until later to emancipate women is wrong, because it means leaving reactionary ideas to grow so that they are harder to fight later."

The great pan-Africans proposed a liberation model that sought to restore the black woman of her dignity so viciously stripped of her by the settler colonialists. Their concept of revolution was not just political, for instance placing certain men in power, it was also social, meaning a total break-down of all institutions of power and oppression.
Just to advance my thesis further on the relationship between intra-party democracy, women's emancipation and good governance, I will use the example of Mozambique's FRELIMO which has produced not just some of the greatest women in Africa, let’s take Graca Machel, but one of the best governments too. Fresh from winning the inaugural US$5 million Mo Ibrahim Award for African Leadership, former President Joaquim Chissano, denounced autocratic rule saying it has no room on the African continent anymore.

For the MDC women I will leave them with the advise of the late nationalist Oliver Tambo to ANC women in 1981: "Women in the ANC should stop behaving like there was no place for them above the level of certain categories of involvement. They have a duty to liberate us men from antique concepts and attitudes about the place and role of women in society and the development and direction of our revolutionary struggle."

And so I will conclude by saying the fact that today when we speak out we are 'othered', called 'whores' and have to defend what we stand for gives us an insight into the 'New Zimbabwe' we are fighting for.

Grace Kwinjeh is an activist and member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

She can be contacted on e-mail: gkwinjeh@gmail.com

Is the Nation of Zimbabwe ready for the earthly departure of its “father”?

Monday, October 29, 2007

By Mufaro Stig Hove (Rev.):

28 OCTOBER, 2007.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS:

Like I wrote in my latest submission “Why The SADC/Mbeki Initiatitive cannot and will not solve Zimbabwe ’s problems”(14 October, 2007), the real tragedy is the very acute suffering of the humble, lovely people of Zimbabwe .Don’t ask the State President of South Africa ! Don’t ask the illegitimate Executive President of Zimbabwe ! Talk to the common person on the ground inside or outside Zimbabwe and you will hear of the unbelievable abuse of the people of Zim!My focus this time is what we have slowly become because of the humanitarian disaster occurring between the Limpopo and the Zambezi .

What are the psychological effects of having a single, arrogant foreigner presiding with an iron fist over the affairs affecting 14 million “immobilised” citizens?What will it be like when the Creator suddenly removes this unique dictator? How He will remove him is not the subject of this particular submission.

A brave body-guard may I “take him out” the Laurent Kabila way!

Or the heart that has been faithful for the past 84 years may suddenly “call it a day”. No-one will be shocked if either happens. Suffice to say Robert Gabriel Mugabe (Matibili) will be officially confirmed as having joined those of his age (and many more younger) who had “gone before him”.

I was taught at the United College of Education in Bulawayo in 1976 that “Learning is a change of behaviour that results from experiences that one goes through.”If there is a change in behaviour because of specific experiences, then we say learning has taken place.I read in a book on Education that a certain Scholar by the name of Pavlov experimented with a group of dogs (or is it a pack of dogs?)

Over a length of time he would ring a bell whenever he gave the dogs food. This went for so long that the dogs would salivate whenever they heard the sound of the bell. He sustained this practice until he was sure all the dogs salivated profusely as mentioned.

Then he radically changed the procedures!

He would give the dogs food without ringing the bell and would ring the bell at odd times and not give the dogs anything to eat.He observed that for some time the dogs would still salivate when the bell was rung but one by one the dogs stopped salivating.This, Pavlov observed, showed something very important.

This clearly showed that animals (including humans) can be made to associate various sounds, objects etc with certain outcomes and then re-act sub-consciously in certain predictable manners.This he called “Conditioning.” So the dogs were conditioned to associate the bell with food hence the salivating.

To the dogs, the bell meant food!

To re-enforce the expectations, Pavlov did not disappoint the dogs when the bell was rung. Conditioning resulted from the dependability of the “signal”. The bell signalled the “arrival” of food and for sure this was made completely reliable. There was no doubt in the minds of the dogs that the bell was just “ONE AND THE SAME THING” with delicious food.

