Posted on 12/07/2002 3:18:36 AM PST by backhoe
From The Daily News, 6 December
Zanu PF card passport to maize-meal in Highfield
Staff Reporter
There was chaos at the Zanu PF district offices at Machipisa shopping centre in Highfield, Harare, yesterday as thousands of people, mostly women, battled to buy maize-meal by proving they were card-carrying Zanu PF members. A by-election for the Highfield parliamentary seat is due soon as the Speaker of Parliament, Emmerson Mnangagwa, this week declared it vacant after the expulsion from the party of the MDC MP, Munyaradzi Gwisai. Under the Constitution, an MP who resigns or is expelled from the party on whose ticket he was elected to Parliament, loses his seat. But most of those seeking the precious commodity went away empty-handed because, in the predominantly MDC constituency, few could produce the passport to maize meal - a Zanu PF membership card. This latest campaign to offer food in exchange for Zanu PF cards was staged in Highfield despite repeated government denials that it has politicised the distribution of food in the face of severe shortages. Nathan Shamuyarira, the Zanu PF secretary for information and publicity, denied any knowledge of the maize-meal sales by the party at Machipisa and elsewhere. He said: "I don’t know anything about that. That is the job of the government and the private sector. If you know who is selling the mealie-meal at the party offices, please tell me. I need it and I would like to buy some."
The 10 and 20kg bags, which were selling for $300 and $600, respectively, at the Zanu PF offices, were delivered on Wednesday. The news spread quickly in the suburb, resulting in people descending on the offices from very early yesterday morning. The police, members of the youth brigade and Zanu PF youths and officials had a hard time controlling the huge crowd. Tempers occasionally flared, graphically illustrating the seriousness of the food shortages. The youths ordered the people to queue according to their Zanu PF branches, while party officials clutching lists with the names of their members collected money to pay for the maize-meal. Those who were not on the lists ignored the orders, adding to the confusion. One said: "Do they think all the people on their lists are their members? If they want to gain support for their party in the coming by-election they should just make the maize-meal available to everyone."
Another by-election is due in Kuwadzana constituency in Harare, following the death of the MDC MP, Learnmore Jongwe, in remand prison in October. Zanu PF has reportedly sold maize-meal in that constituency as well - but only to those with Zanu PF membership cards. Paul Themba Nyathi, the MDC spokesman, said: "The MDC condemns in the strongest terms the use of food as a vote-buying weapon and invites the United Nations and humanitarian organisations to closely monitor developments in Kuwadzana and Highfield." An estimated 6,7 million people, about half the population of the country, are at risk of starvation, according to the World Food Programme, an agency of the United Nations.
From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 7 December
Zimbabweans whisper for their supper
Harare - 'Psst," the young man hissed, as I drank a cup of coffee on the veranda of a roadside cafe. The hisser was furtive, but it was not diamonds or cocaine that he was trying to sell me - it was food. He was offering 20lb of maize meal for Z$2,500, which is equal to anything from two to 50 pence depending on which exchange rate you use. The minimum wage for a labourer is about Z$7,000 a month, the same price as 2lb of imported margarine in the nearby supermarket. Local margarine is no longer available. We whisper arrangements. I will meet him behind the garage across the road in 45 minutes. At the appointed time, I drive along a sanitary lane at the back of the garage, and wait. These deals take time. Two youths emerge from under a tarpaulin covering the back of a derelict pick-up and hiss at me. I hiss back. They drag four 20lb sacks of maize meal into the back of my car. The packs are wrapped in loose plastic sacks to disguise the tell-tale shape of a 20lb bag. I dig into about three inches of Z$500 notes, pick out Z$10,000, and the transaction is over. The youths disappear back under the tarpaulin of the pick-up, and I have my maize, enough to feed the woman who works for me and her family when I go away for Christmas.
