COMMENT - This is the loan extended to Zimbabwe by the late President Bingu wa Mutharika, and for which the Malawian government's budget was sabotaged and donor aid suspended. (Read:
(NYASATIMES) EU petitioned to suspend aid to Malawi over bankrolling Mugabe) Last week Joyce Banda devalued the Malawian currency, robbing the Malawian people of their savings and incomes, as demanded by the IMF and World Bank. President wa Mutharika is barely out of office, and Joyce Banda is reversing all the policies that Malawi was persecuted for. This is the New World Order in action. Do what we tell you, or you will be replaced by someone in the opposition, or now even someone in your own party. Irrespective of what your people want or need - no democracy, but remote controlled governments.
Malawi demands US$23m for maize supplies
18/05/2012 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
THE new Malawi government has dispatched a delegation to Zimbabwe to demand payment of US$23 million for maize sold to Harare last year. The country's Minister of Energy Cassim Chilumpha told local media that the money would help Malawi to buy fuel.
“The delegation left Thursday (May 17) to collect the money which we believe will play a crucial role in helping us buy fuel,” said Chilumpha.
Malawi sold 66,000 tons of maize to Zimbabwe but never collected apparently because the country’s late President Bingu wa Mutharika and President Robert Mugabe had a brotherly relationship.
Chilumpha said they expect Zimbabwe to pay US$12 million with the balance to be settled at a later date.
“In sense Mutharika never bothered about the payment and some of us thought it was an indirect donation,” said a senior government official.
Malawi has been plagued by fuel and foreign exchange shortages for almost two years – problems that helped spark anti-government protests last July in which at least 18 people were killed.
The economic situation has been exacerbated by tensions with key international donors and institutions that had been important sources of foreign exchange, including the IMF, which suspended a $79m aid programme.
Several key donors -- including former colonial power Britain -- suspended aid to the country, citing concerns about growing authoritarian tendencies in Mutharika's government.
But after Mutharika's sudden death last month, new President Joyce Banda has moved swiftly to restore relations with international lenders and donors.
Mugabe described Mutharika, who died after a heart attack after as a “great son” of Africa.
The Zimbabwean leader said Mutharika had “dedicated his professional and political career to the cause of Africa, all the time searching for innovative ways and strategies for improving the condition of its deprived and marginalised peoples”.
Labels: GEOFFREY VAN ORDEN, JOYCE BANDA, SANCTIONS
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Sanctions affecting trade, says South Korean envoy
Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:46
Sunday Mail Reporter
The illegal economic sanctions imposed on the country by the West have negatively affected trade between Zimbabwe and the rest of the world, South Korea’s Ambassador to Harare, Mr Kwang-Chul Lew, has said.
Speaking at a policy dialogue meeting organised by Sapes Trust in the capital last Thursday, Mr Kwang said
trade relations between his country and Zimbabwe have not been immune to the illegal embargo.
“These sanctions have had a negative impact on our relations. Reports that Zimbabwe is under sanctions have a psychological impact on business people from our country.
“There is considerable interest in Zimbabwe by South Korean businesspeople, but not much business has been conducted between the two countries because of the imposition of sanctions.
“Our embassy is currently working on a programme to give our business leaders the true picture of the Zimbabwean economy as a way of encouraging them to come and invest here,” he said.
Ambassador Kwang disclosed that businesspeople from his country are eager to invest in infrastructure development.
“We are interested in investing in the construction of roads and railway infrastructure and prepared to send our specialists to assist in those areas,” he said.
Mr Kwang hailed the cordial relations between the two countries.
“We have kept good friendly relations and some good fruitful engagements,” he said.
He said it was important for developing countries like Zimbabwe to adopt a protectionist economy so as to protect its interests.
“The policy (protectionist) is very natural otherwise the country’s economy will be completely occupied by foreigners.
“However, as the economy grows, the policy becomes less meaningful.”
Labels: AMBASSADOR, SANCTIONS, SOUTH KOREA
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The bogeyman of white supremacy
Wednesday, 16 May 2012 21:17
The documentary “Mugabe and the White African” is quite unbearable to watch, more for its outrageous propaganda content and much less for the vile and depraved image of Robert Mugabe it vainly attempts to portray — itself the evident credo to the authorship and intention of the film-maker, one Ben Freeth, an avowed Christian victim for the purposes of this documentary.
The pungent attacks on the character and person of Robert Mugabe have to be immortalised through literature and films — and this is precisely because Robert Mugabe has been diagnosed as a viral cause to a disease that threatens the soundness and continuity of white supremacy.
To reinvigorate the increasingly apolitical Western populace, it is important that African revolutionaries like Robert Mugabe, Kwame Nkrumah, Muammar Gaddafi, Abdel Nasser, Thomas Sankara and Samora Machel are portrayed as authoritarian with a zero sense of human decency.
This is why people like Simon Bright and Ben Freeth find it necessary to invest in reducing the 2000 rise of the black man in Zimbabwe to a compendium of Mugabe lunacy — even packaging it in books and films so as to immortalise the bastardised image of an African politician who has become the bogeyman of white supremacy.
Author and academic Blessing Miles Tendi recently had a panel discussion with film-maker Simon Bright and Crisis Coalition in Zimbabwe director McDonald Lewanika. This was after the sell-out showing of the propaganda film “Robert Mugabe — What Happened?” in Oxford.
As Tendi later wrote, Robert Mugabe the person continues “to captivate the British public.” This captivation is not a result of the British public’s independent view of Mugabe, but a true reflection of the propaganda model that has steadily manufactured public consent over the unacceptability of what Mugabe stands for in politics — disguised of course under the image of an atrocious conduct “towards his own people.” We will come back to what Mugabe actually stands for in global politics.
Tendi raises an important question on whether the interest in Robert Mugabe is about the real problems Africa is facing or is about other interests. He questions if Zimbabwe at this time has ever been worse than the Democratic Republic of Congo, or the troubled land of Madagascar. This writer would add the Sudans, Nigeria, Somalia, Mali, Guinea Bissau and even Egypt.
As Tendi concludes there seems to be an apparent “disproportionate amount of international focus” on Zimbabwe, compared to other more severe crises across the African continent. Zimbabwe only interests the West for the most daring thing that ever happened to it since the fall of colonial empires, most daring not only for Zimbabwe itself, but by way of history-making and the shaping of Africa — West relations.
The reclamation of land that happened in Zimbabwe in 2000 was not only outstanding in the principle sense of it all but in the manner through which it was executed. It was a departure from the West’s favoured roundtable approach where weaker nations are manipulated and arm-twisted into humiliating compromises that often perpetuate white hegemony at the expense of all others.
Land reclamation in Zimbabwe was done not by Mugabe or Zanu-PF party but by the masses of Zimbabwe. The people simply went out to occupy land that belonged to them and Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF only jumped in to provide leadership — more for their political ends and less for their prior commitment to the cause.
The commitment to reclaim land had been temporarily neutralised by the niceties of the Lancaster House roundtable talks where the nationalists emerged with a proud sense of success — envisaging themselves as incoming rulers even over the wealthy white commercial farmers. That became more important than dispossessing these people and getting them to vacate the black land they illegally occupied.
Tendi correctly notes that Simon Bright’s choice of interviewees for the production of the film “Robert Mugabe — What happened?” was nothing more than an effort to contrive a pre-conceived verdict on a man he seeks to portray as the villain behind the eviction of white commercial farmers in Zimbabwe. Of course Bright expectedly dismissed this charge for obvious reasons. He either has forgotten the real cause of his anger against Mugabe or he knows that such a cause is unsellable to any people with a sense of morality and conscience.
Edgar Tekere was chosen more for his later day political troubles outside Zanu-PF than for the more credible part of his life when he added the much-needed sense of radicalism to the liberation struggle. In his last days of political bitterness, Tekere became a target of Western agents seeking to legitimise their demonisation of Robert Mugabe.
If Tekere fell out with Robert Mugabe, it must mean Tekere is the legitimate voice to tell us how evil Mugabe is — so the reasoning goes. It is like trying to seek an objective characterisation of a woman from her ex-husband who blames the same woman for the breakdown of the marriage.
Geoff Nyarota has his own personal bitterness about how he left The Chronicle’s position of editor after the Willowgate scandal — to be honest an unfair predicament of the time. He tried so hard to use the Daily News as an opportunity to settle scores with old foes in the establishment.
