Posted on 12/10/2002 1:42:28 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean civic groups called a national strike on Tuesday to protest the country's worst economic crisis in two decades, for which they blame President Robert Mugabe's government.
But the police declared the strike call illegal and warned the protest would not be allowed to go ahead.
Zimbabwe is struggling with record high unemployment, inflation and crippling fuel shortages. Nearly half of the country's 14 million people face severe food shortages caused by drought and the government's controversial land redistribution program.
The United Nations World Food Program warned last month that Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of southern Africa, faces a shortfall of close to 200,000 tons of grain from between now and March 2003.
Mugabe has denied responsibility for the country's economic crisis and says his drive to seize white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to landless blacks is aimed at correcting colonial injustices.
"We are optimistic that Zimbabweans will heed the call" to stay away from work on Tuesday, said Lovemore Madhuku, chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA).
"It is a protest to express the anger of the people at the current economic hardships and it is also a call for open democracy, which can only be guaranteed by a new peoples' constitution," Madhuku said.
Madhuku said the MDC and the 200,000-strong Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) support the planned strike.
The NCA, a coalition of student and church groups, political parties and rights groups, has led several such job boycotts and other protests in the past two years against a constitution which critics say Mugabe has manipulated to bolster his power.
Mugabe has amended the constitution 16 times since leading the country to independence from Britain in 1980.
In March he won a presidential election condemned as fraudulent by the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Western governments.
Tough security laws, which bar public gatherings and impose penalties of up to 20 years in prison, have made it difficult to mobilize workers, union leaders say.
Zimbabwe police chief spokesman Assistant Wayne Bvudzijena said late on Monday police authorities would not allow anybody to disturb law and order through illegal gatherings or strikes.
"The strike or protest being talked about is illegal because it is intended to disturb law and order, and we are not going to stand by while that happens," he said.
Last month police fired teargas to disperse about 1,000 NCA marchers in Harare who were demanding a new constitution.
In April more than 60 activists were arrested during demonstrations against Mugabe' presidential victory.
A three-day general strike called by the ZCTU after the March election ran out of steam on the second day. Union officials said fear of government reprisals had driven protesters back to work.
Meanwhile, America's options for dealing with Zimbabwe's president-by-fraud range from the unattractive to the whimsical to the potentially catastrophic. Choosing the best course of action from this menu is tricky enough. Getting other countries to follow in kind implies another set of challenges.
Thanks principally to Mr. Mugabe's land expropriation policy, 12 million Zimbabweans are facing the threat of starvation in Zimbabwe, according to the World Food Program. If this hunger-dictator scenario seems too familiar (think Somalia), it's because Africa has seen much too much of it. With visions of dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets of a far-away country still fresh in the collective memory, sending in forces to halt the hunger in Zimbabwe is an unlikely policy. So, if America isn't going to literally wage war on hunger and those that perpetuate it, the Bush administration must weigh its other options.
Mr. Mugabe's seizures of white-owned land represent the most destructive and self-serving approach to dealing with the country's colonial legacy. Rather than attempt a negotiated settlement with white farmers, such as phasing out ownership or immediate forfeiture of some land, Mr. Mugabe has sought to seize virtually all of the thousands of white-owned commercial farms. And, when the best land is taken, it's not given to the people. Instead, it goes to Mr. Mugabe's family and Cabinet members. When ordinary Zimbabweans have been given land, they have received minimal or no assistance in managing it. Meanwhile, white landowners are banned from farming the land they have owned for years.
So, eventual famine was virtually a foregone conclusion in Zimbabwe. Joblessness has reached 60 percent, and homelessness is rampant. And, the hunger has prompted an exodus. At least 1 million Zimbabweans are estimated to be living in neighboring South Africa, about 600,000 in Britain and many more are working or studying elsewhere in Africa, and in Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States. About half of the nation's 60,000 whites are estimated to have emigrated since the seizure orders began.
The Bush administration could cut all aid to Zimbabwe in official protest of Mr. Mugabe's reckless endangerment of his own people, in the hope that the people will rise up against the government. But starving people aren't effective revolutionaries, and cutting food aid could lend fraudulent credibility to Mr. Mugabe's hate-mongering, racist tirades against the United States in Zimbabwe and beyond.
