Jeanne-Marié Versluis
Pretoria - Two holidaymakers from the UK who were illegally arrested at Beitbridge and detained for 11 hours in wretched conditions, must get damages of R90 000 each from the minister of safety and security.

One of them was admitted to hospital immediately upon his return to England.

Acting Judge Jody Kollapen in the North Gauteng High Court said these two carefree holidaymakers were exploring an amazing country's beauty.

Within an hour they were seen as criminals and put in cells where the conditions are "shockingly" lacking according to what the Bill of Rights requires.

Holiday

Kollapen found that Ian Murrell and Siyananiso Mashava, who were living in Britain when they left on August 14 2007 for a holiday in South Africa, were illegally arrested and detained a few days later.

Murrell is an Australian citizen and Mashava is a Zimbabwean citizen.

Kollapen said the claimants rented a Toyota Tazz from Avo Car Rental in Boksburg on August 19 2007. The rental period would have ended on August 24.

On August 21, the car was in a minor accident near the Ultra City near Beitbridge, but wasn't damaged.

As a precautionary measure, the claimants reported the accident at the Beitbridge police station. According to the police system, it was a stolen car.

The claimants showed their car hire documents to a certain Constable Mamabolo, and Avo Car Rental confirmed to Mamabolo by phone that the claimants had rented the car.

Kollapen said the car was indeed stolen on May 10 2007 and retrieved two days later.

It seems the police were not informed that the car had been found. The police docket was also incomplete.

Detained overnight

Mamabolo then arrested both complainants. They were held overnight in Musina and later released unconditionally.

Kollapen said it's difficult to understand "how any reasonable person" who had received all the information, especially the explanation given by the claimants, could insist that they had committed a crime.

Murrell was held in a cell with about 20 other people. No food or water was offered.

"He shared a place to sleep with a self acknowledged murderer, and offered money and cigarettes in exchange for [his] protection."

Murrell was dazed.

In the cell Mashava shared with others, the toilet was smeared with faeces. She sat against the cell wall for the entire 11 hours.

Hospitalised

Murrell was immediately admitted to hospital with symptoms resembling pneumonia when he returned to England on August 25 2007.

There was "significant suggestion" that his detention contributed to his poor health. However, there was no witness to confirm this and it is not a consideration in the verdict, said Kollapen.

According to him, there is little doubt that these claimants had a traumatic experience.

A former UN official is due to give evidence against Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, accused of undermining humanitarian operations in Zimbabwe and blocking action that could have helped to stop the death of 4,000 people.

The ex-UN official, Zimbabwean Dr. Georges Tadonki, said he would give evidence before a UN Tribunal in Nairobi, Kenya, on Tuesday, showing that the Ban and other senior officials blocked efforts to stop a humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe.

Dr. Tadonki worked as a senior official for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA), between March and December 2009, when a choler a outbreak in Zimbabwe killed 4,000 people and left 100,000 hospitalized.

Dr. Tadonki said he would present his evidence before a special dispute tribunal in Nairobi, on why the UN chief reportedly said the President Robert Mugabe-led government was cooperating with the UN while Mugabe insisted there was no cholera.

"What did the UN Chief say? They (Zanu) officials were cooperative. What did Mugabe say? Our doctors conquered cholera. Now there is no cholera, there is no reason for war," Dr. Tadonki said in a statement, released on his behalf by a publicity firm in Kenya.

The UN chief has denied reports that his office had been silent over the crisis in Zimbabwe, including the grabbing of white farmers land and other subsequent crises there.

Ban denied suggestions that the UN had been silent over the crisis in Zimbabwe, including the power-sharing crisis and the "other conflicts between the Zimbabweans".

"I do not agree that the UN has been silent on Zimbabwe, when there was the humanitarian crisis, I met with Robert Mugabe many times. I asked him to democratize. We still have serious concerns about the humanitarian situation," Ban said on 31 January.

Speaking during his last Africa visit, when he attended the African Union Heads of State Summit, Ban said, on the power-sharing agreement, the parties did not accept the intervention of his office.

On the land issue between Britain and Zimbabwe, he said, the UN did not have powers to interfere on agreements signed between two independent countries.

The former UN official accuses Ban, several senior UN officials within the rank of Under-Secretaries-General, of undermining the work of the UN or working closely with the ZANU-PF to cover up the extent of the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe.

"The cholera epidemic was officially recognized only in December 2008, nearly five months too late. The Government of Zimbabwe was late to act and the UN was late to act," Dr Tadonki alleged.

He said the UN did not challenge the government of Zimbabwe to face the truth and let people receive the help they needed timely.

Dr. Tadonki said: "When help finally came, it was too late. Over 4,000 had died and more than 100,000 people, sick of cholera, and millions of people had been af fected directly or indirectly not only in Zimbabwe, but also in neighboring South Africa, Zambia, and Mozambique."

Five new ambassadors and high commissioners from the MDC were on Wednesday officially appointed by Robert Mugabe, to represent Zimbabwe in different countries.

The three women and two men received their letters of credential from Robert Mugabe when they took the oath of allegiance and the oath of secrecy, administered at State House on Wednesday. The new envoys will serve a minimum four years on tour of duty at their stations. All five completed a three months diplomatic training course in Harare in October last year.

A letter of credential is an official document conveying the credentials of a diplomatic envoy to a foreign government. The envoys are Hebson Makuvise who goes to Germany, Hilda Suka-Mafudze (Sudan), Jacqueline Nomhla Zwambila (Australia), Mabed Khumbulani (Nigeria) (all from MDC-T) and MDC-M’s Trudy Stevenson, who will take up her post in Senegal.

This is the first time since Independence 30 years ago that ambassadors outside ZANU PF circles have been appointed by Mugabe. The appointments were made possible by the signing of the Global Political Agreement that gave birth to the inclusive government. The three principals to the GPA, Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, agreed that the MDC formations nominate five ambassadors-designates for posting to Zimbabwean missions abroad.

One of the new ambassadors, Trudy Stevenson, said that at times she had felt ‘dispirited and demoralised’ by the long time it has taken Mugabe to finally appoint them as ambassadors. The five new envoys were nominated by their parties in August last year and it has taken Mugabe six months to present them with their’ letters of credence’.

Ambassador Stevenson said as the only white envoy among the five, she was particularly honoured to be representing the country in Senegal, a French speaking country. She speaks fluent French and will fly to Dakar next week Wednesday.

‘This shows that white people still have a major role to play in the rebuilding of Zimbabwe. I’m also particularly pleased that I will be able to rebuild the good relations that existed between Senegal and Zimbabwe before 2002 when we closed down our embassy in Dakar due to financial constraints. Being a French speaker, I think I will find it easy to start normalising relations between the two countries,’ Stevenson said.

Makuvise, the new envoy to Berlin in Germany, expressed appreciation to the three principals in the inclusive government and pledged to live up to the task.

The former MDC-T chief representative to London, who takes up his posting in early March, said he will strive to work hard to woo more investors into Zimbabwe and create a market for Zimbabwean goods in Germany.

Zwambila, the new ambassador to Australia, was due to fly out of Harare on Wednesday evening for Canberra to take up her posting. Envoys to Sudan and Nigeria will be leaving Harare next week.

HARARE 08/02/10 - The trial of Zimbabwe opposition politician Roy Bennett was postponed indefinitely on Monday as court workers joined a wage strike by government employees.

Court officials turned people away from the High Court in Harare, where Bennett, a close ally of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, is on trial charged with illegal possession of arms for "terrorism, banditry and sabotage".

"The trial has been deferred indefinitely, on account of the strike," Attorney-General Johannes Tomana, who is leading the state prosecution team, told Reuters.

Zimbabwe's civil servants, who earn an average $160 per month, went on strike on Friday after wage negotiations with the government ended in a deadlock.

The strike is set to put pressure on Zimbabwe's unity government, set up by Tsvangirai and bitter rival President Robert Mugabe last February. The government is struggling to raise at least $10 billion it says is needed to reconstruct the economy after a decade-long slump.

Bennett's arrest and trial is another source of tension between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, who nominated him deputy Agriculture Minister last year. Mugabe has refused to appoint Bennett, saying the courts should clear him first.

The state charges Bennett with funding a 2006 plot to blow up a major communication link and assassinate government figures. Bennett denies the charges, which carry a maximum death sentence, saying they are politically motivated.

Peter Hitschmann, an arms trader and state witness who faced the same charges but was convicted in 2006 on a lesser charge of possessing dangerous weapons, has denied Bennett was involved.

On Friday, judge Chinembiri Bhunu ruled that disputed emails linking Bennett to a conspiracy to procure arms and to blow up some communications targets could be used as evidence, despite objections by defence lawyers that the documents were fake.

The court had previously thrown out confessions by Hitschmann implicating Bennett, on the grounds that the statements had been extracted under torture.

A recent report has revealed that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is so paranoid about his security during his foreign visits that he pays a special allowance of 5,000 dollars a day to his guards.

Mugabe, who turns 86 this month, keeps a crack team of security officials from Zimbabwe's secret service, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), who were assigned to keep him safe during his official visit to Switzerland, Italy and Denmark.

The President uses the team, as he has twice been a target of an attempted citizen's arrest, and has enemies among Zimbabwean exiles forced by economic collapse to leave and find work overseas.

According to The Times, Director-General of the CIO Happyton Bonyongwe submitted the request to the Treasury on October 1 2009, stipulating that the "allowances equivalent of 10 days must be paid in cash" to the "seven crack officers of the advance team to Switzerland".

Each officer accumulated a total of 50,000 dollars in cash, and the money was theirs to keep, a perk of the job, and they did not have to account for it on their return to Harare.

While, for his visit to Rome he paid less important members of the huge entourage were paid 2,000 dollars a day.

It is believed that the entire visit cost the cash-strapped unity government 1.4 million pounds.

In any country, 5,000 dollars a day would be considered good money, but in Zimbabwe, where most of the population lives on less than one dollar a day and a teacher or nurse earns five dollars a day, such sums are beyond people's wildest dreams.

Harare - Eight men armed with AK47 rifles stormed the Zimbabwe offices of a British-based diamond company after midnight Tuesday, in an incident police have described as a robbery.

A police spokesman on Wednesday confirmed the raid on the Zimbabwe headquarters of London-based African Consolidated Resources, and said investigations were in progress.

The company is locked in litigation with President Robert Mugabe's government over the claim for the rich Chiadzwa diamond field in eastern Zimbabwe, deemed by some experts as the most significant find of the gems in the past century.

ACR officials would not comment on the raid, but mining industry sources said the intruders assaulted the company's four security guards at the heavily-protected building in central Harare, and made off with computers and a new pick-up truck.

The vehicle was discovered shortly afterwards at a nearby hotel, abandoned, but with the keys still in the ignition.

The government seized the claim from ACR in 2006, and let thousands of illegal diggers and panners overrun it until two years later, when soldiers and police cracked down, allegedly killing scores of people and severely assaulting and torturing hundreds more.

The violence drew sharp criticism from the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, the international body founded to stop the trade in 'blood diamonds' in Africa, and demanded that the military be withdrawn and transparency and order be established at Chiadzwa.