But more shopping has to be done. Sugar. That is usually available from youths at a shopping centre further west. As they see my old car roaring round the corner, they smile and disappear for a couple of minutes, re-emerging with a 4lb pack of sugar in a cardboard box. The price has gone up to Z$500. Next on my list is milk. Too late - it's 9.30am and all the milk in the supermarkets was sold an hour earlier. The bread queues at bakeries are too formidable to join. Many of the bakeries are next door to coffee shops, yet sipping a cappuccino while watching people queue for food is too uncomfortable. Then a blow to the solar plexus. Why the hell didn't I notice that my petrol gauge was near empty? We had a week of no fuel queues, and like summer, I thought it would go on for ever. There is not enough in the tank to get to my "stash". A stash, or a friendly garage owner, is essential for those who cannot face queuing - or rather can afford not to. A friend drives 10 miles away, fills up at my friendly garage, then drives to me, and we suck a tube and siphon enough petrol to get me to the garage to fill up. I will have to phone 10 minutes ahead before getting there - which is difficult as mobile phones hardly work. Calling ahead is necessary so that the garage owner can tell me if the coast is clear, so that he can arrange for me to jump the queue without being lynched as a "white supremacist". On the way back from my hunt for maize meal, sugar and milk, I pass children begging at traffic lights. There are six traffic lights to get through before home, and at each one I give them sugar, a teaspoonful wrapped in paper, taken from coffee shops. There is no point in giving them money, as most people cannot afford to give enough on a regular basis to buy even a banana, and sugar is a treat.
Along the roads, the four-wheel-drive vehicles speed to the suburbs, driven by rich members of the black middle class, girls with hair expensively plaited, ears fixed to cell phones. On the side of the uneven streets, the dwindling working class trudge home, unable to afford even a bus ticket. Out in the desolate townships and shanty towns it's worse. A woman bit the lip off another who jumped a queue a couple of weeks ago. On a hot afternoon recently fists flew at a bread queue on the western outskirts of town. At a township east of Harare on the same day there was a queue for cheap maize meal distributed by a local ruling party official touting for votes at an upcoming by-election. He was selling it to people with a ruling party card that pre-dated the disputed March presidential elections, which gave President Robert Mugabe another six years in power. Opposition youths, who far outnumbered the ruling party shoppers, were grinning broadly. They claimed to have "redistributed" some of the food to those who had been turned away. Last week, the World Food Programme issued a sudden warning about the deteriorating food situation in Zimbabwe. Yet for those whose pockets are stuffed with a few inches of Z$500 notes, everything can still be all right in Harare.
From News24 (SA), 6 December
Zim 'worst' in southern Africa
Harare - Zimbabwe is worst off among the six southern African countries threatened with famine, which is a crisis rooted in the Aids epidemic and not just crop failures and hunger, a top UN official said on Thursday. Stephen Lewis, the UN's special envoy on HIV/Aids in Africa, told a press conference that southern Africa was facing "deadly human destruction" due to famine because the immune systems of many people have been run down due to HIV/Aids. Fifteen million people in Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique are threatened with starvation, and five million adults are living with HIV/Aids in these six countries. "Zimbabwe in many ways is the epicentre in southern Africa - it's where everything at the moment amongst the six countries is at its worst," said Lewis. Nearly eight million people, or more than two-thirds of Zimbabwe's population of 11.6 million, are threatened with famine. And at least 2.2 million Zimbabweans are living with HIV/Aids. "There's no question that this calamity is something that neither this country, nor the continent nor any of us have ever dealt with before," Lewis noted. The special envoy, who is on a trip to four of the six affected countries, including Zimbabwe, met on Thursday with President Robert Mugabe. Asked whether he felt the Zimbabwean government was doing enough to deal with the crisis, the UN envoy said Mugabe had spoken "with concern" about the crisis. "I got the sense when he (Mugabe) was talking of someone who was certainly deeply aware of what was happening," said Lewis. He said he held a serious discussion with Mugabe about possible methods of intervention that could be used to overcome the crisis. Deputy Finance Minister Chris Kuruneri was reported by the Ziana state news agency as having told Lewis the number of Zimbabweans needing food aid had climbed to eight million people from the previous figure of 6.7 million.
From News24 (SA), 5 December
Netherlands turns anti-Mugabe
Harare - President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe Thursday criticised the Netherlands, accusing it of getting involved in a fight between Zimbabwe and former colonial power Britain, the state news agency said. "How could the Dutch be dragged into a fight which is purely for Britain," ZIANA quoted Mugabe as saying. He was speaking as the new Dutch ambassador to Zimbabwe, Johannes Heinsbroek, presented his credentials to State House. Mugabe blames Britain for many of its current economic and political problems and accuses it of reneging on an agreement to fund a land reform programme here. Britain denies the charges and accuses Mugabe and his government of human rights violations. The European Union, of which the Netherlands is a part, echoes Britain's criticism and has imposed travel and other sanctions against Mugabe and 71 of his associates.