But that did not make Nyarota the owner of The Daily News newspaper as implied by Bright when he wrote “Geoff Nyarota, whose Daily News newspaper was bombed . . .” It is important for Bright to realise that Nyarota is currently hitting back at the Daily News the same way he has been trying to hit back at Robert Mugabe for what he perceives to be the man’s vicarious liability for his unceremonious departure from the Zimpapers stable.
It is hard to understand how Nyarota can be an independent and authentic source of an objective rating on Robert Mugabe.
Simba Makoni was chosen for his departure from Zanu-PF in 2008, and as such his utterances must justifiably be seen from a political context of a competing rival. He collectively shares responsibility for Zanu-PF policies, good or bad, from 1980 all the way to 2008. This Tendi correctly outlined and it is hard to imagine Simba can provide an objective and honest view on Mugabe.
Lovemore Madhuku is a discredited and abandoned political entity. That is why his National Constitutional Assembly has crumbled after his unilateral amending of its constitution for the sole purpose of enabling him to retain power. Donors and supporters have abandoned Madhuku and whatever he stands for.
John Makumbe is the typical academic lunatic in the park. He long abandoned intellectual responsibility, and this writer once wrote about that, with Tendi partially concurring, but sharply rebuking this writer for selectively isolating Makumbe from a host of other culprits. Indeed the culprits are more than just Makumbe, but the man showcases extra outstanding insanity on the matter.
Bright chooses Makumbe as a credible interviewee simply on the basis of the man’s unverified claims of victimhood, and this has a lot of bearing on Bright’s own credibility as a researcher and a film-maker.
Wilfred Mhanda was arrested and detained in Mozambique during the armed struggle on allegations of betrayal, he tells us. True or false, the man’s post-independence life has not proved any better. He glorifies Lord Soames for rescuing him from the cells in Mozambique, continues to fellowship so well with those against whom the war he once commanded was waged, and he always takes his bitterness more to the white people than he does to his fellow blacks. Nathaniel
Manheru caught him at it in Avondale a few weeks ago, and he informed us so through his Saturday Herald column.
Trevor Ncube was chosen for his ownership of newspapers that are sympathetic to the anti-Mugabe rhetoric and that is not surprising. But that makes Ncube a weak witness, if not an incredible one.
Dennis Norman was obviously chosen to make the glowing praises of Mugabe’s early years in governance — praises for Mugabe’s compromising compliance with British and Western interests, including the mesmerising agreement to ESAP in 1991.
He took time to tell us how much President Mugabe is fond of the Western dress, and Bright is convinced that must be an earth-shattering revelation.
If a white man praises Mugabe for “liberation and development,” that should make the subsequent criticism on tyranny and dictatorship more valid — so the reasoning goes.
After interviewing these indisputably biased people Bright concludes that the interviews provide “a definitive account” of Robert Mugabe’s life. In fact the whole exercise provides a definitive account of Simon Bright’s worthlessness as a competent film-maker, and his unmeritorious pedigree as a researcher.
Simon Bright’s calculated idea is to portray Robert Mugabe as a hero who turned out to be a villain. This is a script he grabs from the hard work of the committedly propagandistic Western media, clearly with the intention of capturing an audience from the Western public. Good business thinking but incredible ethics!
Expectedly Bright informs us that his film has sold out in Amsterdam, Brussels, New York, Cape Town and the white community sections of Johannesburg. Why not in Harare, Lusaka, Gaborone, Accra, Kinshasa, Luanda, or Nairobi, one would ask?
As Tendi correctly asserts it is bad film-making for Bright to conclude his production by declaring “a legacy of genocide” for Robert Mugabe. This writer will unapologetically declare that there has never been anything like a genocide in Zimbabwe, and elevating unfortunate incidences of civil conflict to the status of genocide is an unforgivable abuse of the true victims of that episode, especially if the elevation is from a white person seeking to use the fate of black people to discredit another black person, and to pursue his own selfish ends. It becomes totally intolerable and absolutely unforgivable, not least when Mike Auret is deemed to be the definer of the alleged genocide, and the self-anointed custodian of Ndebele memory.
Bright concurs with Tendi that his selection of Mugabe as a villain was misplaced. His defence is that Robert Mugabe is “the subject that interests me.” Of course he is, not exactly because Mugabe is the subject in question, but because the land he allowed to be reclaimed by the people of Zimbabwe is the subject that interests Bright and his Western audience.
Bright flatly denies “misplaced sympathy for white farmers,” and argues that all he has is “an interest in what has happened in Zimbabwe under Mugabe’s leadership.” Strangely Bright goes on to accuse Tendi of “misjudging the complexities of Britain and Zimbabwe”. By reducing everything in Zimbabwe to Mugabe’s leadership Bright himself believes he is providing sound judgment on the complexities of Zimbabwe. Everything that has gone wrong in Zimbabwe has become “It’s Mugabe’s Fault” (IMF), Bright opines.
Bright even dares to challenge Tendi that the political culture in Zimbabwe has no other players but Mugabe alone. Contrary to what Bright says, his film spends a great deal of time explaining and lamenting the fate of the white commercial farmers; and he does so by extensively using the alleged plight of the “black opposition voters” as a catch button to attract sympathy for the white farmer, who we are told used to employ these “black opposition voters,” now made to be unemployed by Mugabe’s “unsound policies.”
Contrary to what Bright declares, his film is all about creating a psychological portrait of a villainous Robert Mugabe, and he openly expresses disdain that “Mugabe has made it his business to stand for Zimbabwe.”
Stripped of the Hitler content, Bright acknowledges through a Robert Mugabe quote that the Zimbabwean leader “has only one objective,” and I quote, “justice for his people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people and their rights over resources.”
How a man of such legendary principle can be turned into a villain by the mere act of an obscure film-maker remains to be judged by history and posterity.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in Sydney, Australia.
Labels: BLESSING MILES TENDI, PROPAGANDA, REASON WAFAWAROVA, ROBERT MUGABE, SIMBA MAKONI
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Zanu-PF: Fending off, fighting on
Friday, 18 May 2012 23:05
Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis
As the story of TB Joshua rages on, rages towards its denouement, I have been reminded of the church politics in England of the late middle ages. And of course church politics necessarily meant the Catholic Church with its many Orders, its vast real estate, its ever swelling coffers, all set against gargantuan appetites of its supposedly holy, otherworldly inmates, starting with the Pope.
Far reaching reforms suggested for the Church in the 12th and 13th century had come to spectacular grief, as dictates of happy secular life got the better of monks and friars, got the better of church dogma, philosophy and vows to a life of devotional privation. Gone and gone for good was the devotional self-abnegation of the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th centuries which had given these religious figures and orders a higher spiritual plinth, well ahead of ordinary men and women of their time. Wealth had slowly but inexorably driven out single-mindedness and the devotion of yore, bringing with it “the world’s slow stain”, to quote A R Myers.
The things of Martha versus Mary
The abbot and the rest of the church officialdom found themselves spending more time in managing accounts of the church, in growing the wealth of the church through extortionate tithes and other exaggerated charges for the redemption of the soul, than in fulfilling St Francis’ dicta: follow naked the naked Christ. Myers puts it beautifully: “It seemed to them (church officials) a solemn, even sacred, obligation to maintain the privileges of their house unimpaired; but such a view meant that the things of Martha tended to drive out those of Mary, and that to its tenants and subjects the monastery appeared not as a holy community but as a property-owning corporation, tenacious of its legal rights . . . The lure of wealth had ensnared the friars . . . ”
Fixed and focused on the here-and-now, naturally the hereafter suffered, with the monastic values of isolation, ascetic frugality and regard for work, prayer and the poor, giving way to parasitic venality. So changed, so degraded, so material, so secular was the church that none in its ranks could dare repeat the Carthusian “nunquam reformata quia nunquam deformata”, which meant “it needs no reform that has never been deformed”. It was this sybaritic givenness to pleasures of the world which triggered massive disenchantment with the Catholic Church, and with faith in general, giving rise to the great ferment we now call the Reformation.