Controversy has continued, however, as the government allowed two South African companies to form joint ventures with the bankrupt state-owned mining company to exploit the alluvial diamond field.

An ongoing parliamentary inquiry this week accused the government of 'irregular' dealings with the two companies.

The raid came as ACR was about to apply for an eviction order against the two companies, after a high court judge in September ruled that the state seizure of the field was illegal, and that ACR was the legal owner of the claim.

Political analysts say that the Chiadzwa diamonds are of crucial importance to the turnaround of the cash-strapped country, which is under a power-sharing government formed by Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. Mining experts believe the field could earn the government up to 1 billion dollars a year in revenues from the field.

But diplomats and members of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change have expressed fears that Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party are planning to seize the claim, after the collapse of the economy in 2008 left them without financial support.

Two MDC councillors were detained by police in Banket in connection with the death by shooting of councilor Lancelot Zvirongwe, whose body was found on Friday floating in a dam at Pindi Farm near Banket

Tensions were on the rise Wednesday within Zimbabwe's unity government following the detention by police in Mashonaland West of two councilors of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change in connection with the apparent murder of a ZANU-PF councilor.

The two were detained by police in Banket in connection with the death by shooting of councilor Lancelot Zvirongwe, whose body was found on Friday floating in a dam at Pindi Farm near the Mashonaland West town. His wife was said to have reported that he texted her saying he had been kidnapped.

Banket police were holding councilors Emmanuel Chinanzvavana and Funny Tembo on suspicion they kidnapped and killed the ZANU-PF councilor. But no formal charges had been filed in the case as of late Wednesday, sources said.

Sources in Banket said some MDC supporters have gone into hiding amid police investigations of the death, fearing political victimization.

Some political analysts said the death could be linked to factional divisions in the Mashonaland West branch of the former ruling ZANU-PF. The party's provincial executive was removed recently amid a police investigation into the diversion of fertilizer from a state depot into the local black market.

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told VOA Studio 7 reporter Blessing Zulu that the party is concerned at the crackdown on members in the province.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has blasted the MDC for engaging in what it calls appeasement of its ZANU-PF partner in the fragile unity government by overlooking rights abuses in order not to destabilize power sharing.

Human Rights Watch Researcher Dewa Mavhinga commented that the strategy his group perceives on the part of the MDC is counterproductive.

Zimbabwe has suspended its plans to draw up a new constitution because of political bickering over funding, dealing a blow to hopes of free and fair elections next year.

 Arch rivals President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who formed a unity government last February, agreed to write a new constitution within 18 months.

Many Zimbabweans hope that a new charter will strengthen the role of parliament, curtail the president's powers and guarantee civil, political and media freedoms.

Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change has said that Mugabe's Zanu-PF is not committed to the drafting of a new constitution, and had repeatedly sought to frustrate the process in a bid to delay elections.

A parliamentary committee is leading the drafting process.

"The management committee has suspended the outreach programme for now, mainly because of financial constraints," Douglas Mwonzora, who co-chairs the committee, said.

Mwonzora, a legislator from Tsvangirai's MDC, said his party disagreed with Zanu-PF about who should be collecting views on the constitution.

•The party offices of Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara have been burgled.
Though Mutambara's break-away wing of the MDC yesterday refused to shed any light on the burglary, sources said computers and documents were stolen.

Though the police are treating the break-in as a normal burglary, party insiders said there was more to it than met the eye.

Agents from the Central Intelligence Organisation visited the premises after the burglary.

"They ransacked our offices and turned everything, including papers, upside-down in search of evidence,'' said a party official.

Meanwhile Constitutional Affairs Minister Eric Matinenga said the committee managing the constitutional revision process has paused to attend to administrative and budget issues, but said it is untrue the process has been suspended

Zimbabwean Minister of Constitutional Affairs on Thursday dismissed reports that the constitutional revision outreach process intended to garner the views of a broad cross section of the public on the document had been suspended due to bickering among the governing parties and funding shortages.

The state-controlled Herald newspaper reported that feuding over the naming of rapporteurs for the outreach process had led to its suspension.

The government has set October as the deadline for completing the process before elections which some believe could be organized in 2011.

Constitutional Affairs Minister Eric Matinenga told VOA Studio 7 reporter Blessing Zulu that the committee managing the process has paused to attend to administrative and financial issues, but said it is not true that process has been suspended. He said a meeting has been set for next Tuesday to resume work.

Co-Chairman Paul Mangwana of the Parliamentary Select Committee for the Constitution, a lawmaker of the former ruling ZANU-PF party of President  Robert Mugabe, told VOA he was misquoted by the Herald.

By Michael Hamlyn
Cape Town - Zimbabwean war veterans are said to be spreading their baleful influence over the rhino population of the country, by feeding them poisoned cabbages near water holes, in a game reserve in the Chiredzi district.
    
 According to the Simply Green website, the veterans are working as poaching agents for South African based rhino horn dealers. When the animals come for water they will also eat the cabbages. They will then track them until they die, then take off the horns.
    
But the poachers have not stopped there. They have also poisoned water sources, which is killing cattle.
      
 The website quotes Nelson Maponga, a community spokesperson as saying: "The biggest problem is that our cattle also drink from the same sources and are also eating the same cabbages and dying. They are even poisoning some small dams around this area with the hope that rhinos will drink from them which have caused serious environmental problems in this area."
      
 In addition to poisoning rhinos and cattle, Maponga reported that the war veterans have indiscriminately cut down trees to sell firewood, which has destroyed the surrounding wildlife habitat.
     
Simply Green said Zimbabwe and South Africa form the epicenter of the rhino poaching crisis, which is poised to undermine decades of conservation success. 

"The resurgence of mass rhino killings is driven by the deadly combination of demand for rhino horn and rising incomes in Asia, mostly China, and increasingly, Vietnam," the article said. .
      
 "Unfortunate cultural superstitions claim that rhino horn is a remedy for common ailments such as pain and fever, although extensive scientific testing has confirmed that rhino horn actually contains no medicinal properties."

14/01/10 Johannesburg - While the campaign to drive white farmers from their farms intensifies, the Zimbabwean government is giving 100 000ha of land to controversial South African businessman Billy Rautenbach.

The land will be used to grow sugar cane which will be converted into bio-fuel.

"It's an absolute disgrace, when we're being driven off our farms like dogs - farms which produce food for Zimbabwe," Charles Taffs, deputy chair of the Zimbabwean Farmers' Association told Beeld on Wednesday.

The Nuanetsi estate in the Masvingo province belongs to the Josua Nkomo trust and is not one of the farms which have been seized from white farmers since 2002.

'All about money'

"It's a matter of principle, and not because Rautenbach is white or about white farmers. He has close ties with Mugabe's Zanu-PF. It's all about money. Besides the loss of land for urgently needed agricultural production, over 10 000 people will be driven off the estate," said Taffs.

Rautenbach will apparently invest over $1bn in the project through his company, Zimbabwe Bio-Energy. President Robert Mugabe and Emmerson Mnangagwa, minister of defence, allegedly own shares in Rautenbach's company.

A South African court has recently acquitted him of a string of criminal charges, in return for his testimony in the trial of former police commissioner, Jackie Selebi.

The decision to make the land available to Rautenbach has the support of deputy president, John Nkomo, who's also one of the trustees.

Fertile soil

However, it doesn't carry the approval of all Zanu-PF supporters in Masvingo. The transfer of highly fertile soil is being opposed by the provincial leadership of Zanu-PF.

"We have to ask ourselves: where is black empowerment if we're going to allow one white man to take over such a large piece of land?" said Lovemore Matuke, provincial chair of Zanu-PF, according to the Zimbabwe Times.

He's supported by the governor of Masvingo, Titus Maluleke.

According to the government mouthpiece, The Herald, Nkomo said in reaction to the criticism that those who are opposed to Rautenbach's role, are "witches who oppose the development of Masvingo. Billy [Rautenbach] is our friend and those who want to drive him off the farm, are MDC supporters."

The MDC is opposed to the Rautenbach project as well.

A spokesperson for the MDC, Nelson Chamisa, on Wednesday said such a project "should only be considered after a comprehensive land audit has been completed in Zimbabwe".

There has been a swath of crackdowns on illegal South African visa holders.

Zimbabweans living in South Africa illegally are being removed in large numbers, as a result of a crack-down by the South African Home Affairs Department.

Most of the people being told to leave were Zimbabweans who had moved to South Africa using fraudulent passports obtained in their home country.

The move has left many Zimbaweans stateless as their passports have been removed and Zimbabwe officials will need to vet them before allowing them back into the country.

The crack down started today and problems arose when several of those told to leave claimed they were genuine South Africans. As a result, the authorities now claim they will simply investigate the documents instead of confiscating them altogether, in order to minimise the risk of confiscating a genuine South Africa passport.

It has proven difficult for South African immigration authorities to stop people using false passports. The fact that many people hold such documents in the country has become an issue for countries like the UK, which has introduced sanctions that now require all South Africans to acquire a UK visa before travelling to the country.

BULAWAYO - Police Commissioner, Augustine Chihuri , instructed his subordinates to deny government auditors access to police records, in a bid to hide glaring loopholes in the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP).
Zimbabwe's inclusive government, at the instigation of Public Service Minister, Elphas Mukonoweshuro (MDC-T), embarked on an audit of the civil service and its payroll, in a bid to rid the system of massive corruption.The audit was expected to disclose tens of thousands of "ghost" workers. It involved a physical count of all civil servants, excluding the army, which is not classified under the Public Service.

Although the audit was approved by cabinet, it met strong resistance from Zanu (PF), which is being accused of paying a big chunk of the taxpayers' money to its youth militia, most of whom are too under-qualified to be civil servants and are only used to terrorise voters at election time.ZRP Internal sources told The Zimbabwean this week that when the audit was announced, they received an internal signal from Chihuri ordering them not to co-operate with the auditors.

The signal was sent out by Faustino Mazango, commissioner responsible for human resources, and is said to have threatened any police officer who defied this order.

"The signal was written in early November and addressed to all police stations in the country," said a Bulawayo-based police officer, who must remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

"The signal ordered us not to allow the auditors any access to police record books containing the names, force numbers and qualifications of each member of the ZRP."

Another police officer, also from Bulawayo, said Chihuri was determined to frustrate the audit, which would have exposed him.

"Chihuri keeps lying to the nation that the ZRP has 60,000 members, but the actual strength is far less than 35,000, because thousands of junior officers quit in large numbers during the past decade, in protest over poor working conditions and political persecution. He feared that the audit would reveal all this," said the police officer.

"Even our recruitment drives have failed to address that skills gap."
A senior police officer from Police General Headquarters in Harare also confirmed that there were less than 40,000 police officers in Zimbabwe today.He added that when the civil service audit was first announced, Chihuri tried to cover fill the gap by enlisting members of the Zanu (PF) youth militia, who were already living inside police stations, and some civilian volunteers serving as members of the Neighbourhood Watch Committee.

"He also ordered the incorporation of general hands whose duties involved cleaning offices and cooking at police canteens. But still this was not enough, leading to the order not to allow access to police records."