Then the dogs’ mindsets were completely “distabilized!”

Food came without the “fun-fare” and the bell could sound and no food appeared! So slowly but surely the animals learnt that apparently the sound of the bell and the appearance of food were not related in any way!What happened here is called “de-conditioning!”The animals reverted to the previous state where the bell and food had nothing in common at all!Another interesting form of conditioning is manifested when a cat flees whenever the maid knocks at the door and then enters the house.

Certain listeners phoned the “Radio Station 702” and asked whether their cats were “racist”. Why did they immediately flee to hide as far as possible when the black maid appeared?I was relieved when another caller gave this very convincing reason!

Whenever the maid came, she would at some time use the “hoover” and this loud-sounding device would scare the poor cat and she would flee like crazy! Incidentally it is known that a cat hears sounds 40 times more than a human being. What this means is that the sound of the “hoover” is picked by the cat 40 times louder than what we humns hear!I’m not the one who proved that: experts say so!

So the cat flees as soon as the maid appears and returns when the maid is gone!Fantastic! Nothing to do with racism!Pure conditioning! If the maid came numerous times and did not use the ‘hoover” it can be safely assumed that the cat would cautiously return while the maid is still around or better still, not flee at all at her arrival! A reaseacher would be needed to verify this but it seems logical!

LETS NOW COME TO ZIM SITUATION:

There is no doubt in anybody’s mind that Robert Gabriel Mugabe is at the very centre of the Zim story (whether you call it a tragedy, a crisis or not!

He is at the centre because he is the one who addresses the Central Committee and the Congresses of the so-called “Ruling Party” (ZANU-PF) and he is the one who gives Policy and Direction and both ZANU-PF and Government follow what he will have given as “guidance.”(You may have noticed that I never refer to Robert Mugabe as President, neither do I believe that ZANU-PF is the legitimate RULING PARTY!

ZANU-PF is in reality an Opposition Party which uses various “arm-twisting tactics” to remain power illegitimately! Morgan Tsvangirai is the true President of Zimbabwe and his original MDC is the true ruling party!

This however is only academic but must nevertheless bravely noted!)Lets return to the story of Robert Mugabe being at the centre of the Zim story:I would need to do a separate submission to relate how Mr Mugabe has developed into the influential person that he is!Suffice to say that Mr Mugabe is to ZANU-PF what an Oasis is to one stranded in a desert! Robert Mugabe (as someone observed) is the glue that keeps ZANU-PF together.

I have a book with many of the speeches he gave at various Central Committee meetings especially from after the 2000 Referendum (where ZANU-PF clearly lost to the NCA/MDC) and he, more often than not, started by saying that he was aware of the “apathy” etc that was creeping into “The Party” and he had brought words of Encouragement etc.In one speech he reminded the delegates that they had to find “comfort” in the fact the whole range of Security Forces were “on their side.”

He specifically said he was disappointed that the Mayors of the major cities and towns were in the hands of what he called “enemies.”“Something has to be done about it,” he specifically said. The unceremonious removal of the MDC Mayor of Harare (Engineer Elias Mudzuri) was a specific directive from none other than Mugabe himself.

The unceremonious removal of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority Chief Executive (the youthful world-respected Engineer Simbarashe Mangwengwende) was straight from the same Robert Mugabe.

The truth, therefore, is that the running of the country appears to the simple as de-centralized but in reality is in the hands of one man and his dangerous Central Intelligence Organisation (the CIO.) Many, including Eng Mangwengwende, relate how they received visits from certain young men who advised them to “change” and behave in a certain ways or risk losing their livelihoods. Engineer Mangwengwende did personally pay a visit to Cde Mugabe at State House where he thought he had convinced him on the lack of wisdom in selling the Hwange Power Stations to an outsider.