Holy See and the Mafia
Yet in spite of these excesses which are as old as the medieval era, the Holy See is yet to give us a clean Catholic Church. Only last month, in April, the Vatican was rocked by yet another sordid scandal involving the burial in 1990 of a mafia mobster, one Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis of the infamous Magliana organised crime gang, next to a whole row of bishops and cardinals. How such a sinner, how this dead bloody mafioso could buy his way onto the sacred grounds of the Holy See, and then find his way into one of the ornate sarcophaguses (marble tombs) of bishops and cardinals in the crypt of Basilica of Sant' Apollinare, all to quietly lie there unasked, unmasked, until 1997, lie there undisturbed and peacefully until April 2012, lie there a pretentious neighbour to so holy men, no one, no one in this great church is prepared to say! And how only keys to such a holy tomb could only be in the hands of the gangster's wife, now late, again no one was and is prepared to say to this day.
Explosive Vatileaks
But Vatileaks dramatise even more bizarre dimensions to the story: the dead crook made too huge a monetary offer to the Church for it to refuse him a holy sepulcher. Much worse, there is very strong indication that De Pedis was not lying in the tomb alone. A mysterious caller to an Italian investigative television programme intimated the mafioso was in the company of the 15-year-old girl, Emanuela Orlandi, daughter of a prominent non-clerical Vatican employee who mysteriously went missing in June 1983, never to be seen again, whether in person or by remains.
The belief is that she was kidnapped and killed by De Pedis' Magliana gang, possibly by De Padis himself, on the orders of a powerful cardinal of American origins, all to shut the mouth of her father who knew too much on the arcane banking affairs of the Vatican. Apparently the little girl’s father who worked for the Vatican had stumbled on documents linking the Vatican Bank with the Magliana gang through one Roberto Calvi, dubbed “God’s banker”. In a spiraling mystery, Calvi himself was found hanging in London in June 1982 in yet another unexplained case of murder. He stood accused of stealing millions laundered on behalf of the mafia.
Dead in company
Only Monday this week was the mafia boss’ tomb opened after the Vatican finally granted authority to Italian forensic police. That authority had been very long in coming. On prising open the tomb, De Pedis was found there, intact in his dark blue suit and black tie of the burial day. But also tucked under his body in this three-layered sarcophagus were dozens of boxes containing unidentified human bones. Italy is still to establish whose remains these could be, but with the missing Emanuela in mind.
[Paul Crouch.]
Paul Crouch.
The story of TBN
Still my mind wonders to TBN, Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world’s largest so-called God channel. As I write, it is embroiled in a vicious family feud, the latest in a series of scandals to gnaw it, including one of a gay tryst involving a male employee and TBN’s owner, Paul Crouch. TBN is a multi million-dollar world Christian media empire with so many diligent followers in many countries, including Zimbabwe. Now Crouch’s granddaughter, Brittany Koper, has filed court papers in Costa Mesa, California, that include allegations of US$50 million in financial shenanigans. Her suit was followed by another one from a Koper in-law which details opulent spending at TBN, including on purchasing such items as private jets mansions in California, Tennessee and Florida, and a US$100 000 mobile home for Crouch’s wife, Jan’s dogs. TBN is exempt from paying any taxes. Now the police and Internal Revenue Service are interested.
So little God, so much gold
TBN was founded in 1973 on the philosophy that if the faithful sacrifice for their belief, God will reward them with material wealth. TBN raked in US$92 million in donations in 2010 and cleared US$175 million in tax-free revenue. In the same year, TBN declared US$800 million in net assets. Reports speak of a maze of other organisations run by the Crouch through which financial transparency gets soundly and gainfully defeated. And the fight that has spilled into the courts is over competing lavish lifestyles. Gentle reader, it is not for me to draw any lessons for you from the foregoing anecdotes. That is your business. Or to suggest any parallels with any persons living or dead, here or in West Africa. Again, that is for you. Or even to impute un-holiness in the body of Christ.
Tithes and bank accounts
What I am very clear about is that our immigration laws place most West African nations in category C. That means they have to apply for visas well before their day of travel. That has not happened in respect of our guest of honour. That might never happen if May 25 is the day. Much more, many in the MDC-T did not think the invitation was clever, let alone uniting. They think it is much worse now, with all this mud bespattered everywhere. But the story of Jesus between two robbers on the crucifix, the story of De Pedis between tombs of bishops and cardinals, is quite intriguing, suggesting compelling parallels from Zimbabwe's brisk politics nowadays. Enjoy the National Day of Prayer when it falls due, always bearing in mind the basilica accommodates cardinals and De Pedis, indeed that in a bank account, even tithes and the widow’s mite, all come in one colour or money, indeed build towards a +dollar!
Thank you Excellency Deborah!
I heartily thank Deborah Bronnert, Britain’s official lady here in Zimbabwe. I spared her a few weeks back when she made some not-so-charitable comments on our policy on indigenisation, and what she perceived to be its negative impact on the country’s ability to attract foreign direct investment. I would have politely reminded her that our “mother country” Britain gave us a long lecture whose delivery began in 1890 and ended in 1980, a lecture that Newcastle coal is never given away to the Japanese, let alone to Russians. Coal tenaciously remains a British preserve, a dark British family “silver” for all time, for all generations, for all governments — Labour, Conservatives or Lib Dem. We took the lesson to heart, carried it in our bosoms for all time. We hope to be good students, so good that even the teacher shall not be spared the full wrath of well grasped lessons.
Not party to the GPA
But thank you Deborah, Your Excellency, for your candid remarks on the GPA and the obligations it unfairly places on your country in respect of the costs of our land reforms. I want to quote you: “Well, we are not parties to the GPA, this was a Zimbabwean agreement and we have never accepted liability to fund the land reform although we did actually provide some funds for land reform, soon after independence. I think it was £44 million which we paid.” You went further, Madame Ambassador: “But we do have a problem with the way the land reform was undertaken and we feel it was unfair to the individuals affected. It had a terrible impact both on those running and managing the farms, those working on the farms and the wider Zimbabwean economy.” Then you concluded: “At some point I think we are likely to . . . support a future settlement but I think we are a long way from it and it will require quite a big political shift and a political settlement here for that to be taken forward.”
[Deborah Bronnet...we are not part to the GPA.]
Deborah Bronnet...we are not part to the GPA.
No alchemists please
We understood your English, forever being grateful that you put it so plainly that none lost your meaning in all its compelling fullness. As with other lessons from your great, great civilisation, we take this one to heart, too! Your country is not a party to the GPA. This is truly and correctly put and we hope this settles the matter definitively. That you spare us the need to remind you in the not-so-distant electoral future that GPA is, in your own clear English words, “a Zimbabwean agreement”. Needless to say it did not, does not, should not, concern foreigners from any clime — Britain, Europe included. Zimbabweans should and must be left alone to deal with their GPA, in the best way they know how. It cannot be a document that outsiders conveniently and alchemically turn into a whip with which to lash at us. Equally, it cannot be a conditionality invoked in our name, invoked against us. Indeed the few quiet months which have gone by, with no meddling from all outsiders of whatever hue, who have been so solicitous in the name of our welfare, have seen remarkable progress in our effort at finding one another as Zimbabweans, GPA Zimbabweans.
When all are fed up
And as should be clear to Madame Deborah, Mugabe is fed up, Tsvangirai is fed up, Ncube is fed up — all are fed up with one another and with the Inclusive Government that all are ready to move to the GPA’s last phase, its last assignment, which is elections. We need to be left alone, something which most people, including this our good British lady, seem incapable of. I sometimes wonder why my little country prompts such deep but unsolicited engagement and involvement. Let me illustrate. After correctly renouncing the GPA, Ambassador Bronnert then goes on to voice “a problem with the way the land reform was undertaken”. Well, she does not have to for I am sure that as the British ambassador here, and as a British citizen away from home, her plate is already full, already spilling with unresolved British issues crying out for attention. She does not have to carry extra burdens from, and of, Zimbabwe. In any case we are not likely to be thankful, to be grateful. How we do things here is part of the exercise of our sovereignty. She does not have to like it, she does not have to shed an impulse, whether of empathy or of revulsion. Which is what begins to rile me about this woman.
Big political shifts?