The police sources said that the admission of the green bombers to the force flew in the face of ZRP's claims of professionalism.

"These are people who failed to meet the minimum educational requirements for entry into the ZRP, yet they are now fast-tracked without even going through formal training," fumed one officer.The minimum qualifications are five O level passes, including maths and English.

11/12/09 Jenni Williams (l) and Magodonga Mahlangu at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Right in Washington, 23 Nov 2009

Zimbabwean state security agents have been harassing the co-founders of the activist group Women of Zimbabwe Arise following their recognition by U.S. President Barack Obama who presented them with the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in a White House ceremony last month.

WOZA Co-Directors Magodonga Mahlangu and Jenni Williams said that since their return to Zimbabwe two weeks ago they have been closely followed by plain-clothes police and agents of Central Intelligence Organization.

Williams said that while the majority of Zimbabweans congratulated them for receiving the award, the security apparatus views them as a threat.

Williams and Mahlangu currently face charges of staging unsanctioned public demonstrations over economic and social issues affecting Zimbabweans.

In the past four days the two women have appeared several times in Bulawayo Magistrates Court to answer charges under Section 37 of the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Act. They have challenged the constitutionality of the law, but the Supreme Court has yet to rule in the matter.

WOZA attorney Kossam Ncube told VOA Studio 7 reporter Gibbs Dube that court documents for the pending case against the two human rights activists have disappeared from the Office of the Attorney General in Bulawayo

Botswana Government reply to Zimbabwe complaint

8/12/09  South African Facilitators Back in Harare to Press for Zimbabwe Unity Solution

After gathering information on the intra-party talks, the facilitators will draft a report that South African President Jacob Zuma will present to the chairman of the SADC troika on politics, defense and security.

 South African facilitators representing President Jacob Zuma were back in Harare on Monday to encourage negotiators for the three parties in Zimbabwe's unity government to work quickly to settle their differences.

The facilitation delegation reopened discussions with the three principals in the government - President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara - and the negotiators who hammered out the Global Political Agreement which left important aspects of power-sharing unresolved when the government launched 10 months ago.

Sources said that after gathering information on the intra-government talks, the facilitators will draft a report to Mr. Zuma which he will present next week to Mozambican President Armando Guebuza, chairman of the Southern African Development Community's troika on politics, defense and security.

Negotiators for Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the two formations of the Movement for Democratic Change could not be reached. Butsources informed on the talks said agreement has been reached on most of the 27 outstanding issues with an announcement of results likely later this week.

Minister of State Gorden Moyo in the office of Prime Minister Tsvangirai told VOA Studio 7 reporter Ntungamili Nkomo that there is progress in the negotiations - but was not at liberty to provide details.

Elsewhere, the United Nations formally announced on Monday that it is seeking US$ 378 million to meet Zimbabwe's urgent humanitarian needs. News of the appeal emerged unofficially last week.

The U.N.'s deputy emergency aid chief, Catherine Bragg, said some 1.9 million Zimbabweans will need food aid in the first three months of 2010. But she said conditions are gradually improving under the power-sharing government and that Zimbabwe is now moving out of crisis into a recovery.

The appeal target is sharply lower than the US$718 million the U.N. sought for hunger- and disease-stricken Zimbabweans in 2009.

By Jonga Kandemiiri
18 November 2009
 

Zimbabwe's Organ on National Healing and Reconciliation has embarked on a new round of consultations in the country's 10 provinces to solicit views on how best to proceed with the program to reconcile those caught up in often deadly 2008 political violence.

The three ministers for healing of the parties sharing power in the national unity government are leading the latest round of discussions in collaboration with the heads of the country's Christian denominations and the National Association of Non-Governmental Organizations.

The consultative team visited Manicaland province on Tuesday, moved to Masvingo province on Wednesday and was to head next week to Midlands and Bulawayo provinces.

Programs Coordinator Machinda Marongwe of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organizations told VOA Studio 7 reporter Jonga Kandemiiri that the meetings arose from consultations between church and civil society leaders and the healing ministers.

JOHANNESBURG, 17 November 2009  - Fearing a resurgence of xenophobic attacks, around 2,500 Zimbabwean migrants have taken refuge in government buildings in De Doorns, a farming town about 140km from Cape Town, South Africa, after some of their shacks in an informal settlement were attacked and demolished, said a police official.

The attacks took place early in the morning of 17 November in Stofland, meaning dustland in Afrikaans, the largest squatter camp in De Doorns. All the displaced Zimbabweans are documented.

The local police station commander, Superintendent Desmond van der Westhuizen, told IRIN the local residents were unhappy that farm owners had been employing Zimbabweans for "less money", and had complained that farmers were "excluding the local community".

But the residents threatened to prevent the Zimbabweans from going to work on 17 November [Monday morningl 
The global economic recession has hit South Africa hard; the government's latest labour force survey said 484,000 jobs had been lost in the last six months, and unemployment stood at 24.5 percent for the period July to September 2009, up from 23.2 percent during the same period in 2008.

Van der Westhuizen told IRIN that the situation had been tense since 13 November, when Zimbabweans had been involved in a violent spat in an informal tavern. "Following that incident, some 68 Zimbabweans" had fled the area, fearing a resurgence of xenophobic violence.

In May 2008 a tide of xenophobic violence erupted in Johannesburg and quickly spread through most parts of the country, killing more than 60 people and displacing about 100,000 others.

"The same area was affected in 2008," van der Westhuizen said. The 68 Zimbabweans took refuge in government buildings in De Doorns during Saturday and Sunday.

The police, accompanied by local government and disaster management officials, held a meeting with the informal settlement residents on the evening of 16 November to calm the situation. "But the residents threatened to prevent the Zimbabweans from going to work on 17 November [Monday morning]," van der Westhuizen told IRIN.

Police had to fire rubber bullets to disperse the residents, who attacked some more shacks in Stofland, forcing the Zimbabweans to flee. "Fortunately, none of the Zimbabweans were harmed and they all moved out with their personal belongings voluntarily," the police superintendent said.

The local authorities are trying to erect a tent shelter and provide portable toilets for the displaced people on the town's sports ground. Van der Westhuizen told IRIN: "We are making interim arrangements to keep them here for a week until we try and mediate with the local residents to get the Zimbabweans integrated back into the community."

Botswana’s President Ian Khama has accused President Robert Mugabe of failing to honour Zimbabwe’s power-sharing agreement.

In his state of the nation address, Khama said new elections in Zimbabwe would end the political infighting paralyzing the unity government in Harare.

He is concerned about Mugabe’s failure to honour agreements signed in September last year.

Khama said in the absence of genuine partnership it was better to go back to the people, who should be the ultimate authority in determining who should govern Zimbabwe.

There is no substitute for free and fair elections, he added.

GENEVA  - Zimbabwe has barred at the last minute a week-long visit by an independent expert on torture who had been invited to the country by the government, the United Nations said Wednesday.
The expert, Austrian academic Manfred Nowak, was only told his visit had been postponed as he arrived in Johannesburg on his way to Zimbabwe where his fact-finding mission was set to last from October 28-November 4.

Nowak immediately called on Harare to reinstate the program and allow him to proceed, the United Nations office in Geneva said in a statement.

The invitation marked the first time that Zimbabwe had offered to open up to an expert working for the U.N. Human Rights Council. Nowak is the Council's special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Nowak was told the decision to postpone his visit was due to talks in Harare between mediators from the 15-nation South African Development Community and leaders of Zimbabwe's troubled power-sharing government, the U.N. said.

The mediators aim to resolve growing differences over power-sharing between President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

But the United Nations said that although Nowak welcomed the fact that those talks were taking place, he failed to be convinced that they "should be a valid reason to cancel his eight-day mission at such a late stage."

The urgency of an objective fact-finding by an independent U.N. expert at this time was highlighted by allegations of arrest, intimidation and harassment of supporters of the MDC and of human rights defenders in the past few days, the U.N. said

HARARE, 27 October 2009 - Violence and intimidation against members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) increased sharply within days of the party "disengaging" from Zimbabwe's unity government, MDC spokesman Luke Tamborinyoka told IRIN.

In one incident three armed men accosted MDC security official Edith Mashaire, 32, and tried to force her into a waiting vehicle as she walked towards her office in the capital, Harare, during working hours.

"Two other men, one brandishing an AK-47 rifle and another holding a pistol, approached me and threatened to shoot me. They started assaulting me with their weapons while telling me to get into the truck," Mashaire told IRIN. She screamed to other pedestrians that she was an MDC official and frightened the men off.

"We have received reports of our supporters being beaten up and having their homes set on fire, allegedly by ZANU-PF supporters led by war veterans and members of the army," Tamborinyoka said. President Robert Mugabe is the leader of ZANU-PF, the other wing of the unity government formed in February 2009.

Morgan Tsvangirai, MDC leader and Prime Minister, "disengaged" from the unity government on 16 October in protest over the re-arrest of the party's treasurer and deputy agricultural minister designate, Roy Bennett, which had "brought home the fiction of the credibility and integrity of the transitional government".

Teachers targeted

Violence has erupted in Mashonaland Central Province, once a ZANU-PF stronghold in the north of the country. "The violence has intensified in rural areas ... Also affected are close to 100 teachers who have fled from the province," Tamborinyoka said.

"Some of the biggest victims in this ongoing cycle of violence are children, because they have nobody to teach them," he told IRIN. ZANU-PF supporters have accused the teaching profession of being allied to the MDC, and teachers have been told that since their party, the MDC, had pulled out of the government, they were now considered enemies of ZANU-PF.
The violence is spreading to many parts of the country like Mashonaland West and East [provinces], Manicaland [province in the east] and Masvingo [province in the south] - all former ZANU-PF strongholds - and even in central Harare 

"The violence is spreading to many parts of the country like Mashonaland West and East [provinces], Manicaland [province in the east] and Masvingo [province in the south] - all former ZANU-PF strongholds - and even in central Harare. We believe that ZANU-PF is retaliating after our party disengaged from the government two weeks ago," Tamborinyoka said.

At the weekend, heavily armed police and soldiers raided a house used by MDC officials and accused the group of stealing weapons from army barracks in Harare. Tamborinyoka said recent events showed all the hallmarks of a crackdown on the MDC and its supporters. "Recently, a brigadier-general pointed a gun at one of our members of parliament and threatened to shoot him."

ZANU-PF youth militia deployed in rural areas

A special audit report on ministerial accounts has also revealed that the youth development ministry employed 10,277 ZANU-PF youth militia since May 2008, who were subsequently deployed to rural areas.

The period of recruitment, which began after ZANU-PF lost its majority in parliament for the first time since independence from Britain in 1980, coincided with escalating violence against MDC supporters, including incidents of murder, rape, torture and displacement, during the second round of the presidential ballot in 2008.

Tsvangirai got the majority of votes in the first round of the presidential poll but narrowly missed securing the 50-plus-one votes required for an outright win. He withdrew from the run-off presidential vote in protest against alleged state-sponsored violence. Mugabe thus won unopposed, but international observers dismissed the poll as invalid.