He returned to Electricity House (ZESA HEADQUARTERS) confident that Cde Mugabe would communicate with the then Non-Executive Board Chairman Sidney Gata so they would inform the Malasyian Company that the “deal” was no longer going ahead as planned. Hadn’t he, as the Custodian of the Company Affairs and Properties not spoken to the very Executive President of the country and all was, therefore, clear after all!Lo and behold, surprise, surprise: two young men came to his 10th floor office and asked him why he was not co-operating with the Government-appointed Board Chairman Sidney Gata on the supposed sale of ZESA Power Stations to the Malaysian Company YTL.

Was he not aware that Mr Solomon Tavengwa had been removed from the Chairmanship of the ZESA Board because of this very issue? Was he prepared to risk “following in his foot-steps”?Eng Mangwengwende said to me that he confidently replied them that they were “behind news”. He had already spoken to “His Excellency” and all was understood. The young men in “dark glasses” informed him that they were aware of his meeting with “The Chef” but they were still insisting that he be aware of the consequences of “fighting” Dr Gata.

The young men left and what happened to Eng Simbarashe Mangwengwende is sad history that would require the “deposed” Chief Executive himself to narrate.Also ask Engineer Elias Mudzuri how he was removed by heavily armed men from Harare Town House. Eng Mudzuri used to work even in the middle of the night seeing the City workmen repairing roads, filling pot-holes etc.To tell the whole world the truth, there was absolutely no reason for Engineer Mudzuri’s removal from the Executive Mayorship of the Capital City of Zimbabwe !

Mugabe was too embarrassed to be “a tenant” under an MDC Mayor!

Five years after Mudzuri’s illegal removal, Cde Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki had the guts to hypocritically and mischievously announce to the world (only this year) that ZANU-PF believed they were a Democratic Party which respected the wishes of the people and the evidence was that MDC Mayors were happily and efficiently running the affairs of Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare, Gweru, Kwekwe, Masvingo, Chitungwiza etc. What the dangerous South African “sweet-talker” omitted to mention was that the same “democratic ZANU-PF” had through the ruthless, cold, adulterous Ignatious Chombo “deposed” the Harare , Mutare and Chitungwiza City Fathers.“The long and the short” of it is that ZANU-PF has been effectively supervised closely by Mr Robert Gabriel Mugabe and the extremely huge “Politburo” and Cabinet are just window-dressing tactics to make it appear as if there some semblance of Democracy in both ZANU-PF and by extension, in Zimbabwe!

Ask Dr Simba Makoni, ask Mr July Moyo…the list is endless!

Is Robert Mugabe sure when he says Dr Simba Makoni has been a “failure” in every assignment that he was given? Mr Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki must be ashamed to be used to convey such stinking trash to the world!Did Dr Simba Makoni fail as Executive Secretary of the former SADCC (now SADC) when he was based in Gaberone , Botswana ?

Then if Dr Simba Makoni was a failure as Minister Of Finance, how is Dr Gideon Gono not a failure as Central Bank Governor when he is trying the same policies that Dr Simba Makoni was suggesting? But the failure of those policies (if Dr Gono has failed), have absolutely nothing to do with the policies themselves.

Who can be successful when operating under an accomplished wizard like Robert Mugabe?Robert Mugabe tells President Thabo Mbeki about an expected outcry if Dr Sidney Sekeramayi was declared his successor! What a load of stinking human waste! So Mugabe will be periodically advising “his” people after he is dead on when to express “outrage” and when to accept whatever is before them!

Cde Thabo Mbeki should be completely ashamed to convey such filthy rubbish!

Cde Thabo Mbeki please don’t be used so sheepishly by this Malawian Wizard, Robert Matibili!

Then the Malawian Wizard goes further to say that Emmerson Munangagwa cannot be President because he lost to the MDC twice!

Well and fine!

Question number one: Why continue appointing him to Ministerial posts when the man is such a loser?

Question number two: Why are you Robert Matibili avoiding a legal challenge to your dubious 2002 Electoral Victory? The reason is because you are a worse loser than your rival Emmerson Munangagwa.