Her last bit on the requirement of “quite a big political shift and political settlement here” before British support for land reforms which she says do not concern Britain, is quite provocative, to say the very least. I will hate any political shift meant to please this solicitous girl or her country. My country and I are not bound to please her and her Britain, the same way her country need not please or even help Zimbabwe. To require political shifts and settlements, whatever these are, is to meddle in our own affairs. It is to invite Zimbabwean opprobrium and revilement. And that she tries to hide her racist concern for white former farmers here — towards whom she simulates impersonal detachment by referring to them as “those running and managing the farms”, deludes no one. We know fully well that her heart goes out to evicted setter farmers the majority of whom are of British extraction, with blacks she calls “those working on the farms” only being dropped in to mask this racialised advocacy.
That gives colour and political identity to the “big political shift”, to the big “political settlement” she hungers after, but which she might never live to see or celebrate. This ambassador has chosen to take us back to Labour’s politics of confrontation in order to wreck the engagement currently underway with the EU. She must be taken on; we must not shirk confrontation if her country, simply on crass grounds of ex-colonial legitimacy, thinks it owns this country, and controls people and its destiny.
Locating Deborah’s politics
[Buoyed by Deborah, we see the otherwise moribund CFU in a resurrectional stir.]
Buoyed by Deborah, we see the otherwise moribund CFU in a resurrectional stir.
Buoyed by Deborah, we see the otherwise moribund CFU in a resurrectional stir. Its president, one Charles Taffs rues what he terms the destruction of property rights and land tenure during our land reforms. “The attrition of these rights has impacted, not only on citizens, but also foreign investors. Compensation for expropriated investments is a pre-requisite to the restoration of the country’s image as a good place to do business.” You are left in no doubt that he is Bronnert’s “those running and managing farms”, and whose stability only returns through “a big political shift”.
Equally, you cannot miss the implied throwback to a pre-land reform discourse, in its a-historical conceptual form, and seeking to gloss over massive colonial land alienation, massive destruction of original property rights without a single dime for compensation. And since Deborah has repudiated British obligation to meeting costs of resolving this colonial land question, it is clear from whom compensation is being asked. And a political settlement that guarantees such compensation can only exist outside the framework of Zanu-PF-), indeed can only exist inside the framework of MDC-T with its neo-liberal political outlook.
Land, mines and indigenisation
In fact Taffs gets quite explicit in his disappointment that the MDC-T has failed to fight in the CFU corner, for the greater part of the past decade. Bemoaning the party’s naked weakness, Charles Taffs says: “What is the MDC’s policy on indigenisation, mining and land? It concerns us that all that they want to do and will hinge their election campaign on is to remove President Mugabe and Zanu-PF from power. That is what they have been trying to do in the past decade. At least Zanu-PF programmes are clear-cut and well known. It is about time the election became a contestation of ideas.” You cannot miss the clarity and coincidence of thought between Bronnert and Taffs, a coincidence which more than attests to the reactivation of a political common front involving the British government, settler farmers and the MDC formations. Equally, you cannot miss the fact that white interests strip the next election down to land, mines and the rolling back of the policy of indigenisation as it relates to both classes of assets.
The real role of white farmers
If there is anyone in Zanu-PF who thinks land is now a done deal, that land is now irreversibly transferred, I urge them to think again. The electoral question and agenda has hardly changed, has hardly moved an inch. Though numerically trimmed and economically weakened, white farmers remain belligerently hopeful for a return to their pre-land reform heyday. True, they may not have the money now but their hopes remain as implacable as ever. They may have fought a lonely war but today they think miners and industrialists are so upset and shaken by the policy of indigenisation that the front against Zanu-PF could be decisively broadened. Their frustration with the MDC formations does not amount to a capitulation, a surrender; rather it underlines a desire to challenge and hopefully galvanise the formations’ inert leadership. Or even to rattle it in a way that brings forward new blood in leadership. MDC weakness cannot be merely read from the attitude of farmers. Long broke, white farmers no longer count for much as financial benefactors. But they help rouse British opinion and with it, the British Government. This is why the Deborah-Taffs axis must be taken seriously.
ZCTU bogey
Equally, the divisions in the ZCTU might mean very little to the MDC vote. The ZCTU will throw its weight behind MDC anyway, the real issue being that its membership has been declining precipitously over the years. The real issue is for Zanu-PF to interpret its indigenisation programme in a way that engages this dormant worker-voter who is no longer part of the ZCTU anyway by virtue of the fact that he is either unemployed or self-employed. That is where the numbers are; that is where the effort should be, apart from the youth.
Down to zero
More critically, the link between the efforts of Britain and white farmers to “push the clock back”, and certain ministerial behaviours in the Inclusive Government must be established. While Zanu-PF has been focusing on indigenisation and its own restructuring, a vying wing within the MDC leadership which is linked to angry white interests, has been mounting a very serious comeback rear attack on land. That attack has depth, has been developing incrementally. It has now gathered enough confidence as to be openly bold and defiant.
[While Zanu-PF has been focusing on indigenisation and its own restructuring, a vying wing within the MDC leadership which is linked to angry white interests, has been mounting a very serious comeback rear attack on land.]
While Zanu-PF has been focusing on indigenisation and its own restructuring, a vying wing within the MDC leadership which is linked to angry white interests, has been mounting a very serious comeback rear attack on land.
The capacity of the new farmer has been under an inexorable attack since the start of the Inclusive Government, initially furtively, now blatantly. And this capacity has been whittled down progressively to a stage where, as with wheat farming, it has shrunk to zero! What is even more worrisome is that both affected farmers and authors of the land reform programme, that is, Zanu-PF, appear to have been wearied, to have been worn down to zero protest. And the MDC faction’s anti-land reform strategy has been overwhelming: nil funding for farmers, overwhelmingly erratic power supply to levels where as a farmer you think you are being sensible by not planting anything at all. And because you are being sensible, you are content with silent self-congratulations for your induced no-show on the land.
Subduing a sense of ownership
Three outcomes are immediately apparent. Land is fast becoming a dead asset whose emotional attachment and intensity to Zimbabweans is being precipitously lowered to become a rallying point for elections or against their possible loss. That is worrisome, deeply worrisome. Much worse, because the land lies fallow in your hands, with someone relentlessly pointing that out to you daily through politically contrived editorials, you begin to feel guilty about your owning and occupying it, indeed begin to regret that you were ever given it in the first place. And guilt is not the impulse for resistance, for assertion of one’s heritage. The sense of deservedness associated with ownership gives way to a new sense of failure and futility founded on low or nil productivity. Farmers are being set up for failure in order to induce a sense of self-contempt for ownership. And of course a people without a strong sense of ownership are ready to be subdued into a new, menial role of a worker. Need we wonder then that Biti is pushing for a jobs programme?
The domino effect
Much worse, with agricultural production heavily compromised, the whole economy has drifted towards a reliance on food imports. And with that decline goes all processes of agro-value addition, principally milling. This week we saw millers wailing through a huge advertisement. The mills have ground to a halt against flour imports, against zero wheat farming. It is a sign of things to come. Had it not been for tobacco, those involved in the manufacture of agro-implements would have been wailing too. With little activity on the land, no one comes for services. They will cry eventually, unless this trend is checked.
Weakening the defence of land
With the farmer impotent and inert, he ceases to be a homogenous constituency for political outcomes, including voting. He also begins to seek livelihoods elsewhere, away from the land. And as he does so, he harbors bitterness which is not always easy to causally link with the guilty fraction in the Inclusive Government. Already we have witnessed a situation where Made and Biti are being blamed in equal measure.
Yet Made only moves upon disbursements of funds by Biti. When culpability gets this blurred, you could be witnessing a seismic shift in attitudes. With power outages endured everyday, we begin to get used to Mangoma’s non-delivery on energy, a non-delivery that we never got to at the height of sanctions. We forget this has a direct bearing on the meaning of land reforms, especially at a personal level. And where the meaning has been lowered, few are motivated to resist politics of land reform reversal. In such circumstances, Ambassador Bronnert’s “big political shift” becomes feasible.
Blaming it all on land reforms
The MDC is not concerned about agricultural failures. These will be posted on Zanu-PF anyway. And as reports of likely imports from Zambia gather visibility, we have seen the return of that discourse that blames imports on land reforms, that see imports as an indictment on land reforms. That discourse does not recognise that from about 2008, the productivity trend has been upward, except in times of drought. Such that we can no longer trace low productivity to land reforms, but to aborted agrarian reforms, thanks to the anti-land elements in the Inclusive Government. The agrarian reforms which were making steady progress before the Inclusive Government, have now been denied their inputs components, principally finance, well before hitting their threshold.