America's food aid, on the other hand, is surely lengthening the lifespan of Mr. Mugabe's rule. That negative impact could be tempered, though, by ensuring food is distributed by private organizations, rather than Mr. Mugabe's cabal. That has been the Bush administration's approach, but Mr. Mugabe may be gearing up to counter this distribution system. Three weeks ago, Zimbabweans calling themselves war veterans detained, interrogated and robbed a delegation from the U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe that had been assessing the condition of displaced workers. The Zimbabweans escorting the delegation were beaten. Amazingly, Mr. Mugabe's response was to summon the U.S. ambassador, Joseph Sullivan, for an explanation of why embassy employees had traveled outside the capital without permission.
"[W]e have not and need not apologize for normal activities in fulfillment of our diplomatic and humanitarian mission," said U.S. Embassy spokesman Bruce Wharton, adding that the administrations had no plans to reduce its presence. "We make a clear distinction between the government and the people of Zimbabwe. We will continue to provide humanitarian assistance to all Zimbabweans who need it." Meanwhile, Mark Bellamy, a State Department official, said recently that America was willing to take "very intrusive interventionist measures" to ensure food aid was delivered.
Fortunately, African countries are beginning to voice clear condemnation of Mr. Mugabe's thuggish policies. In Brussels late last month, legislators from Ghana, Botswana and Mozambique harshly criticized Mr. Mugabe. Sadly, South Africa and other countries spoke out in support of Zimbabwe and were able to scuttle a planned meeting between the African, Caribbean and Pacific States and the European Union (EU) in Brussels, after EU officials said Zimbabwe was barred from participating in the meeting.
U.S. diplomacy should vigorously encourage greater momentum for these condemnations. And, if the administration can continue distributing food without Mr. Mugabe's control, it should continue to do so. Hopefully, Mr. Mugabe won't take away Zimbabweans' last hope. It is an outrage that this former breadbasket of Africa should turn into a starvation field. [End]
We were naive to have expected, when the MDC was formed in 1999, that we were about to engage in a struggle for power that would be based on competing ideas and policies, on clearly defined democratic principles and within the framework of the rule of law. We are now wiser - African politics are not played out like that and that perhaps explains why so many political conflicts on the continent end up as military conflicts.
Since formation of the MDC, we have seen the rule of law abandoned, every accepted rule for a democratic process discarded or abused and the blatant use of all the power of the State to try and smash the fledgling party. The MDC's refusal to be drawn into a violent confrontation, its persistent adherence to democratic principles and activities within the framework of the law has brought it accolades from other democratic forces and countries throughout the world, but scant recognition in Africa itself - where it matters.
It has not even resulted in significant financial support based on principle and a desire to promote democracy in Africa.
What it has triggered inside the Zanu PF machine is a "total onslaught" in the old South African apartheid parlance. They have recognised that it has been urban workers and commercial farm workers who have been the backbone of the MDC. They have seen that small independent business has been able to support the MDC financially and all these sectors of our population have become a target. The commercial farmers have been smashed into the ground - now the State is taking their staff and their families and dumping them in the Zambezi Valley without food or any means of support.
These impoverished, beaten and harassed people - 1,5 million of them - have nowhere to go except perhaps to our neighbours, where they will become new refugees.
They have been stripped of their citizenship and any other rights they might have had before this economic blitzkrieg was unleashed. Their employers are now sitting in rented accommodation in the cities wondering just what they are to do next. Their assets have been handed out to those who committed this economic crime, in front of the whole world, as a reward for their activities and support.
In the cities the attack has been more subtle but just as effective: formal sector employment has crashed, some 400 000 jobs have been wiped out, an estimated 2,5 million economic refugees - 90 percent of them potential MDC supporters - have been driven out of the country to become economic refugees in other lands, 80 percent of them in South Africa.
Incomes have been decimated by high inflation and low wages. The trade unions have been neutralised by introducing pro-Zanu PF structures to all sectors and allowing them to harass and intimidate the workers in their companies and to entice them with promises that their companies cannot afford.
When required, these industrial thugs are bolstered by Central Intelligence Organisation agents and the police who harass and intimidate management. Life has become a nightmare in many companies targeted for this treatment.