Please give us a break!

( By the way I believe Zimbabwe would be much worse off under Emmerson Munangagwa than under Robert Matibili!

Ask the now severely crippled Godfrey Majonga presently writhing in perpetual pain at Danhiko Centre!)IN CONCLUSION:We have had Mr Robert Gabriel Mugabe (correctly known as Matibili) for the past 40 years.

He has led us before Independence and after Independence !

What have we learnt from our associating with him?Like Pavlov’s dogs, what will happen to us when the name Robert Mugabe is mentioned?

Do you feel confident and assured or do you shiver with trepidation lest someone behind you see you spit and vomit at the mention of his name?Are we aware that one day he will be in a Casket at some Funeral Home like everyone else?Has he prepared us for a day when the day will be shining on his “Golden Tomb”?

Why can he not learn from Cde Nelson Mandela who left the Presidency while the masses still cried for him to continue?

What kind of a father has Robert Mugabe/Matibili been to us the millions he has claimed to Mr Tony Blair as “belonging” to him?

In short, yes, we have been “conditioned” for the past four decades to various emotions, fears, attitude postures etc?

As a parting short: WILL THE “DE-CONDITIONING” BE SMOOTH AND UNEVENTFUL?

WILL THE MAN GET A DECENT BURIAL AND WILL IT BE AT HEROES’ ACRE AMONG THOSE HE SENT BEFORE HIM?

OR WILL HIS CORPSE BE STOLEN, “VANDALISED” AND CREMATED AT MBARE OR HIGHFIELDS?

WILL SADC AND OTHER AU COUNTRIES NOT NEED TO SEND SECURITY FORCES TO TRY AND BRING ORDER WHEN THE MIXED EMOTIONS ERUPT?

AGAIN THE QUESTION STANDS: WILL THE “DE-CONDITIONING” BE UNEVENTFUL?

Respectfully Submitted,

Rev Mufaro Stig Hove.

www.zimfinalpush.blogspot.com @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@Refer Professor Jonathan Moyo's Article "THE DEATH OF ROBERT MUGABE: THE TRAGEDY AHEAD!" LINK AVAILABLE HERE!!

THOUGHTS ON THE "THIRD WAY".

DEMOCRACY...THE THIRD WAY

QUESTION ....What does any person on Earth want???? ANSWER... A better
life than what they have at present.


Some would argue that the structural constraints under which the
Zimbabwean economy operates have influenced the debate in terms of the
desirability for unchecked foreign investment.

The current shortages of investment funds and growing unemployment are
said to impose difficult choices on the nation.

However who is looking at the cost of these foreign investor vultures
as they seek to pick over the corpse of a Zimbabwe crippled by Zanu PF
maladministration and an opposition strategy of allowing the nation to
fall in disrepair in order to facilitate a popular uprising against the
incumbent tyranny/regime?


For 8 years the social /political landscape has been thick with the
barrages of the various parties as they carrying out their power struggles backed by various powerful outside interests.Power being sought for its own sake alongside personal ego and self enrichment was so much the focus that the people and the nation became the main casualties of this real yet 'phoney war'.

Unfortunately the narrow and dishonest nature of the focus lead to a
singular blurring of issues so that sight was lost regarding the most
important question:

...WHAT IS ZIMBABWE AT THE FULLEST OF ITS POTENTIAL and HOW DO WE
ATTAIN IT.

The question instead being turned into one of... WHAT IS THE BEST
ADVANTAGE I CAN GAIN WITHIN THE CRISIS.

The end result being a rudderless ship with the vast majority asking
...which way are we going.

Various influences have come into play as a result of political
ideology or personal greed...ESPOUSING ...Nationlism...Socialism
...capitalism...feudalism...racialism...sexism...tribalism...FACTIONALISM...religion...corporatism...Imperialism...idealism

Many prophets, profiteers and practicioners have come in the name and
so called name of all these faiths and none as a singularity has helped
progress the country as a whole. Each boasts the heralding of a 'golden
age' for their own side yet none brings progress to the whole nation.