[TENDAI Biti...The capacity of the new farmer has been under an inexorable attack since the start of the Inclusive Government.]
TENDAI Biti...The capacity of the new farmer has been under an inexorable attack since the start of the Inclusive Government.
The budget tool
All of which means what? Well, that we must take notice of the clear definition of white interests and the relentless pursuit of their realization, riding on the platform of forthcoming elections. As Taffs says, it is not the removal of President Mugabe as a political proposition which matters in the forthcoming elections; it is the land, the mines, and reversing indigenisation. And in this crucial election, MDC formations are being instrumentalised by these white interests.
The budget becomes a principal tool. Biti’s double thrust of refusing to plant for a national harvest, while wanting to harvest what God planted in Marange for more and more debilitating imports, is quite telling. And you notice together with Mangoma, he will not import power to drive our engines, to drive our farmers, to drive our economy. Only to import wines, mixed flour, stale chickens and some such needless goods we can grow here with better financial support. Zanu -PF has been allowing this to happen.
Fend, fight!
Is all lost? Of course not. The MDC formations are not ready for elections. Tsvangirai is all over the world, including in Austria looking for funding for his sellout politics. His party is deeply fractured, with the white lobby losing patience with his leadership, while also pushing the likes of Biti in what amounts to a negative campaign. Bennett’s recent outbursts should be seen that way. Much worse, as Eddie Cross’ most recent piece shows, the MDC-T know they will not win the forthcoming elections. I quote him: “Almost certainly it will be another GNU — but this time led by Tsvangirai as State President and the leader of a defeated Zanu-PF as first Vice President.”
This is an admission of a failure to win the forthcoming elections, seeking measly consolation in imaginary convoluted posts. An MDC outright win does not yield another GNU. That was the essence of his article tellingly titled “making progress”, and not “winning”. He is right, the MDC formations will not win. Zanu-PF will, which is why it needs to understand the politics and subterfuges of this dire moment. The land issue is back on the agenda; the issue of mining and mineral rights must be firmly on the agenda through the programme of empowerment which will constitute its central message in the forthcoming election. Both issues should be carried by Zanu-PF. This means as it fends off attacks on the previously conquered and occupied ground of land, it should at the same time, fight on in respect of the new and more exciting ground of mines and minerals.
Icho!
* nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Labels: CATHOLIC CHURCH, CHRISTIANITY, ZANU-PF
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Zanu-PF: Fending off, fighting on
Friday, 18 May 2012 23:05
Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis
As the story of TB Joshua rages on, rages towards its denouement, I have been reminded of the church politics in England of the late middle ages. And of course church politics necessarily meant the Catholic Church with its many Orders, its vast real estate, its ever swelling coffers, all set against gargantuan appetites of its supposedly holy, otherworldly inmates, starting with the Pope.
Far reaching reforms suggested for the Church in the 12th and 13th century had come to spectacular grief, as dictates of happy secular life got the better of monks and friars, got the better of church dogma, philosophy and vows to a life of devotional privation. Gone and gone for good was the devotional self-abnegation of the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th centuries which had given these religious figures and orders a higher spiritual plinth, well ahead of ordinary men and women of their time. Wealth had slowly but inexorably driven out single-mindedness and the devotion of yore, bringing with it “the world’s slow stain”, to quote A R Myers.
The things of Martha versus Mary
The abbot and the rest of the church officialdom found themselves spending more time in managing accounts of the church, in growing the wealth of the church through extortionate tithes and other exaggerated charges for the redemption of the soul, than in fulfilling St Francis’ dicta: follow naked the naked Christ. Myers puts it beautifully: “It seemed to them (church officials) a solemn, even sacred, obligation to maintain the privileges of their house unimpaired; but such a view meant that the things of Martha tended to drive out those of Mary, and that to its tenants and subjects the monastery appeared not as a holy community but as a property-owning corporation, tenacious of its legal rights . . . The lure of wealth had ensnared the friars . . . ”
Fixed and focused on the here-and-now, naturally the hereafter suffered, with the monastic values of isolation, ascetic frugality and regard for work, prayer and the poor, giving way to parasitic venality. So changed, so degraded, so material, so secular was the church that none in its ranks could dare repeat the Carthusian “nunquam reformata quia nunquam deformata”, which meant “it needs no reform that has never been deformed”. It was this sybaritic givenness to pleasures of the world which triggered massive disenchantment with the Catholic Church, and with faith in general, giving rise to the great ferment we now call the Reformation.
Holy See and the Mafia
Yet in spite of these excesses which are as old as the medieval era, the Holy See is yet to give us a clean Catholic Church. Only last month, in April, the Vatican was rocked by yet another sordid scandal involving the burial in 1990 of a mafia mobster, one Enrico “Renatino” De Pedis of the infamous Magliana organised crime gang, next to a whole row of bishops and cardinals. How such a sinner, how this dead bloody mafioso could buy his way onto the sacred grounds of the Holy See, and then find his way into one of the ornate sarcophaguses (marble tombs) of bishops and cardinals in the crypt of Basilica of Sant' Apollinare, all to quietly lie there unasked, unmasked, until 1997, lie there undisturbed and peacefully until April 2012, lie there a pretentious neighbour to so holy men, no one, no one in this great church is prepared to say! And how only keys to such a holy tomb could only be in the hands of the gangster's wife, now late, again no one was and is prepared to say to this day.
Explosive Vatileaks
But Vatileaks dramatise even more bizarre dimensions to the story: the dead crook made too huge a monetary offer to the Church for it to refuse him a holy sepulcher. Much worse, there is very strong indication that De Pedis was not lying in the tomb alone. A mysterious caller to an Italian investigative television programme intimated the mafioso was in the company of the 15-year-old girl, Emanuela Orlandi, daughter of a prominent non-clerical Vatican employee who mysteriously went missing in June 1983, never to be seen again, whether in person or by remains.
The belief is that she was kidnapped and killed by De Pedis' Magliana gang, possibly by De Padis himself, on the orders of a powerful cardinal of American origins, all to shut the mouth of her father who knew too much on the arcane banking affairs of the Vatican. Apparently the little girl’s father who worked for the Vatican had stumbled on documents linking the Vatican Bank with the Magliana gang through one Roberto Calvi, dubbed “God’s banker”. In a spiraling mystery, Calvi himself was found hanging in London in June 1982 in yet another unexplained case of murder. He stood accused of stealing millions laundered on behalf of the mafia.
Dead in company
Only Monday this week was the mafia boss’ tomb opened after the Vatican finally granted authority to Italian forensic police. That authority had been very long in coming. On prising open the tomb, De Pedis was found there, intact in his dark blue suit and black tie of the burial day. But also tucked under his body in this three-layered sarcophagus were dozens of boxes containing unidentified human bones. Italy is still to establish whose remains these could be, but with the missing Emanuela in mind.
[Paul Crouch.]
Paul Crouch.
The story of TBN
Still my mind wonders to TBN, Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world’s largest so-called God channel. As I write, it is embroiled in a vicious family feud, the latest in a series of scandals to gnaw it, including one of a gay tryst involving a male employee and TBN’s owner, Paul Crouch. TBN is a multi million-dollar world Christian media empire with so many diligent followers in many countries, including Zimbabwe. Now Crouch’s granddaughter, Brittany Koper, has filed court papers in Costa Mesa, California, that include allegations of US$50 million in financial shenanigans. Her suit was followed by another one from a Koper in-law which details opulent spending at TBN, including on purchasing such items as private jets mansions in California, Tennessee and Florida, and a US$100 000 mobile home for Crouch’s wife, Jan’s dogs. TBN is exempt from paying any taxes. Now the police and Internal Revenue Service are interested.
So little God, so much gold
TBN was founded in 1973 on the philosophy that if the faithful sacrifice for their belief, God will reward them with material wealth. TBN raked in US$92 million in donations in 2010 and cleared US$175 million in tax-free revenue. In the same year, TBN declared US$800 million in net assets. Reports speak of a maze of other organisations run by the Crouch through which financial transparency gets soundly and gainfully defeated. And the fight that has spilled into the courts is over competing lavish lifestyles. Gentle reader, it is not for me to draw any lessons for you from the foregoing anecdotes. That is your business. Or to suggest any parallels with any persons living or dead, here or in West Africa. Again, that is for you. Or even to impute un-holiness in the body of Christ.