When they say enough is enough, there is always a Zanu PF gravy train hack ready with a suitcase full of money to do a cheap, fast deal.
Best of all, you have a simple computer-driven system of theft which, when a company receives a payment in foreign exchange, just takes 40 percent and gives the company a pittance for its efforts. The company then sells the balance for a huge premium, paid for by the productive sector or those who are desperate to leave, and because the resulting blend is profitable, the companies accept being robbed.
Just to show they are in charge, if they need petty cash for anything, they just sell the foreign exchange back to the very same people who participate in this grand larceny at the huge premiums they are prepared to pay. So we pay for our own destruction. It's very neat!
The end result is systematic, deliberate destruction of everything that has been built up here since 1900. More especially, since 1980, all the benefits of the past 22 years of foreign aid and World Bank and International Monetary Fund-assisted development are being swept away.
In 22 years the life expectancy of our people has declined 22 years on average, incomes have fallen to levels last seen in the 1960s, industrial production is falling 3 percent a month. We have gone from being a net exporter of food to being dependent on imports for 75 percent of what we need to survive.
Education and health systems are in a crisis state. The educated elite we created with so much optimism in the 1980s has left and now benefits the developed countries where they do all the jobs the Westerners do not want. At home, we get the crumbs off their table.
What does this mean for us in Zimbabwe? We are being starved, robbed, beaten and worse - and all we get is sympathy!
We do not even get that from our African colleagues. They simply say "accept the inevitable, do a deal with the devil".
A government of national unity is the answer, is the cry from Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo. We turn to our ancestors and Joshua Nkomo comes back with the answer to that one!
So the debate rages on in Zimbabwean society. Should the MDC fight the elections, even though they are a sham?
Or should it lie down and wait until they kill enough of its MPs to give them the two-thirds they need to change the Constitution? How does the MDC fight back democratically when every aspect of the system is under Zanu PF control and direction?
Take the Tonga people of Binga district. They are an ancient people, used to living on the banks of the great rivers where they subsist on flood plain agriculture and the rich fishing.
Long neglected by African governments and others, they have come to recognise that they, as a tiny ethnic minority, have a stake in a democratic system.
So they voted for the MDC in June 2000, then in March 2002 and again in September 2002.
The result is that they are now being starved to death en masse. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) does nothing except make appeals to the minister responsible; the international community wrings their hands and goes to the next cocktail party where they discuss the problem and the question of what to do next.
Binga people look at their plight; their starving children and old people and ask for help from the MDC. What can the party do? Denied food or money to make any difference, the MP simply attends funerals and commiserates with the families.
I wrote to the UNDP asking that urgent action be taken to force a break in the blockade. All I got was an assurance that they were "consulting".
Who needs to consult in respect of a thing like this? What we need is action and fast, to avoid a catastrophe.
As for the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), what can we say?
There will be no political peer review process, Mbeki says. That will be left to the organs of the African Union. I have lived under the influence of the AU and its predecessors since it was established. I have never seen any form of effective influence exerted by this organisation in its entire history. Those who seek to foster development and democracy in Africa must take note of these events.
Do not listen to the fine words spoken by African leaders - watch their actions and be warned. The majority do not give a damn about their own people or their welfare. All they want is control and power and the ability to use the resources of the state (and donors if possible) to feather their own nests and the nests of their close associates. [End]
The anarchy coming in Zimbabwe won't put anyone of consequences' knickers in a twist. I'm afraid that it will be the unarmed Zimbabweans versus the armed force of the ZANU-PF state.
It may be that the Zulus in South Africa will raise a stir if their cousins, the Ndebeles, face another gukurahundi.
This is all very disheartening.
They have to fight.
And I very much doubt that the Zulu will come to the aid of the Ndebele. The Zulu have their own problems in South Africa.
And I am also completely sure that there will be another gukurahundi, this one making the 1983 one look like a tea party.
Mugabe now knows that the rest of Africa will not interfere and that the rest of the Commonwealth will folllow the African lead and the rest of the west will follow the Commonwealth lead.
How say you, Jan?
That is the rest of the SADC.
Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of southern Africa. Mugabe's destruction of Zim's agrarian sector has put food security in southern Africa in peril. The only sighn of any break in the front, and that is tentative, is Mozambique.
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