From The Daily News, 6 December
Stop beating our citizens, Mozambican mayor pleads
From Brian Mangwende recently in Manica, Mozambique
The government has been urged to withdraw its soldiers from the Forbes border post in Manicaland or risk the twinning arrangement between the City of Mutare and other cities in Mozambique. The Zimbabwean soldiers have been accused of beating up Mozambican citizens at the border post. The call was made by Mougene Cadiero, the Mayor of Manica town in Mozambique, on Wednesday during the signing of a twinning arrangement between his town and Mutare. In a prayer, during which Cadiero pleaded for divine intervention, he said solemnly: "God, please help to remove the soldiers from that border. They are assaulting our people every day. It’s terrible." The soldiers are deployed in and around Mutare to intercept smugglers who sneak commodities such as cigarettes, sugar, bread, cooking oil, flour, maize-meal and alcohol into Mozambique. So far, two Mozambicans, suspected to be illegal cross-border traders, have been shot dead by the Zimbabwean soldiers. Following the fatal shootings, diplomatic relations between Zimbabwe and Mozambique became strained. Soares Nhaca, the Governor of Manica Province, condemned the Zimbabwean security forces over the killings and beatings. But Oppah Muchinguri, his counterpart in Zimbabwe’s Manicaland Province, remained adamant that relations between the countries were cordial.
"Zimbabwean soldiers are beating up our citizens either at the border or in their country," Cadiero said in a separate interview. He said the twinning agreements could be jeopardised if the soldiers continued the beatings. Hundreds of traders, mainly Mozambicans, have allegedly been assaulted by soldiers and the police manning all illegal entry points along the border. Those arrested are taken to the Grand Reef Infantry Battalion cantonment in Mutare, where they are allegedly subjected to further assaults before being ordered to pay a fine of up to $500 for their freedom. The twinning agreement between the two cities was signed by Lawrence Mudehwe, the Executive Mayor of Mutare, and Cadiero, his counterpart in Manica town. The agreement is designed to promote economic, cultural, social and employment links and boost industrial development between the two nations. Mudehwe said: "After signing this agreement, Mozambique and Zimbabwe are now one. I don’t think it will be proper to continue putting in place restrictive measures such as visas to travel to Mozambique. If I am visiting my brother or counterpart in Manica, I don’t believe I need a visa and vice-versa. We have been friends for a long time and it should stay that way. So far, we have signed a twinning agreement with Chimoio."
From The Financial Gazette, 5 December
CIO officers livid over appointment
Staff Reporter
Senior officers of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) are seeking an audience with State Security Minister Nicholas Goche to protest the imminent appointment of a director-general from outside Zimbabwe’s top spy agency, it was learnt this week. CIO sources said the officers wanted to impress on Goche that the position of director-general had to be filled from within the agency to curb divisions caused by tribalism and factionalism. The sources said the senior officers were opposed to the imminent appointment to the powerful position of CIO director-general of Tichaona Jokonya, Zimbabwe’s former permanent representative to the United Nations. "There is already so much resistance within the organisation about the prospects of Jokonya coming to head the organisation," a senior intelligence officer told the Financial Gazette. "Some directors are actually seeking an audience with Minister Goche to express their dissatisfaction with the appointment of the organisation’s director-general," said the officer, who spoke on condition he was not named.
There was no comment from Goche, who was said to be out of the office yesterday and was not reachable on his mobile phone. However, CIO insiders said senior operatives wanted to prevent an outsider filling the top post at the spy agency as happened in 1998 when retired army brigadier general Elisha Muzonzini was recruited for the position. Muzonzini was this year removed from the CIO and posted to Kenya as Zimbabwe’s high commissioner there. Insiders say most intelligence officers prefer CIO deputy director-general Happyton Bonyongwe or the organisation’s internal director, Menard Muzariri, to take charge at the CIO. President Robert Mugabe appoints the country’s spy chief at the recommendation of Goche but powerful ruling Zanu PF party politicians always influence the process. The state security minister is said to favour Muzariri for the CIO’s top post but he must convince not only Mugabe but also Vice President Simon Muzenda, who is said to have been instrumental in the appointment of past director-generals. Sources say retired army general Solomon Mujuru, a kingmaker in the ruling party, is also another influential voice in the selection of the CIO boss.
Besides the complicated political jockeying around the CIO’s top job, the CIO directors wishing to keep the director-generalship inside the organisation could be hampered by accusations that the intelligence agency has failed to produce incisive and useful reports on the operations of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The sources said this failure to effectively infiltrate the MDC had heightened the search for a new director-general from outside the ranks of the CIO. Insiders say Mugabe has been worried by the inconsistencies in some intelligence reports issued by the spy agency, leading to suspicion that the organisation could have been infiltrated by the opposition and foreign spy networks.
Their silence is deafening and damning.
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