"The appointees [youth militia] were not subjected to a medical examination, as required by the public service regulations, declarations of official secrets were not completed, and there were no staff files opened at either the ministry headquarters or provincial centres," Tamborinyoka said.

War collaborators

Raymond Majongwe, secretary-general of the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe, said ZANU-PF youth militia, working as "youth or ward officers", were harassing teachers in schools.

"Sometimes they talk about the need to 'teach children the correct history of the country',  and are going as far as appointing school prefects," Majongwe told IRIN.

In the past two months "war collaborators" - people who assisted guerrilla fighters during the war of independence in the 1970s and remain staunch ZANU-PF supporters - have been holding meetings across the country, raising fears of an increase in violence. Zimbabwe's defence minister, Emmerson Mnangagwa, recently addressed one of the meetings.

The trial of Roy Bennett, the MDC Deputy Agriculture Minister-designate, is supposed to start in Mutare on Tuesday but his lawyer, Trust Maanda, has said it may not kick off because the defence team has still not been furnished with the indictment papers.

The lawyer said he will apply for his client's removal from remand because since July the prosecutor has failed to give him the indictment papers which are supposed to outline the State's charge sheet and the witness statements. This is information that is supposed to help the defence lawyers know what accusations their client is facing and the State's evidence against him, in order to prepare for his defence.

Bennett was arrested in February, soon after his return from South Africa where he had been living in exile, and spent a month in remand prison. Ever since his arrest Bennett's lawyer have complained that their client is being victimised and that the State is failing to come up with a case against him. Since his arrest the State has slapped him with various charges ranging from flouting immigrations laws to treason, and then reverted back to terrorism charges after the first two accusations failed to stick. Maanda said the State had for months failed to come up with a trial date because they are not ready and have failed to come up with any incriminating evidence against the former Chimanimani MP.

Maanda said during Bennett's last remand hearing in July the prosecutor settled for the 13th October for the trial. "But because we knew the State would not be ready we asked the court to put it on record - that if that day comes and the state would not be ready, then Mr Roy Bennett should be removed from remand."

Maanda went on to say: "We think the State is not ready because it does not have anything on its hands in terms of evidence, specially as they say this matter was being investigated since 2006. So for them not to be able to come up with a trial date immediately, to us it shows that they don't have any evidence at all and they are trying to postpone the Ides of March."

The defence lawyer said no proper reasons have been given by the State for the delay, even though he has demanded the indictment papers consistently from 1st July, both in writing and by phone with the Attorney General's office.

Meanwhile, Robert Mugabe continues to refuse to swear the MDC Deputy Agriculture Minister-designate into office, insisting that it's because he is facing serious charges of possessing weapons for the purposes of insurgency and banditry. Bennett, who served a year in jail for pushing Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa in parliament, denies the allegations.

SADC leaders meeting in Kinshasa, the DRC, resolved at the end of their two-day summit on Tuesday to call for ‘sanctions’ against Robert Mugabe and his cronies to be lifted.

While the state media in the country was quick to celebrate the decision by SADC as a diplomatic triumph for Mugabe, analysts said the plea by the regional bloc represented a false dawn for ZANU PF, as none of the Western countries were going to lift these targeted sanctions anytime soon.
‘The summit noted the progress made in the implementation of the global political agreement and called on the international community to remove all forms of sanctions against Zimbabwe,’ SADC said in its final communiqué.
This communiqué showed that SADC is fully behind Mugabe’s misrepresentation of the so-called sanctions on Zimbabwe, which are in fact targeted on the ruling elite.
New SADC chair, President Joseph Kabila, told journalists that considering the progress that had been made in Zimbabwe it was now time that sanctions were lifted. Kabila, who took over as chairperson of SADC during the summit, said if sanctions were not lifted, they would become an impediment to putting the political agreement into practice.
Mugabe reportedly impressed on his fellow leaders that Tsvangirai and the MDC have not done enough to have the restrictions lifted. But MDC-T senator for Harare East, Obert Gutu, said that no right-thinking person could assume that Tsvangirai would be able to just pick up the phone and instruct the international community to lift the travel restrictions and restrictive measures on the ruling elite.
‘The MDC is raising genuine and legitimate transgressions of the GPA. Both Gono and Tomana were unilaterally appointed by Mugabe in late 2008, long after the GPA had been solemnised on 15th September 2008,’ Gutu said.

‘For anyone to therefore argue that Gono and Tomana are not outstanding issues of the GPA is to completely miss the point. This type of sterile argument is completely lacking in both factual and legal support. This argument ought to be dismissed with the contempt that it deserves,’ Gutu added.
Former SADC chair Jacob Zuma kicked off the meeting on Monday by asking Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara to end a row over the power-sharing pact, that is holding up vital foreign aid to repair Zimbabwe’s battered economy.
Reports initially suggested that SADC would hold a special summit on Zimbabwe, so that the situation could be discussed in depth. But SADC made a U-turn saying it would ask the bloc’s Troika on Politics, Defence and Security (a much less influential organ) to review the cooperation between Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
Speaking to SW Radio Africa from Kinshasa on Wednesday, human rights lawyer Dewa Mavhinga said without fundamental reforms by Mugabe, there will be no reason for the international community to unlock aid or lift the targeted sanctions.

‘It’s a hollow victory for Mugabe. As for SADC it is an embarrassment for the regional body because it all calls into question the credibility of the leaders in the face of the international community. The leaders have failed the Zimbabwean people once again by failing to take a very strong stance against something that human rights defenders call a rape of democracy in Zimbabwe,’ Mavhinga said.
Kenneth Meshoe, the leader of the African Christian Democratic Party in South Africa, criticized SADC and his country for supporting Mugabe at the just ended summit.
Addressing the South African parliament in Cape Town on Wednesday, Meshoe said SADC as a regional bloc had failed the people of Zimbabwe by focusing on protecting and defending Mugabe. He said the bloc should have demanded that Mugabe respects the rule of law, justice, democracy and human rights in his country.
The call by the SADC leaders comes amid deadlocked negotiations between Mugabe and Tsvangirai on key political appointments and ongoing concerns over human rights abuses.

The parties remain deadlocked over the appointment of the Central Bank chief, blamed for presiding over the collapse of the local currency, and the attorney general who continues to prosecute MDC supporters despite guarantees of political freedoms in the unity accord.

In a press statement on Tuesday Tsvangirai urged SADC leaders to closely monitor the progress of his power-sharing deal with Mugabe. He said he hoped all outstanding issues would be dealt with as a matter of urgency by the Troika, which will be chaired by the Mozambican President Armando Guebuza.

Doctors at Zimbabwe's state hospitals on Wednesday called off a crippling two-week strike, broken by the reality that the government had no money to meet their wage demands, their union said.

The strike was called off after Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai reassured doctors that the government was listening to them, and urged them to return to work after five children caught swine flu and new cholera cases broke out.

"We have called off the strike and we are now going back to work," Brighton Chizhande, president of the Hospital Doctors Association told AFP.

"We have called off the strike after realising that the government does not have money to finance our demands," he said.

"The calling off the strike is also as a result of appeals by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai who last week said our concerns are being addressed," he added.

"The government is broke, they have no money, but we are asking them that they give doctors housing and car allowances which will be payable over a 10-year period."

Chizhande said doctors who had been dismissed during the strike had been told to re-apply for their jobs.

Doctors went on strike two weeks ago after the government stopped paying a monthly 100 US dollar allowance.

Doctors earn 170 US dollars a month, which had been paid on top of the allowance, but went on strike to demand salaries of up to 3,000 dollars.

Meanwhile, a fresh cholera outbreak was reported in the eastern district of Chipinge, barely a week after the UN Children's Fund warned of a new outbreak.

Health Minister Henry Madzorera told the state-run Herald the situation was under control, although some 4,200 people died from the deadly but treatable disease over the last year.

"There were reported cases of cholera at Chibuwe clinic and all patients were successfully treated and discharged," Madzorera told the paper.

The new government has appealed for more than eight billion dollars to revive the country's economy but to date it has raised just over two billion dollars, mostly from African organisations and China.

Zimbabwe's health delivery system is reeling from the flight of skilled staff seeking better pay abroad, while essential equipment is often not working and drug stocks are low.

HARARE — Zimbabwe's national carrier said Tuesday it will cut 500 jobs, one-third of its workforce, in a bid to prevent the embattled airline from going under.

"We have no option other but to right-size or else we are dead," Air Zimbabwe chief executive Peter Chikumba said.

Nearly a decade of economic and political crisis has seen annual passenger numbers for the struggling airline drop from a peak of one million in 1996 to just 300,000 now, the company said.

The state-owned airline formed in 1980 after the country's independence has been beset by a string of financial problems.

The company currently has a 30 million US dollar debt, and has asked the government to sell its stake in the airline in a bid to raise desperately needed cash from private investors.

"If we do not do anything about it, the business will collapse and it will be very unfortunate if this happens," Chikumba told AFP.

Last year at the height of the country's hyperinflation, which officially hit 231 million percent but was believed many times higher, Air Zimbabwe was forced to sell tickets in the virtually worthless local currency.

That left the airline struggling to pay its membership fees with the airline regulation body, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), while it couldn't pay landing fees at London's Gatwick Airport.

Chikumba was hopeful that the unity government formed in February between President Robert Mugabe and his erstwhile rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai would bring economic stability and improve the business environment.

"We are positive that the political atmosphere that has been created will bring potential investors into the airline and the country," said Chikumba.

Air Zimbabwe's fortunes nosedived so dramatically that one flight in 2005 arrived from Dubai carrying a single passenger.

The route has since been closed, together with Kinshasa and Luanda, while the airline has concentrated on busy routes to South Africa, Britain and Zambia.

The company has also been hit hard by the national brain drain as experienced personnel such as engineers and pilots are poached by rival carriers in the region and Europe.

Chikumba said the retrenchment was a way of trimming the company's workforce to match the reduced business climate, while retaining staff with the right skills.

He also expressed concern about the airline's ageing fleet.

"Our 737 fleet is 23 years old and has outlived its economic life span," he said.

"The standard economic life span of an aircraft is about 15 years. Maintenance costs are high, spares for these aeroplanes are scarce," Chikumba added.

The company's newer planes are three Boeing 737s, two 767s and three Chinese MA60s which were purchased in 2005.

The political crisis in the southern African nation has decimated key industries like mining and agriculture, and run the country's education and health sector to the ground.

Once described as a model economy and a regional breadbasket, Zimbabwe's political crisis drove the economy to a near collapse with severe shortages of basic foodstuffs like sugar and cooking oil.

Mugabe has blamed Zimbabwe's meltdown on sanctions imposed by Britain and other Western nations, but his opponents accuse his government of widespread economic mismanagement.

MUTARE – Tendai Biti, Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister and a top MDC official says President Mugabe has now become too old to continue to rule the country in an effective manner.

Biti, the MDC secretary general, told about 400 cheering supporters at Dangamvura Grounds in Mutare, that Zimbabwe now urgently needed younger politicians such as Morgan Tsvangirai to effectively tackle the many problems facing the country.

Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, is the country’s Prime Minister under the inclusive government negotiated to end a political stalemate in the wake of a flawed presidential run-off election held last year on June 27.