THE QUESTION REMAINING.......... ZIMBABWE WHERE ARE YOU GOING AND HOW
ARE
YOU TRYING TO GET THERE???

Short term thinking that lacked vision and selfish aspirations ...mean
few have ever really considered in any real depth what the promotion of
their partisan views would mean to the well being of the whole.
Almost always such divisive philosophies were born as emotional
outcomes...as reactions to...or against...the idea always being the
only way forwards the only panacea when set against all others.

Bad experiences at the hands of some who misused a philosophy meaning
that others saw the whole idea as 'wrong'...capitalism and socialism having no redeeming features ...being always misused as weapons of greed or social control in the hands of those who helped destroy whole nations.

A person using a hammer does not become a hammer...yet men and women
using ideology or belonging to a Party became the ideology...they became the Party...they forgot its use as merely a tool as a means to a socially progressive end.

Politicians became cult icons...messiahs...businessmen became looters
and the institutions for national growth that were meant to be left intact for future generations became tarnished and corrupted.

The removal of one 'ism' with another may have enriched a chosen few
but it did not improve human nature to the level of ...'do unto others
respectfully as you would have them treat you'

So...without regulation or checks and balances within the system hope
became void.

People repeat the words...DEMOCRACY...FREEDOM...LIBERATION...yet hold
no sense of those words as A COHESIVE FULLY FUNCTIONING SOCIETY...as
responsibilities to be tended and nurtured by the active and the aware.

The masses did not gain control of the means of production nor did they
become partners with the decision makers...the ruling heights of the
economy remained firmly in the hands of their oppressors. But the people did get access to education, health services, water, agricultural produce in supermarkets. Just enough to understand what they had lost when the next step of repression emerged.

The truth is that there is no template...no standard for what
constitutes real democracy...so the floor is open to suggestion and constant improvement not just manipulation. Only the supposed rights of individuals are projected as democracy..yet the quality and practice and responsibility and obligations to democracy are never offered.

The presentation of all and sundry who oppose the ZANU PF tyranny as
'democratic' misuses the term and denies the very scrutiny and
standards that offer real social safeguards....

The petty bourgeoisie contradictions of promoting freedoms and rights
while blindly following consumer capitalist system greed and domination as part of a global neo-liberal elite does not amount to any real cohesive society.

Zimbabwe's politics and business class must not constantly align
themselves with outsiders as collaborators for personal gain at Zimbabwes expense.

The idea of 'openess' which scorns criticism...or leadership that
espouses change but scorns its own institutional renewal is hypocrisy. The idea of the pornographic potrayal of Zimbabwe's suffering to an International Community awash with the beneficiaries of African neo-colonialism is repugnant.

African opposition parties the proxies of outside corporate and State
interests..seeking to mould Africa in corporate capitalisms old
colonial image...the mantra of.....'investor confidence' must be met with a firm NOT UNTIL... the change IS true and fundamental...the people must be empowered ... to create their own national economy.

So a new education system needs to be found, a new political maturity,
responsibility and social awareness....a new economic safety net that
empowers people along the full chain of production from primary source
to retail profit margins and reinvestment.

So that ...DEMOCRACY...FREEDOM...LIBERATION...have real security behind
them..party politics and Zimbabwean business benefits the nation not
merely foreign capital interests, the people see and respond to coherent policies, not spurious promises and threats of demagouges.

So slogans and cults of personality never again replace real thought.

SO THE QUESTION.... ZIMBABWE WHERE ARE YOU GOING AND HOW ARE YOU
GETTING??

THERE ...can be properly answered.

Testing, testing!

I went to my yahoo address and posted this from there!

 

Please kindly post to this site to chinyavada1.crisis@blogger.com

 

THE QUESTION IS: WHAT IN YOUR VIEW IS THE WAY FORWARD?

 

Cde Chinyavada!

 

 

 

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