Tithes and bank accounts
What I am very clear about is that our immigration laws place most West African nations in category C. That means they have to apply for visas well before their day of travel. That has not happened in respect of our guest of honour. That might never happen if May 25 is the day. Much more, many in the MDC-T did not think the invitation was clever, let alone uniting. They think it is much worse now, with all this mud bespattered everywhere. But the story of Jesus between two robbers on the crucifix, the story of De Pedis between tombs of bishops and cardinals, is quite intriguing, suggesting compelling parallels from Zimbabwe's brisk politics nowadays. Enjoy the National Day of Prayer when it falls due, always bearing in mind the basilica accommodates cardinals and De Pedis, indeed that in a bank account, even tithes and the widow’s mite, all come in one colour or money, indeed build towards a +dollar!
Thank you Excellency Deborah!
I heartily thank Deborah Bronnert, Britain’s official lady here in Zimbabwe. I spared her a few weeks back when she made some not-so-charitable comments on our policy on indigenisation, and what she perceived to be its negative impact on the country’s ability to attract foreign direct investment. I would have politely reminded her that our “mother country” Britain gave us a long lecture whose delivery began in 1890 and ended in 1980, a lecture that Newcastle coal is never given away to the Japanese, let alone to Russians. Coal tenaciously remains a British preserve, a dark British family “silver” for all time, for all generations, for all governments — Labour, Conservatives or Lib Dem. We took the lesson to heart, carried it in our bosoms for all time. We hope to be good students, so good that even the teacher shall not be spared the full wrath of well grasped lessons.
Not party to the GPA
But thank you Deborah, Your Excellency, for your candid remarks on the GPA and the obligations it unfairly places on your country in respect of the costs of our land reforms. I want to quote you: “Well, we are not parties to the GPA, this was a Zimbabwean agreement and we have never accepted liability to fund the land reform although we did actually provide some funds for land reform, soon after independence. I think it was £44 million which we paid.” You went further, Madame Ambassador: “But we do have a problem with the way the land reform was undertaken and we feel it was unfair to the individuals affected. It had a terrible impact both on those running and managing the farms, those working on the farms and the wider Zimbabwean economy.” Then you concluded: “At some point I think we are likely to . . . support a future settlement but I think we are a long way from it and it will require quite a big political shift and a political settlement here for that to be taken forward.”
[Deborah Bronnet...we are not part to the GPA.]
Deborah Bronnet...we are not part to the GPA.
No alchemists please
We understood your English, forever being grateful that you put it so plainly that none lost your meaning in all its compelling fullness. As with other lessons from your great, great civilisation, we take this one to heart, too! Your country is not a party to the GPA. This is truly and correctly put and we hope this settles the matter definitively. That you spare us the need to remind you in the not-so-distant electoral future that GPA is, in your own clear English words, “a Zimbabwean agreement”. Needless to say it did not, does not, should not, concern foreigners from any clime — Britain, Europe included. Zimbabweans should and must be left alone to deal with their GPA, in the best way they know how. It cannot be a document that outsiders conveniently and alchemically turn into a whip with which to lash at us. Equally, it cannot be a conditionality invoked in our name, invoked against us. Indeed the few quiet months which have gone by, with no meddling from all outsiders of whatever hue, who have been so solicitous in the name of our welfare, have seen remarkable progress in our effort at finding one another as Zimbabweans, GPA Zimbabweans.
When all are fed up
And as should be clear to Madame Deborah, Mugabe is fed up, Tsvangirai is fed up, Ncube is fed up — all are fed up with one another and with the Inclusive Government that all are ready to move to the GPA’s last phase, its last assignment, which is elections. We need to be left alone, something which most people, including this our good British lady, seem incapable of. I sometimes wonder why my little country prompts such deep but unsolicited engagement and involvement. Let me illustrate. After correctly renouncing the GPA, Ambassador Bronnert then goes on to voice “a problem with the way the land reform was undertaken”. Well, she does not have to for I am sure that as the British ambassador here, and as a British citizen away from home, her plate is already full, already spilling with unresolved British issues crying out for attention. She does not have to carry extra burdens from, and of, Zimbabwe. In any case we are not likely to be thankful, to be grateful. How we do things here is part of the exercise of our sovereignty. She does not have to like it, she does not have to shed an impulse, whether of empathy or of revulsion. Which is what begins to rile me about this woman.
Big political shifts?
Her last bit on the requirement of “quite a big political shift and political settlement here” before British support for land reforms which she says do not concern Britain, is quite provocative, to say the very least. I will hate any political shift meant to please this solicitous girl or her country. My country and I are not bound to please her and her Britain, the same way her country need not please or even help Zimbabwe. To require political shifts and settlements, whatever these are, is to meddle in our own affairs. It is to invite Zimbabwean opprobrium and revilement. And that she tries to hide her racist concern for white former farmers here — towards whom she simulates impersonal detachment by referring to them as “those running and managing the farms”, deludes no one. We know fully well that her heart goes out to evicted setter farmers the majority of whom are of British extraction, with blacks she calls “those working on the farms” only being dropped in to mask this racialised advocacy.
That gives colour and political identity to the “big political shift”, to the big “political settlement” she hungers after, but which she might never live to see or celebrate. This ambassador has chosen to take us back to Labour’s politics of confrontation in order to wreck the engagement currently underway with the EU. She must be taken on; we must not shirk confrontation if her country, simply on crass grounds of ex-colonial legitimacy, thinks it owns this country, and controls people and its destiny.
Locating Deborah’s politics
[Buoyed by Deborah, we see the otherwise moribund CFU in a resurrectional stir.]
Buoyed by Deborah, we see the otherwise moribund CFU in a resurrectional stir.
Buoyed by Deborah, we see the otherwise moribund CFU in a resurrectional stir. Its president, one Charles Taffs rues what he terms the destruction of property rights and land tenure during our land reforms. “The attrition of these rights has impacted, not only on citizens, but also foreign investors. Compensation for expropriated investments is a pre-requisite to the restoration of the country’s image as a good place to do business.” You are left in no doubt that he is Bronnert’s “those running and managing farms”, and whose stability only returns through “a big political shift”.
Equally, you cannot miss the implied throwback to a pre-land reform discourse, in its a-historical conceptual form, and seeking to gloss over massive colonial land alienation, massive destruction of original property rights without a single dime for compensation. And since Deborah has repudiated British obligation to meeting costs of resolving this colonial land question, it is clear from whom compensation is being asked. And a political settlement that guarantees such compensation can only exist outside the framework of Zanu-PF-), indeed can only exist inside the framework of MDC-T with its neo-liberal political outlook.
Land, mines and indigenisation
In fact Taffs gets quite explicit in his disappointment that the MDC-T has failed to fight in the CFU corner, for the greater part of the past decade. Bemoaning the party’s naked weakness, Charles Taffs says: “What is the MDC’s policy on indigenisation, mining and land? It concerns us that all that they want to do and will hinge their election campaign on is to remove President Mugabe and Zanu-PF from power. That is what they have been trying to do in the past decade. At least Zanu-PF programmes are clear-cut and well known. It is about time the election became a contestation of ideas.” You cannot miss the clarity and coincidence of thought between Bronnert and Taffs, a coincidence which more than attests to the reactivation of a political common front involving the British government, settler farmers and the MDC formations. Equally, you cannot miss the fact that white interests strip the next election down to land, mines and the rolling back of the policy of indigenisation as it relates to both classes of assets.
The real role of white farmers
If there is anyone in Zanu-PF who thinks land is now a done deal, that land is now irreversibly transferred, I urge them to think again. The electoral question and agenda has hardly changed, has hardly moved an inch. Though numerically trimmed and economically weakened, white farmers remain belligerently hopeful for a return to their pre-land reform heyday. True, they may not have the money now but their hopes remain as implacable as ever. They may have fought a lonely war but today they think miners and industrialists are so upset and shaken by the policy of indigenisation that the front against Zanu-PF could be decisively broadened. Their frustration with the MDC formations does not amount to a capitulation, a surrender; rather it underlines a desire to challenge and hopefully galvanise the formations’ inert leadership. Or even to rattle it in a way that brings forward new blood in leadership. MDC weakness cannot be merely read from the attitude of farmers. Long broke, white farmers no longer count for much as financial benefactors. But they help rouse British opinion and with it, the British Government. This is why the Deborah-Taffs axis must be taken seriously.