“The major problem is that our country is being led by very elderly people,” Biti said amid applause. “We now need wheelchairs in Cabinet because a lot of too old people.”

He was speaking during election victory celebrations hosted by Giles Mutsekwa, the MP for Dangamvura-Chikanga constituency. Mutsekwa is the home affairs minister, a portfolio which he shares with Kembo Mohadi of Zanu-PF. The celebrations were held during the Heroes’ Day holiday.

Biti said it was disappointing when leaders hang on to power despite their very advanced ages. He said if civil servants were forced to retire when they reach 65 years of age it was imperative for political leaders to do the same.

He said President Mugabe and his elderly lieutenants should now step aside because of old age and allow Tsvangirai, who is relatively younger and raring to go, to take over. One of Mugabe’s two vice presidents, Joseph Msika, died last week at the ripe old age of 86. Msika spent the last 46 days of his life on a life-support unit at the West End Hospital in Harare after medical experts in Cape Town had given up on him.

Towards the end Msika, known for his predilection for scotch and cigarettes into his old age, requested to be allowed to step down and rest. Mugabe would not allow him to retire. As his former deputy was buried at Heroes Acre on Monday, Mugabe told mourners that the VP’s death was a delayed reaction to years on incarceration in Gonakudzingwa Detention camp in the 1960s and 1970s.

Mugabe and Msika were among the black nationalists detained by the Ian Smith regime for periods of up to 10 and 11 years.

“Chipai Save vachiri kutemwa dzinobuda ropa kuti vatonge,” Biti said in Shona, meaning: “Please hand over to Tsvangirai who is still full of life and bountiful energy.”

In MDC circles Tsvangirai is not called by his name, but by his totem, Save.

President Mugabe, now 85, and known by his own totem, Gushungo, in Zanu-PF circles, appears anxious to cling on to power with a dogged determination after three decades of dictatorial rule during which Zimbabwe, once a prosperous nation and a net exporter of food, has been reduced to a poor country 80 percent of whose citizens survive on food handouts from the western nations that the President loves to despise.

“Zimbabwe is a free country,” Mugabe lashed out characteristically at Msika’s burial at Heroes’ Acre on Monday. “Zimbabwe needs not be tied to any one corner of the world, least of all a corner of former imperialist and racist colonizers. We are not part of Europe and the United States.”

Biti said it was disheartening when leaders die of advanced age while in office instead of retiring and resting from the hectic political offices.

While Msika died at 86, two vice presidents before him, Joshua Nkomo and Simon Muzenda died in office at the ages of 82 and 81 respectively. In the 30 years he has been in power Mugabe has not clearly defined a line of succession within his Zanu-PF party, preferring, except in the case of Vice President Joice Mujuru, deputies with little prospect of ever succeeding him because of their old age.

Biti said Tsvangirai could not effectively solve the country’s problems as long as “there are two drivers on the steering wheel”.

Biti said the MDC entered into the power-sharing deal with its sworn political nemesis so as to extricate the country from a 10-year economic and political crisis of unprecedented proportions.

Biti said the MDC was committed to having a liberalized media in Zimbabwe and to bringing international news organizations such as CNN, BBC and Sky News into the country.

He said they were also committed to ensuring the country goes through a proper national healing process to unite the people divided for almost a decade because of the political rivalry between the two major political parties, the MDC and Zanu-PF.

Biti attacked the country’s justice system saying it was being selectively applied to victimize MDC legislators.

He queried why eight MDC Members of Parliament had been arrested and promptly convicted of various criminal offences when at the same time no Zanu-PF parliamentarian had been subjected to similar treatment.

“The justice system has become effective when it comes to convicting MDC MPs but Joseph Male is a free man,” he said.

Mwale, a reclusive Central Intelligence Organisation operative, has roamed freely and with total impunity despite calls by the High Court for his arrest for the alleged gruesome murder of two MDC activists, Talent Mabika and Tichaona Chiminya. The two were killed at Murambinda Growth Point, Buhera, during the violent campaign ahead of the 2000 parliamentary election.

According to sworn testimony, Mwale and an accomplice Kainos “Kitsiyatota” Zimunya, a Zanu-PF official, intercepted an MDC vehicle in which Mabika and Chiminya were travelling. They poured petrol on the vehicle as well as directly on Mabika and Chiminya. A bomb was then thrown into the vehicle which caught fire. The two died a horrifying death.

For the past ten years the police have sat on the docket implicating Mwale and Zimunya.

By Denford Magora

Dumiso Dabengwa, the ZAPU leader and former ZAPU Commander, who is being offered the vice-presidency of Zimbabwe by Mugabe, is holding out and repeating his oft-stated demand for an apology from Mugabe over Gukurahundi.

This is one of his two demands. Dabengwa is said to have also demanded that the healing process currently underway encompass Gukurahundi.

You will recall I told you when I broke the story about a Reconciliation Commission that Mugabe had told Tsvangirai that Gukurahundi had “nothing to do” with him and he could only speak for the violence that followed the formation of the MDC.

Very few people are aware of just how mortified Mugabe is over the Matabeleland massacres termed by then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s government “Gukurahundi” – the early rains that wash away the chaff”.

The only time Mugabe ever came even close to making a public apology over anything was over the Gukurandi massacres, which he said he “regretted” and called “a moment of madness.”

Back then, it was because Joshua Nkomo, Vice-president and ZAPU President, pestered Mugabe over the matter, explaining in detail to him over months just what was done in the rural areas of Matabeleland, insisting that the people of the region did not want retribution or vengeance, just an acknowledgement of their horrors.

Mugabe is loath to openly and unequivocally accept blame for the 1980s Gukurahundi. Besides it leading (potentially) to a huge number of claims in court from people stripped of their belongings and loved ones, there is also the fact that he considers the unity with ZAPU in 1987 to have settled that issue.

So, Dabengwa, who has made it clear before that Mugabe has to offer an apology, is now using that to try and put The Solution on the spot.

If he wants Dabengwa to be VP bad enough, he will have to face that greatest fear of his.

Or perhaps other ways of persuasion will be found. That can never be discounted. But by all accounts, Mugabe is dead serious about the approach to the ZAPU leader.

Just the fact that the revived ZAPU is being treated now with some respect even in state media also means that Dabengwa has won already. Mugabe and his people recognise Dabengwa’s ZAPU now.

To fully understand the approach to Dabengwa, you should also be aware that right across Matabeleland, whole ZANU PF structures are defecting to Dabengwa’s party. Mugabe knows that the rural constituencies that he used to pick up here and there were coming to him only because he was with ZAPU. Left to their own devices, the people of the region would throw ZANU PF out on its ear.

Mugabe, who is demanding “unity”, meaning Dabengwa would have to disband the ZAPU he revived and come back to the ZANU PF fold, is actually playing his usual game and I hope Dabengwa realises this.

Mugabe’s mode of negotiation is to start off by making outrageous and ridiculous demands on issues he really cares nothing about. He did it with Nelson Chamisa, when he wanted to take back control of Interception of Communications.

Those close to the dictator say he is willing to actually forge a new alliance with Dabengwa’s ZAPU, as a sister party from the liberation wars. The idea, obviously, is to bide his time and eventually swallow them again.

He maintains that he is still “an avowed apostle of the one party state”.

This, I suppose, should also point us to the destination where Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC-T will end up.

“Never!” did they say? We will see.

Report on the current situation in Zimbabwe - DA
Democratic Alliance
06 August 2009

Wilmot James and Kenneth Mubu say Jacob Zuma needs to take action

JOINT STATEMENT BY DR WILMOT JAMES, MP AND KENNETH MUBU, MP

PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATIVE TO THE SADC PARLIAMENTARY FORUM AND DA SHADOW MINISTER OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND COOPERATION

Report on the current situation in Zimbabwe

On 27th July 2009, we embarked on a three day fact-finding educational mission to Zimbabwe. We learnt two fundamental things:

(1) that the inclusive Government of National Unity and specifically the role of the Movement for Democratic Change (main and breakaway incarnations) in elevating economic growth and service delivery deserve our fullest support, and

(2) that President Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF should be held to account for failing to honour the SADC Judicial Tribunal's ruling on land seizures and, given the reports that he is mobilising his well-organised paramilitary terror apparatus in the countryside, they should be actively restrained by SADC and specifically by the South African President, Jacob Zuma, as its Chairperson, to abide by the Global Political Agreement (GPA) to which Mugabe attached his signature.

As Members of the South African Parliament with regional and global affairs portfolios we call on President Zuma to:

Insist that President Mugabe do everything in his power to return the farms to Michael Campbell and the 76 other South African litigants as legally required by the SADC Judicial Tribunal;
Be prepared to - in collaboration with other agencies - send enough election monitors to cover every voting station in time for the forthcoming referendum and any elections flowing from that;
By assisting the Joint Monitoring and Implementations Committee (JOMIC) of the Global Political Agreement (GPA), keep President Mugabe and Prime Minister Tsvangarai to its terms and schedules including the writing of a new Constitution, the introduction of the rule of law, free political activity, freedom of assembly and association, security of persons, freedom of expression and other key elements as contained in the GPA; and finally
As ZANU-PF and President Mugabe appear to be mobilising for war against their own citizens and as they have without fail at every moment in the past used national elections to terrorise the Zimbabwean people, we believe it is appropriate to request Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea to desist funding Mugabe's war machine and for South Africa to impose an arms embargo on Zimbabwe.
A full report follows.

FULL REPORT ON THE CURRENT SITUATION IN ZIMBABWE:

By Dr Wilmot James, MP (Democratic Alliance) & Parliamentary Representative to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum.

Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga is the Minister of Regional Integration and International Co-Operation in the inclusive Zimbabwean government of national unity. With a last name that long, ‘rather call me Priscilla' she says. A striking and forceful woman, it is astonishing to us that she has retained her sense of humour.

A month ago, ten heavily armed men beat up the security guard at her home and proceeded to assault the housekeeper, a visiting friend and her husband -an orthopedic surgeon. They had beaten her husband so badly that he is unable to recognize her. Nothing was stolen.

The men knew that Misihairabwi-Mushonga was absent. She was traveling at the time. This was no ordinary crime. Still, she reaches deep within her to say that she is determined to make the inclusive government work.

We were in Zimbabwe to bear witness to developments there. I was in Zimbabwe last in 1995 leading a team of MPs and academics on a study tour of migration patterns. It is today a country devastated by atrociously bad government and a vicious war led by Robert Mugabe's ZANU PF against his own people.

Zimbabwe writhes in pain and sorrow. The scale of destruction is summarized in some cold statistics. The economist John Robertson remarks that at its best performance in the late 1990s Zimbabwe's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was the same as the city of Durban. Today it is the same as Bloemfontein's.

Zimbabwe has a population of 8 million. Do the mental arithmetic and you will have some sense of the scale of the misery. We learnt from the non-governmental organisation Justice for Agriculture that Zimbabwean agriculture has the capacity to produce 400,000 tonnes of wheat. The 2009 harvest will be 12,000.

The railways are not running. Coal has to be transported by truck, that is why electricity supply is annoyingly spotty. Harare has no garbage collection. A private commercial firm will collect your garbage for a fee. Water runs through old and leaking pipes.  Sanitation is beyond Dickensian. The poor - the overwhelming majority - live in an area known colloquially as the ‘sewer'.

In the countryside, the source of Zimbabwe's wealth, 1.3 million ordinary Zimbabweans have been affected by the land seizures. ‘Little has been done' reads a report prepared by the Research and Advocacy Unit ‘to investigate the means by which ... a population of at least 1.3 million farm workers was subjected to 8 long years of political violence, intimidation and torture.'[1] Some have remained, others are ‘internally displaced' and yet others are refugees in South Africa and elsewhere.

The farm workers became destitute because of the land invasions that masqueraded as land reform. The 4,000 or so farmers whose land was seized employed the workers. Former farmers at Justice for Agriculture shared with us their tales of woe about their homes and properties lost.[2]

There is Ben Freeth whose farm was famously invaded by Zanu-PF thugs and whose bloodied face became the tragic expression of widespread land theft. Unfortunately we could not visit his farm. Freeth explained. The thugs turned up one day, seized the farm, beat him and his family up. They let him and his family stay in a small part of the large farm and compelled them to continue farming. Now that the harvest is due, they come like locusts, use Freeth's harvesting equipment and steal his crop worth US$4million.

For a government to perversely ruin the material basis of the country it governs' survival and growth makes to the uninitiated no sense at all. We learn that the explanation for this suicidal behaviour is as follows: ZANU PF under Mugabe became a corporate-military entity that had to constantly find largesse to feed itself and its supporters.

ZANU PF sucked the state dry. It helped itself to foreign currency. Then it raided the pension funds. ZANU PF helped itself to private bank accounts. It seized farms. Then, like locusts they simply came and took the harvests. But their number is beginning to be up: there are few available farms and little foreign currency left. There is already talk of drought for 2010, which is a warning - a lie - that next year's harvests will also be taken, for how else would one explain the national production statistics for what it is.

For this reason, we heard from credible sources that Mugabe is talking to Venezuela, Cuba and Korea to fund a war-chest in preparation for the referendum and election following on the implementation of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) brokered by former President Thabo Mbeki on behalf of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).[3]

It is only possible to do this, South Africans should note, if you do not have good governance. ZANU PF fused with and became indistinguishable from government. Parliament exercised little to no oversight over the executive. Mugabe ran the Treasury and the Reserve Bank as if they were his personal bank accounts.

It is only possible to have a government that may raid private bank accounts and pension funds if the judiciary is politically pliable, corrupt and obsequious. A truly independent judiciary protects citizens against the abuse of power. Mugabe lives in contempt of this fundamental democratic principle.

I wrote to President Jacob Zuma (on 11 June 2009) about Mugabe's contempt of the SADC's Tribunal finding declaring him to be in breach of a ruling that required government to make all efforts to return seized farms to a Mr William Campbell and 76 others litigants.[4] We may legitimately raise our concern because Campbell and the 76 others are South Africans working there, though of course the land invasions affect almost all farmers and is therefore a major issue of social-ethical principle.

Mugabe responded with dismissive impunity, describing the SADC -Zimbabwe is a signed-up member - Tribunal's judgment as ‘nonsense' and of ‘no consequence'.  As head of the SADC, President Jacob Zuma is duty bound to call Mugabe to account. He has not yet done so.

Prior to our visit we did not appreciate how well oiled is Mugabe's repressive machinery. It is the one thing - in addition to his personal assets stolen from the Zimbabwean citizens - which he maintains with care. Under his personal control he has a paramilitary machine consisting of soldiers, thugs, the so-called war veterans and ZANU political commissars. There are the hit squads. The police also collaborate, though some - regrettably few - local cops part of the local community do their best to ameliorate the human misery. This machine is built upon Ian Smith's legacy, bolstered during the pacification of Matabeleland in the 1980s and strengthened at every election or national event since independence. Mugabe unleashes his violence with unrestrained fury against his people as if he is an angry school principal legitimately handing out corporal punishment to his naughty children, as any good - in his case deeply misguided - Catholic pater familias would.

The Human Rights NGO Forum established that during 2008 alone there were 6 politically-motivated rape cases, 107 murders, 137 abductions and kidnappings, 1 913 assault cases, 19 instances of disappearance, 629 cases of internal displacement and 2 532 violations on freedoms of association and expression.[5] These were the reported cases, the tip of the iceberg. Cumulatively, since independence, Mugabe and his cronies surely have a record that would lead them to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

We are told that the climate of fear has eased. We speak with a very impressive young businessman Nigel Chanakira, owner of the Kingdom Bank and a chain of supermarkets, who says that he feels and experiences less trepidation, a sentiment echoed by many other individuals. Chanakira is no political patsy, as he spent many bouts in jail. If this is a relaxed police state, it must have been truly awful at its worst.

It appears though as if Mugabe is stirring that this is a calm before the storm. Fiona Forde reported that Mugabe has indeed been stockpiling modern weapons.[6] She cites a study by the respected Belgian research group International Peace Information Service (IPIS) to say that on 28 August 2008 a first of many arm shipments containing 32 tons of 7.62mmx54 cartridges was flown from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Harare (by Enterprise World Airways using a very old Boeing 707-3B4C aircraft registered as 9Q-CRM). On 30 August a second shipment of 20 tons of 7.62mmx39 cartridges used in AK-47s arrived. That is a lot of bullets to be used not for a defence of borders or war on external enemies but against, as has been the past pattern, their own citizens. The ammunition arrived in Zimbabwe, says Forde, after an arms consignment from China was turned away from Durban only to be flown into Harare by way of Angola. This one included mortar bombs, rockets and more ammunition. Zimbabwe itself does not have legislation regulating the importing and exporting of weapons and, as a result, no one within the country is providing oversight of what Mugabe is up to with the result that the Zimbabwe executive and ZANU-PF are circumventing whatever sanctions - the European Union's in particular - in existence.

We regret to report that our country South Africa is planning to export 7.62 and 9 mm ammunition to Zimbabwe. Our colleague David Maynier MP recently revealed - on 2 August 2009 - that Parliament's National Conventional Arms Control Committee is considering authorizing more than a million rounds of both types of bullets for export there. There is no question that the bullets will be used against civilians.

There are reports from credible sources of increasing paramilitary activity in the countryside, especially in the Shona populated areas. Hit squads are still busy. Land invasions have not ceased. The judicial machinery is still being used for ZANU-PF ends. The MDC has lost its majority in Parliament because of spuriously motivated arrests of MPs.  During the week of our visit NGOs were warned to not get involved beyond charity work. It might be that the repression has waned some but no one is under any illusion that Mugabe has lost any of his instincts to survive and that he is willing and able to use all he has without conscience to stay in control.

Still, the inclusive government has for now held and is, by all accounts, the only game in town. We speak with the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Moses Mzila-Ndlovu who is adamant that the SADC must do everything in its power to actively and robustly monitor the implementation of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) brokered - some say he was heavily biased towards ZANU-PF - by former President Thabo Mbeki.[7] Our assessment is that SADC is weakened by the inherent compromise of its membership consisting of (less than a few) democracies, (more) part-democracies and (many) authoritarian regimes and its repeated failure to sanction its members for breaking its own rules.

We call on President Zuma to do everything is his power to restrain Mugabe from pursuing another round of pacification by terror. This time he will take a lot more than his country down with him. We are delighted that President Zuma has met with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangarai who has been in South Africa to solicit investments that would kick-start their economy. South African retail businesses have a presence there. There is room for expansion in all sectors, especially energy, transport and retail. Only should we do so if we also effectively restrain Mugabe, for his game is up.

In sum, we call on President Zuma to consider:

Insisting that President Mugabe do everything in his power to return the farms to Michael Campbell and the 76 other South African litigants as legally required by the SADC Judicial Tribunal;
Be prepared to - in collaboration with other agencies - send enough election monitors to cover every voting station in time for the forthcoming referendum and any elections flowing from that;
By assisting the Joint Monitoring and Implementations Committee (JOMIC) of the Global Political Agreement GPA), keep President Mugabe and Prime Minister Tsvangarai to its terms and schedules including the writing of a new Constitution, the introduction of the rule of law, free political activity, freedom of assembly and association, security of persons, freedom of expression and other key elements as contained in the GPA; and finally,
As ZANU-PF and President Mugabe appear to be mobilizing for war against their own citizens and as they have without fail at every moment in the past used national elections to terrorise the Zimbabwean people, we believe it is appropriate to request Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea to desist funding Mugabe's war machine and for South Africa to impose an arms embargo on Zimbabwe.
[1] Human Rights Violations and Losses Suffered by Commercial Farmers and Workers in Zimbabwe from 2000 to 2008: An Executive Synopsis (Research and Advocacy Unit for Justice for Agriculture and GAPWUZ, 2008, Harare) p.1.

[2] A Just Solution (Justice for Agriculture Trust, Harare, 2009).

[3] Agreement between the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (SANU-PF) and the two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formations, on resolving the challenges facing Zimbabwe (Harare, 15 September 2008).

[4] Dr Wilmot James, MP, Parliamentary Representative to SADC PF, to President Jacob Zuma (11 June 2009). Receipt of the letter has not been acknowledged nor has a reply been forthcoming.

[5] Political Violence Report December 2008 (Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, 13 February 2009, Harare) p.2.

[6] Sunday Independent (12 July 2009).

[7] Report on Strengthening Monitoring Mechanisms of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) though appropriate Media Strategy hosted for Journalists (Harare, 22 May 2009).

Issued by the Democratic Alliance

HARARE — A Zimbabwean newspaper banned nearly six years ago has won a new licence to resume printing, documents showed Friday, as the BBC and CNN were allowed back into the country after restrictions were eased.

The Daily News, a popular newspaper renowned for it willingness to criticise President Robert Mugabe, survived bombings of its premises and arrests of its journalists until authorities finally shut it down in September 2003.

Its publishers, Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, have repeatedly tried to challenge the ban without success.

But the head of a special government committee set up to look into The Daily News case has now written a letter to the company informing that they can resume publishing.

"This letter serves to advise you that your application for registration as a mass media provider was successful," read the brief letter by Edward Dube, head of the committee, dated July 30, 2009.

Mugabe's government introduced stringent media laws in 2002 which essentially banned foreign reporters and privately-owned daily newspapers.

Under the unity deal that brought together Mugabe with his erstwhile rival Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister in February, the government is meant to commit to greater media freedom.

A few steps have been taken. In addition to The Daily News, two new private dailies are in the works for Zimbabwe.

Local journalists last month won a court case that found reporters no longer need government accreditation to perform their work.

The BBC said Thursday that Zimbabwe had lifted its ban on the broadcaster, which has had no official presence in the country since 2001, when its Harare correspondent was told to leave the country.

CNN also said Zimbabwe agreed last week to allow it to resume working in the country.

But media watchdogs and journalists' groups were quick to note that journalists are still being prosecuted.

Two senior journalists were charged with publishing falsehoods about the detention of 18 activists, after police raised the offices of the private weekly Zimbabwe Independent in May.