ZCTU bogey
Equally, the divisions in the ZCTU might mean very little to the MDC vote. The ZCTU will throw its weight behind MDC anyway, the real issue being that its membership has been declining precipitously over the years. The real issue is for Zanu-PF to interpret its indigenisation programme in a way that engages this dormant worker-voter who is no longer part of the ZCTU anyway by virtue of the fact that he is either unemployed or self-employed. That is where the numbers are; that is where the effort should be, apart from the youth.
Down to zero
More critically, the link between the efforts of Britain and white farmers to “push the clock back”, and certain ministerial behaviours in the Inclusive Government must be established. While Zanu-PF has been focusing on indigenisation and its own restructuring, a vying wing within the MDC leadership which is linked to angry white interests, has been mounting a very serious comeback rear attack on land. That attack has depth, has been developing incrementally. It has now gathered enough confidence as to be openly bold and defiant.
[While Zanu-PF has been focusing on indigenisation and its own restructuring, a vying wing within the MDC leadership which is linked to angry white interests, has been mounting a very serious comeback rear attack on land.]
While Zanu-PF has been focusing on indigenisation and its own restructuring, a vying wing within the MDC leadership which is linked to angry white interests, has been mounting a very serious comeback rear attack on land.
The capacity of the new farmer has been under an inexorable attack since the start of the Inclusive Government, initially furtively, now blatantly. And this capacity has been whittled down progressively to a stage where, as with wheat farming, it has shrunk to zero! What is even more worrisome is that both affected farmers and authors of the land reform programme, that is, Zanu-PF, appear to have been wearied, to have been worn down to zero protest. And the MDC faction’s anti-land reform strategy has been overwhelming: nil funding for farmers, overwhelmingly erratic power supply to levels where as a farmer you think you are being sensible by not planting anything at all. And because you are being sensible, you are content with silent self-congratulations for your induced no-show on the land.
Subduing a sense of ownership
Three outcomes are immediately apparent. Land is fast becoming a dead asset whose emotional attachment and intensity to Zimbabweans is being precipitously lowered to become a rallying point for elections or against their possible loss. That is worrisome, deeply worrisome. Much worse, because the land lies fallow in your hands, with someone relentlessly pointing that out to you daily through politically contrived editorials, you begin to feel guilty about your owning and occupying it, indeed begin to regret that you were ever given it in the first place. And guilt is not the impulse for resistance, for assertion of one’s heritage. The sense of deservedness associated with ownership gives way to a new sense of failure and futility founded on low or nil productivity. Farmers are being set up for failure in order to induce a sense of self-contempt for ownership. And of course a people without a strong sense of ownership are ready to be subdued into a new, menial role of a worker. Need we wonder then that Biti is pushing for a jobs programme?
The domino effect
Much worse, with agricultural production heavily compromised, the whole economy has drifted towards a reliance on food imports. And with that decline goes all processes of agro-value addition, principally milling. This week we saw millers wailing through a huge advertisement. The mills have ground to a halt against flour imports, against zero wheat farming. It is a sign of things to come. Had it not been for tobacco, those involved in the manufacture of agro-implements would have been wailing too. With little activity on the land, no one comes for services. They will cry eventually, unless this trend is checked.
Weakening the defence of land
With the farmer impotent and inert, he ceases to be a homogenous constituency for political outcomes, including voting. He also begins to seek livelihoods elsewhere, away from the land. And as he does so, he harbors bitterness which is not always easy to causally link with the guilty fraction in the Inclusive Government. Already we have witnessed a situation where Made and Biti are being blamed in equal measure.
Yet Made only moves upon disbursements of funds by Biti. When culpability gets this blurred, you could be witnessing a seismic shift in attitudes. With power outages endured everyday, we begin to get used to Mangoma’s non-delivery on energy, a non-delivery that we never got to at the height of sanctions. We forget this has a direct bearing on the meaning of land reforms, especially at a personal level. And where the meaning has been lowered, few are motivated to resist politics of land reform reversal. In such circumstances, Ambassador Bronnert’s “big political shift” becomes feasible.
Blaming it all on land reforms
The MDC is not concerned about agricultural failures. These will be posted on Zanu-PF anyway. And as reports of likely imports from Zambia gather visibility, we have seen the return of that discourse that blames imports on land reforms, that see imports as an indictment on land reforms. That discourse does not recognise that from about 2008, the productivity trend has been upward, except in times of drought. Such that we can no longer trace low productivity to land reforms, but to aborted agrarian reforms, thanks to the anti-land elements in the Inclusive Government. The agrarian reforms which were making steady progress before the Inclusive Government, have now been denied their inputs components, principally finance, well before hitting their threshold.
[TENDAI Biti...The capacity of the new farmer has been under an inexorable attack since the start of the Inclusive Government.]
TENDAI Biti...The capacity of the new farmer has been under an inexorable attack since the start of the Inclusive Government.
The budget tool
All of which means what? Well, that we must take notice of the clear definition of white interests and the relentless pursuit of their realization, riding on the platform of forthcoming elections. As Taffs says, it is not the removal of President Mugabe as a political proposition which matters in the forthcoming elections; it is the land, the mines, and reversing indigenisation. And in this crucial election, MDC formations are being instrumentalised by these white interests.
The budget becomes a principal tool. Biti’s double thrust of refusing to plant for a national harvest, while wanting to harvest what God planted in Marange for more and more debilitating imports, is quite telling. And you notice together with Mangoma, he will not import power to drive our engines, to drive our farmers, to drive our economy. Only to import wines, mixed flour, stale chickens and some such needless goods we can grow here with better financial support. Zanu -PF has been allowing this to happen.
Fend, fight!
Is all lost? Of course not. The MDC formations are not ready for elections. Tsvangirai is all over the world, including in Austria looking for funding for his sellout politics. His party is deeply fractured, with the white lobby losing patience with his leadership, while also pushing the likes of Biti in what amounts to a negative campaign. Bennett’s recent outbursts should be seen that way. Much worse, as Eddie Cross’ most recent piece shows, the MDC-T know they will not win the forthcoming elections. I quote him: “Almost certainly it will be another GNU — but this time led by Tsvangirai as State President and the leader of a defeated Zanu-PF as first Vice President.”
This is an admission of a failure to win the forthcoming elections, seeking measly consolation in imaginary convoluted posts. An MDC outright win does not yield another GNU. That was the essence of his article tellingly titled “making progress”, and not “winning”. He is right, the MDC formations will not win. Zanu-PF will, which is why it needs to understand the politics and subterfuges of this dire moment. The land issue is back on the agenda; the issue of mining and mineral rights must be firmly on the agenda through the programme of empowerment which will constitute its central message in the forthcoming election. Both issues should be carried by Zanu-PF. This means as it fends off attacks on the previously conquered and occupied ground of land, it should at the same time, fight on in respect of the new and more exciting ground of mines and minerals.
Icho!
* nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Labels: CHRISTIANITY, ZANU-PF
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Mr Commissar, Sir!
Tuesday, 15 May 2012 21:15
Tony Namate is a brilliant cartoonist. While I do not subscribe to his political thinking I can’t begrudge him his talent. From the sketches to the humour, he is good at what he does.
One of his cartoons I liked most depicted the late vice president Dr Simon Muzenda with his trademark jersey and jacket accosting a congress of baboons — an appropriate name I think for our noisy Lower House — soliciting for a parliamentary candidate. The dialogue box above one baboon, which was depicted scratching itself nonchalantly, was ‘‘I am sorry Mzee, but this year I am standing as an independent!’’
Dr Mzee had brought the joke on himself when he announced, in the run-up to the 2000 general elections, that even if Zanu-PF fielded a baboon as a candidate, true party cadres should vote for it.
He made the announcement as he decried the factionalism that had gripped Masvingo province, pitting the then so-called Muzenda and Zvobgo factions.
While Namate saw the humour in Cde Muzenda’s utterances, I doubt the grassroots did or do whenever their wishes are disregarded and a candidate is imposed. The top-down approach to intra-party democracy is a cancer that has afflicted Zanu-PF in recent years.