The government is so far ignoring the court ruling on accreditations, and still requires hefty fees from journalists -- 4,000 US dollars a year for Zimbabwean reporters working for foreign media, in a nation with a per capita income of 259 dollars.

State media remain tightly controlled and have a monopoly on the airwaves.

A new council with powers to regulate the media is still being formed, leaving it unclear how much power it will exert. The government's previous media commission lost its legal mandate in January, but has continued operating anyway.

"There have been no media reforms that have taken place," said Foster Dongozi, secretary general of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists.

"We believe in self-regulation by the media and not be statutes."

Media groups are pressing for a complete overhaul of the laws, but progress has been sketchy.

"As long as we have bad laws, there is no press freedom. What is needed is an overhaul of the media laws across the board," said Loughty Dube, chairman of the Zimbabwe chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa.

Greater media freedom is one of the key demands of western donors, who are insisting on political reforms before committing to major new aid to the unity government.

The country is seeking more than eight billion dollars in aid to rebuild the shattered economy. More than two billion dollars has been pledged, mainly from Africa and China.

A medicine woman who conned President Robert Mugabe’s government out of about 1 million US dollars by bamboozling ministers into believing she could tap diesel fuel from a rock was convicted of fraud at the weekend, state media reported today.

Rotina Mavhunga, who goes by the alias of Nomatter Tagirira, found an abandoned fuel tank in the bush near the northern town of Chinhoyi in March 2007.

She filled it with diesel, attached a pipe to the outlet and concealed it at the top of a rock, the Chinhoyi magistrate’s court heard.

She then summoned top government official to witness her "discovery."

At a signal, a hidden accomplice would open the tap on the pipe and the officials would gasp in amazement as refined diesel poured down the side of the rock.

A cabinet "task force" dispatched by Mugabe to investigate the claim returned to declare that Zimbabwe’s persistent fuel shortages were at an end.

Government officials and businessmen lavished money and vehicles on the medium until several months later, when a second group of ministers began to express doubt about the woman’s bona fides.

Judge Ignatius Mugova found Mavhunga guilty of defrauding the government of 500 billion dollars in the now disused Zimbabwean dollar, the equivalent of about 1 million US dollars, and of "misrepresenting to a public official" that she could conjure diesel from a stone, the state-controlled Herald daily reported.

The magistrate also named one of the country’s most powerful civil servants, registrar-general Tobaiwa Mudede, as "an interested party" in the fraud.

Mudede, who has run the country’s elections since 2000, had supplied 125 litres of diesel, which the mystic poured down the rock, the judge revealed.

When Mavhunga went on the run from police, she was hidden and fed by Mudede, Mugova said.

While finding his behaviour was "disturbing" the judge said he was not convinced Mudede was acting out of self-interest.

Many people who visited Mavhunga’s "shrine" were "gullible" and were clearly "frightened" of her alleged spiritual power, referring to reports that members of the investigating cabinet task force took off their shoes in her presence.

During the trial, Mavhunga would start growling in the dock before the terror-stricken public gallery, but the magistrate said she had been faking a trance to try and have herself declared unfit for trial.

Her conviction was passed "in absentia", as she had repeatedly failed to turn up after being served the summons, and was believed to be in hiding, the Herald said. Sentencing is expected later in the week.

Principals in Zimbabwe's national unity government reached agreement Tuesday on some of the issues troubling their power-sharing arrangement, said officials informed on a meeting Monday involving President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara.

Senior sources in Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party and the Movement for Democratic Change of Mr. Tsvangirai said the National Security Council which was created to govern the security services will now meet every Thursday, resolving a dispute over its convening.

Zimbabwe's military heads and security agency chiefs have until now refused to brief Mr. Tsvangirai on national security issues – some have vowed never to salute him.

Progress was made on a lingering dispute over the naming of MDC ambassadors. Sources said Public Service Commission Chairman Mariyawanda Nzuwa would meet senior officials of the three governing parties on the training and dispatch of MDC ambassadors overseas.

Sources said that of five diplomatic posts now vacant the Tsvangirai MDC formation would fill four, while the Mutambara grouping would be given one ambassadorship.

In addition, five governors named by the Tsvangirai MDC and one named by the Mutambara formation are to be sworn in next month, ending months of delay.

The three principals in the unity government also agreed to move ahead to establish a media commission and speed up reform of the communications sector.

But President Robert Mugabe was said to have said to have refused to budge on the vexed question of the tenures of Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono, reappointed by him late last year, and Attorney General Johannes Tomana, named to the post in late 2008 without consultation with the MDC despite signature of a power-sharing pact.

MDC sources said both party formations have asked the Southern African Development Community to intervene, presenting a report citing more than 700 alleged instances in which Mr. Mugabe and ZANU-PF have breached the global political agreement. It also detailed the prosecution of several MDC lawmakers and harassment of other activists.

Political observer Andrew Meldrum, senior editor at the Global Post in Boston and a Harvard University lecturer, told reporter Blessing Zulu of VOA's Studio 7 for Zimbabwe that the latest agreement is a small but positive step.

Elsewhere, MDC sources told VOA that party members were becoming impatient with Mr. Tsvangirai for what they called a softly-softly approach dealing with Mr. Mugabe.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a minister in the Tsvangirai formation told VOA that “everyone wants to see finality once and for all.”

However, London-based political analyst Brilliant Mhlanga of the University of Westminster told VOA reporter Ntungamili Nkomo that members of the Tsvangirai MDC formation should back their leader despite the lack of progress.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Thursday said some white farmers would be spared under his controversial land reforms, and urged Britain to compensate owners of property seized for redistribution.

"It's not every white farm which will be taken. Not necessarily," Mugabe said in reply to the leader of the predominantly white Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) at a conference to lure investors.

"The responsibility of compensation rests on the shoulders of the British government and its allies," he said.

"We pay compensation for developments and improvements. That's our obligation and we have honoured that. Above all Zimbabwe upholds the sanctity of property rights.

"Sure there must be some compensation. Let's join hands and appeal to the British."

The land reforms, launched in 2000, aimed to resettle black Zimbabweans on 4 000 white-owned commercial farms, but the process was marred by politically charged violence.

The scheme has drastically reduced agricultural production, which once accounted for 40% of the economy, as most of its beneficiaries lacked both farming equipment and expertise.

Mugabe's statements came as the CFU reported fresh invasions of white-owned farms.

He accused the farmers of taking sides with the British, whose relations with Zimbabwe were strained over the land reforms launched ostensibly to redress historical land imbalances.

"The farmers have let themselves down," he said. "They have tended to side with the British."

Mugabe said conditions in Zimbabwe favoured investment following the formation of a coalition government with his long-time rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, and opposition faction leader Arthur Mutambara.

"The formation of the inclusive government has strengthened our stable political environment, making us more conducive to investment promotion," he asserted.

The international investment conference aimed at attracting local and foreign investment will end on Friday.

Hellen Frizt
23 June 2009

 Kigali — HARARE - Zimbabwe could be harboring as many as six former top soldiers in the Rwandan army wanted in connection with the 1994 Genocide which left over a million people dead.

The six were senior military officers in the regime of former Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana, which is accused of masterminding the Geenocide against Tutsis.

The former soldiers from the then Armed Forces of Rwanda (FAR) fled Rwanda when then Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels led by president Paul Kagame, seized control of Kigali and put to an end the 100 days of blood-letting.

Sources this week said the six former senior Rwandan army officers were based in Harare where they were reportedly running thriving business ventures. They have all reportedly changed their identities and assumed new names.

Although there was no official confirmation from authorities in both Harare and Kigali, an African Rights Report released recently revealed several former top Rwandan army officers who participated in the Genocide are scattered all over southern Africa mainly in countries such as Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

The top former army officers are wanted in Kigali and by an international tribunal trying Genocide suspects in Arusha, Tanzania.

Sources within the refugees' community said genocide suspects were living comfortably in Harare running business ventures.

"They are in Harare running their businesses," said one refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). "But it's difficult to track them down because they have all changed their identities but I know that they are about six staying here."

Some years ago refugees from the DRC demonstrated at Tongogara Refuge Camp, about 350 KM south east of the capital, demanding that some refugees from Rwanda be removed from the camp because they participated in the Genocide. The demonstration was quelled by the police.

Sources in Harare said the former top military men came to Zimbabwe in 1996 after initially being based in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Officials from the United Nations refugees' agency in Harare, United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), declined to comment on the issue.

An official from the department of social welfare in Harare said he was aware of such accusations but insisted divulging such information was sensitive and could compromise their work.

Zimbabwe is also home to former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariem, who together with several of his kinsmen fled their motherland after a rebel movement, which is now in power, overran the country. Mengistu is wanted for the murder of hundreds of his former political nemesis.

Relatives of former Liberian strongman Charles Taylor are also staying in Harare also running thriving business operations in the Zimbabwean capital.

Another country accused of harbouring alleged fugitives include Kenya where Felicien Kabuga is largely believed to be hiding.

Kabuga is Africa's most wanted war criminal with a US$5 million bounty on his head. He is alleged to have financed the Genocide.

Senior officials in Kenya's government are accused of harbouring Kabuga, an immensely wealthy businessman with vast business interests.

HARARE, June 4 2009 - Zimbabwean journalists have sued the government, including Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai over the Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity's decision to accredit journalists wishing to cover the on-going COMESA Summit.

 Press Freedom Day March BannerTsvangirai is cited as the fourth respondent in matter in which freelance journalists Stanley Gama, Valentine Maponga, Stanley Kwenda and Jealous Mawarire want the court to bar Information Minister Webster Shamu and the Permanent Secretary George Charamba, from forcing them to get accreditation for the summit through the Media and Information Commission (MIC). In the urgent chamber application (case number HC2355/2009) and filed on  2 June 2009 by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), the journalists argue that the MIC and its structures, which is the basis used by the ministry to call for accreditation, ceased to exist on 11 January 2008 after amendments to the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) in 2007.

The journalists also want the MIC to be barred from involving themselves in issues relating to the accreditation of journalists. They also want a declaratory order allowing them to cover the COMESA Heads of State and Government summit without the need to produce an MIC accreditation card.

Gama argues in the founding affidavit the MIC chairperson Tafataona Mahoso and his staff have been assigned to unlawfully accredit journalists for the COMESA Summit in a clear disregard of the law.

"It is common cause that amended AIPPA which came into operation on 11 January 2008 repealed sections 38 and 39 of the Act (the provisions which established the MIC and set out its functions) and replaced the MIC with a body to be known as the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC)," said Gama.

He said the amended act effectively dissolved the MIC and the first ZMC was to be established and would have the powers to "receive, evaluate for accreditation and consider the application for the accreditation of journalists".

"The amended Act effectively sought to limit executive interference in the workings of the Commission by removing the power to make regulations from the Minister (Shamu) and putting it in the hands of the ZMC. As such the neither the first and second respondents (Shamu and Charamba respectively) had, nor have any powers in relation to accreditation of journalists," argues Gama.

He further argues that the minister could not purport to exercise regulatory power unless and until it was with written authorisation of such from the ZMC, as stipulated in 52 of AIPPA.

Gama also refers to Tsvangirai's comments of 21 May 2009 that as a result of the amendments to AIPPA, the MIC ceased to exist.

"There is presently no legal obligation for foreign or local journalists, media houses or news agencies to apply for accreditation until the Media Commission is established and a new framework put in place," said Tsvangirai during a press conference last month.

However the ministry published notices in the Herald and The Sunday Mail instructing journalists to seek accredit for the COMESA summit. Journalists with "valid MIC accreditation cards" and those from the COMESA region would not have to pay accreditation fees while those from outside will have to pay US$150.

"I believe the action of the 1st and 2nd respondent are not only unlawful but also infringe on my freedom of expression and my right to access and disseminate information without unlawful hindrance. Further the actions are infringing on my right to freely carry out my lawful profession and earn a living," said Gama praying that the matter should be heard on an urgent basis to enable him to cover the summit.

After his first 100 days in office Zimbabwe's new Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has given his assessment of the progress of the new unity government.

Peta: Isn't the number of Zimbabweans still streaming into South Africa a vote of no confidence in this new government?

Tsvangirai: These people are economic refugees and I can understand why they are flooding into South Africa. They are coming for job opportunities. This government has only been in place for three months. You cannot create jobs in three months especially with the level of economic decay we have experienced.

Peta: But for economic recovery don't you need a massive injection of aid from Western countries which remain reticent because Mugabe is continuing to flout the rule of law?
Tsvangirai: There has been some positive engagement with them. They have moved from total disregard of what has happened to scepticism and now they are saying there is progress, though not sufficient. So they all accept that there is change taking place and that change must be consolidated.

They will eventually open (their purses). But any delays in giving Zimbabwe lines of credit and balance of payments support delays the recovery process and worsens the plight of the people of Zimbabwe.

Peta: Is it likely donors will provide money when violence continues on the farms, journalists are being harassed and your supporters are being jailed?

Tsvangirai: There are incidents in which it is reported that there are invasions on one or two farms but it's all blown out of proportion… We have investigated examples of those so-called farm invasions.

We have asked the minister of lands (Zanu-PF) to give us a detailed report of what has been happening over all these so called farm invasions and the outcry over that… We must also proceed with the land audit and setting up the land commission to resolve these disputes once and for all. (And) we want the full restoration of the rule of law.

Peta: How would you generally rate the performance of the government of national unity (GNU) in the first 100 days?

Tsvangirai: You need to look at both the performance of the government and the implementation of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) that gave rise to the unity government. The two go hand in hand. Government has consolidated itself as a coalition government. But of course there are problems with the political agreement, which I think are not insurmountable.

The major concern has been the slow pace in implementing some of the outstanding issues in the GPA but we have hammered out almost 90 percent of them. There are a few areas of conflict but a large number have been resolved…

Peta: Why has it taken so long to clear the outstanding issues?

Tsvangirai: It's a number of factors. I was away for almost a month (after the death of wife Susan) and also the fact that you cannot resolve some of these issues automatically as they need careful negotiation.

Peta: Will Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono and attorney-general Johannes Tomana be removed soon since that has been one of your key demands?

Tsvangirai: I don't want to talk about individuals but the issue is being looked into by the inclusive government. We can't all be pre-occupied with Gono and Tomana at the expense of all the issues that the country is facing.

Peta: And what about the governors unilaterally appointed by Mugabe whom you also want fired?

Tsvangirai: There has been an agreement on that, not only on the formula but also on the issue of termination (of their contracts) which had been a sticking point.

Peta: By insisting that you will never pull out of the unity government, have you not put yourself at Mugabe's mercy because he can do what he likes? And aren't you overdoing your praise of Mugabe?

Tsvangirai: I am very much conscious of the leverage we have over the unity government… our confidence in the interim government is not cast in stone. I am saying so far, the government has consolidated.

Whether you like Robert Mugabe or not is not the issue. I am saying so far the unity government is working and it's working to the best interests of Zimbabweans… for the moment it's an irreversible process… but I cannot predict what will happen in future before the expiry of the transitional government.

(However) I don't foresee anything that will cause its rupture...

Peta: Are you committed to the unity government because you are now also on the gravy train, driving Mercedes-Benzes?

And what about your MPs disobeying your order to return cars unprocedurally dished out to them by Gono?

Tsvangirai: For goodness' sake, we are all earning only $100 (R820) a month. Is that a gravy train? These are petty issues to focus on. Cars allocated to the ministers don't belong to them but to the state. As for MPs, we have said there is a government scheme for them to access vehicles... (so there was no need to take Gono's second-hand Mercs). The majority of the (MDC) MPs have returned these cars except maybe one or two. So there is no question of ill-discipline in our caucus.

Peta: What about the insubordination of the army generals who still refuse to salute you - which you spoke about at the Wits Business School?

Tsvangirai: I did not say there is insubordination. I said there is an attitude which is prevailing which creates an impression in the public domain that there is reluctance to accept the inclusive government. I have not seen anything that demonstrates that they are insubordinate. It's all about personal attitudes. I cannot worry whether somebody has saluted me or not when there are more pressing issues needing my attention.

Peta: Do you agree that the sooner a new constitution is put in place and free and fair elections held, the better the chances are for a new legitimate government emerging out of those elections to raise aid for Zimbabwe's recovery?

Tsvangirai: A constitution-making process is now in place. You can't achieve a constitution in one day. But while we wait for a new constitution and fresh elections, we can't recline on our laurels and fail to do something about the immediate social problems the people are facing... opening of schools, hospitals and clinics.

We will consider the issue of elections after 18 months. Electoral dates were not defined in the GPA because we did not want to start in an election mode from day one in view of all that had happened.

Peta: You recently said government was broke. With hindsight do you regret having promised foreign currency wages in the first place?

Tsvangirai: No, no, no. We said we would pay civil servants allowances in foreign currency, which we have done. We will continue to pay that. But I have said that at the moment the government cannot move to define salaries in foreign currency outside the $100 allowance. I have called for more time. We will make an assessment at the end of May and as the revenues of the government increase - remember that no one is paying taxes - then we can look at the question of salaries.

What people were talking about was that they wanted $1500 salaries a month and I said 'let's be realistic'. That kind of money is just not there.

And I want to tell you that Zimbabweans are grateful for the allowances… because they can now go and buy something.

The goods are back in the shops. With R1 000, people can use R500 to buy groceries and live with their families.

Peta: During negotiations you demanded control of Home Affairs and the police but you reluctantly settled for sharing it with Zanu-PF. How has that worked?

Tsvangirai: It has worked fantastically. The two ministers have worked… very co-operatively together.

Peta: But is your Home Affairs minister powerless to control the police and halt the continuing arrests of your supporters? Surely you don't believe Jestina Mukoko and Co were really plotting to overthrow Mugabe?

Tsvangirai: The recent arrests were not political arrests. They were procedural matters. If you are given bail in a lower court and then indicted to a higher court for trial, you have to negotiate a new bail condition.

This is the mishap that occurred, especially with the case of Jestina Mukoko and others. These were not re-arrests but just a mishap to deal with their being indicted to a higher court. Either existing or new bail conditions had to be instituted.

Once the state has charged people and you try to interfere, there will then be accusations that you are trying to interfere with the due process of the law.

We say, well let the law take its course but it must take its course not selectively but in all cases. I don't believe the charges (against Mukoko and others) are valid. But they have to go through the due process.

If it's harassment, it will be proven in a court of law. I went through the same process - being accused of treason - but in the end I was acquitted. But the issue is that if the state believes it has a case, then it should bring people to trial speedily.

Peta: Mugabe has been refusing to swear in Roy Bennett as deputy minister of Agriculture. Will he ever take up his post?

Tsvangirai: Yes, Mugabe has been resisting. He is saying Bennett is facing serious charges. But we have been saying that yes, he is facing charges but you don't find him guilty before he has been tried by a court of law. Those are some of the things that have been irritating but eventually, we are not going to budge on the question of Bennett being deputy minister of agriculture. We have other ministers who have been charged. Biti and Matinenga are facing charges (but he swore them into office). It's therefore a question of personalities. My appointments in terms of the GPA are my sole prerogative and Mugabe cannot veto them. I hope we don't continue to create arguments over straight forward issues.

Peta: And Mugabe appointed permanent secretaries in complete disregard of you.

Tsvangirai: Those are among the outstanding issues which are now being resolved. We are dealing with that. In terms of the GPA, we are supposed to appoint these people together in a consultative process.

Peta: How does it feel working with a man (Mugabe) whom you defeated in elections and who continues sitting in a chair that is rightfully yours?

Tsvangirai: Yes, let's accept that we were bitter rivals. There was acrimony and vilification across the political divide between us. But we have agreed.

We have negotiated in a protracted way and we have agreed. Once you have agreed, you have to work together.

We are certainly working together in the spirit of advancing the GPA. My own personal views don't matter but I put the national interests first. The GPA defines the destiny of Zimbabwe.

Peta: How is your personal relationship with Mugabe?

Tsvangirai: It's a workable relationship and respectful. Yes we disagree but we don't disagree to the point of shouting at each other. We disagree by dialogue and we search for solutions to the problems at hand.

Government lawyers in Hong Kong are considering whether to prosecute two bodyguards looking after the daughter of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe for alleged assaults.

The Zimbabwean man and woman are accused of assaulting photographers Colin Galloway and Tim O'Rourke on February 13 outside a luxury house, where Bona Mugabe is living while on a university course in Hong Kong.

Galloway, 46, from, Britain, and O'Rourke, 45, from the US, were on assignment for a newspaper investigating the Mugabe family's links to the Far East.

They were allegedly attacked outside the house on the private JC Castle development in Hong Kong's Tai Po district.

O'Rourke claims he was grabbed by the neck and Galloway says he was gripped and bruised by a man in his 30s.

The three-storey home was reportedly bought in June last year by a middleman acting on behalf of the Zimbabwean leader and his wife, Grace, the Sunday Times newspaper in London reported.

Mugabe, 85, later denied he had bought the house, saying he was renting it for his daughter to live in with two friends while she studied at a Hong Kong university.

Police questioned a Zimbabwean man and woman about the incident.

A police spokesman said the case has been classified as common assault, and had been referred to the Department of Justice for advice. A file on the incident is understood to have been sent to the department in early March.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said, "We are now in the process of finalising our legal advice and we expect shortly to be in a position to advise the police of our decision."

The pair were employed as bodyguards to look after Bona Mugabe during her stay in Hong Kong but were not entitled to diplomatic immunity as they are not consular officials, a police source said.

Officers cautioned the pair after the alleged assault and told them to contact police if they had any plans to leave Hong Kong, the source said.

"Bona Mugabe will be leaving Hong Kong for her summer holidays soon with the two bodyguards so we believe a Department of Justice decision on whether to charge them with assault must be made soon," the source said.

Grace Mugabe was accused of repeatedly punching another photographer when he photographed her shopping in Tsim Sha Tsui on January 15.

Hong Kong's Department of Justice announced in March that the case would go no further as Mugabe, 43, is entitled to diplomatic immunity because of her status as the President's wife.