In fact Zanu-PF played second fiddle to the MDC-T in the House of Assembly elections in the March 2008 harmonised elections even though it led the popular vote coluntrywide precisely because of imposing candidates.
Though the crunching effects of the western economic sanctions regime had a lot to do with voting patterns in 2008, Zanu-PF was in a position to shake off the MDC-T challenge but two issues cost the party outright victory in the March 29 harmonised elections.
The first, and gravest one was the imposition of candidates by the Politburo and other higher echelons of the party at the expense of what the grassroots wanted.
We saw hordes of people camping at the Zanu-PF HQ in Harare, among them chiefs resplendent in their regalia, seeking to drive the point home, but they were either turned away or ignored.
The result was either voter apathy or protest votes. Zanu-PF ended up fielding two candidates; a Politburo candidate and the peoples candidate, in one constituency, splitting the vote in favour of MDC-T in about five constituencies.
The second and equally grave one is the sheer absence of principles among some party members like the two Zanu-PF legislators who secretly voted for Lovemore Moyo during the House of Assembly speaker’s contest and the blind mice who urged party supporters to vote Zanu-PF in the council, House of Assembly and Senate elections, and then Simba Makoni for president in 2008 oblivious to the fact that they were splitting the vote in favour of Tsvangirai.
In times like these, especially after the near miss of 2008, it should be self-evident to any progressive Zimbabwean that votes have to be cast on principle not personalities.
You vote for the party not its representative which is what happens in systems of proportional representation where you would not even know who the party will nominate to be your representative in parliament.
This is what Dr Mzee meant when he said even if Zanu-PF fields a baboon, party cadres must endorse the baboon regardless.
However such cadreship was missing in 2008.
The game in town was the self-defeating practice code-named ‘‘bhora musango” (protest vote), that saw President Mugabe trailing Tsvangirai in the first round of the presidential contest even though Zanu-PF, the party he leads, led the MDC-T in the popular vote nationwide.
Coming back to the Speaker’s contest, I had it on good authority that Zanu-PF Chief Whip Joram Gumbo, and Women’s League boss, Oppah Muchinguri were interested in the Speaker’s post. Gumbo having done extensive groundwork but both were shunted aside as the Politburo wanted Khaya Moyo, the party’s most senior member out of government, to land the post.
This spawned disgruntlement in party ranks prompting VP Mujuru to threaten dissenting legislators with expulsion if they refused to vote for the Zanu-PF national chairman.
Yet a simple, amicable way out would have been primary elections pitting Cdes Khaya Moyo, Oppah Muchinguri and Joram Gumbo with the winner taking on Lovemore Moyo.
This cancer in Zanu-PF that sees some leaders say no self-respecting party cadre should challenge another cadre with a higher rank in party primaries must be nipped in the bud. The grassroots carry the party, not the chefs.
Let the inter-party elections be real polls where one's standing in the party is not an issue but one's ideas and appeal to the electorate so that voters get the candidates they want.
However, judging by what has been going on in DCC elections countrywide, the lessons of 2008 have been forgotten as some ‘‘untouchable’’ party chefs are busy filling party structures with their own choices at the expense of the grassroots. President Mugabe blasted this practice during the burial of national hero Cde Edison Ncube at the beginning of the month.
‘‘They go around and say do not vote for so and so. Ndiwe ani? Kunyora tutsamba kuti ava ndivo vanosungirwa kuvhoterwa muDCC. You are destroying the party for which people like Edson worked so hard. Do your work. Let the people judge you. If they do not like you, they do not like you. We do not want impositions. No!”
I hope the national political commissar, Cde Webster Shamu, took notice and will walk the talk.
Zanu-PF must exorcise the ghost of 2008 by cleansing its ranks of dubious characters and putting an end to the cancer of imposing candidates, otherwise they needlessly concede ground to the hapless MDC-T.
Labels: CAESAR ZVAYI
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US$5m share ownership trust for Gwanda
Saturday, 19 May 2012 00:00
Bulawayo Bureau
PRESIDENT Mugabe yesterday laun-ched the fourth Community Share Ownership Scheme Trust in Gwanda as part of the indigenous economic empowerment programme. Thousands of people from Matabeleland South Province turned up to witness the launch where 15 mining companies and a cement manufacturer donated US$5 million to kick-start the Gwanda community development fund.
The companies pledged to give 10 percent of their annual profits for community development and ceded 51 percent of their shareholding to indigenous people.
The scheme is a countrywide Government initiative spearheading development and empowering rural communities by giving them 10 percent stake in all businesses that exploit natural resources in their areas.
So far, three platinum mines — Zimplats, Mimosa and Unki — have launched community share ownership schemes.
President Mugabe described the launch as a fulfilment of the aspirations of liberation war fighters whose passion was to see Zimbabweans politically and economically liberated.
However, he said indigenous empowerment was not enough if no one was prepared to defend it against neo-colonialism.
“We are not only redistributing our country’s wealth and rightfully so, but we seek now to elevate those who were called labourers by the defeated racist system of governance that classified people on the basis of their skin colour.
“We are removing the unfair and indefensible barriers and limitations which inhibited the full and unfettered participation of black Zimbabweans in the mainstream economy.”
President Mugabe said the empowerment drive was also designed to control the selfish exploitation of the country’s natural resources for the benefit of multi-national corporations and other foreign businesses with negligible returns to Zimbabweans.
The President said the motive behind achieving the 51 percent ownership in companies was neither vindictive nor racist.
“The principle of sovereign ownership of the natural resources of our land by the State on behalf of indigenous Zimbabweans is also a means of fighting and eliminating the dependency syndrome, which has haunted most of the developing world.
“It is a policy that enables us to think beyond foreign aid, which often has strings attached to it.”
He said no one was being demeaned by the programme.
“If anything, we are demeaning ourselves because God gave us 100 percent of our natural resources, but here we are saying we are content with 51 percent and others can simply get 49 percent. Colonialism conditioned us to be workers and we always think of looking for jobs, but never of being employers. It is time to be empowered and discard that way of thinking,” he said to applause from the crowd.
President Mugabe warned companies that did not want to take up the generous 51 to 49 percent offer now, saying they would in future go out with nothing.
He said foreigners, especially from Europe, had exploited the country’s natural resources for centuries without developing the country and the time had come for the practice to stop.
President Mugabe said it was incumbent on Zimbabweans to ensure they were not used by the West to reverse the gains of indigenisation.
He donated 250 computers and printers to schools in the province.
The President also launched the US$40 000 Ukondla Fund from which youths in Matabeleland South got money to start income-generating projects.
Speaking at the same occasion, the Governor and Resident Minister of the province Angeline Masuku said foreign companies used Gwanda’s mineral resources to built big cities abroad while the town remained underdeveloped.
She said people from the province were saying those who did not want to comply with indigenisation had their own governments elsewhere and should leave.
Among people who attended the launch were traditional leaders, the Minister of Local Government, Rural and Urban Development Dr Ignatius Chombo, the Minister of Mines and Mining Development Dr Obert Mpofu, Zanu-PF national chairman Cde Simon Khaya Moyo, the Minister of Indigenisation, Youth Development and Economic Empowerment, Saviour Kasukuwere, Zanu-PF Matabeleland South chairman Cde Andrew Langa, civil servants and service chiefs.
Labels: INDIGENIZATION AND EMPOWERMENT ACT (ZIMBABWE)
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Zinara collects US$57m in toll fees
Saturday, 19 May 2012 00:00
Peter Matambanadzo Senior Reporter
A total of US$57 million in toll fees has been collected since the toll system was started three years ago. In a statement yesterday on the collection and utilisation of toll fees, Secretary for Transport, Communications and Infrastructural Development Mr Partson Mbiriri said US$57 million was collected from August 18, 2009 to April 2012.
“Since we started collecting on August 18, 2009 to April 10, 2012 the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority has collected US$56 552 513,39 and remitted a total of sum of US$47 026 318,83 from toll fees to Zinara after retaining 10 percent for administration purposes and US$49 000 for security each month,” the statement reads.
During the same period, Zinara in turn disbursed US$34 million to the Department of Roads for regional, primary and part of the secondary road network maintenance.
The Ministry of Transport, Communications and Infrastructural Development said US$16,3 million went towards routine road maintenance, US$10,2 million to road dualisation and road
rehabilitation of the Harare-Masvingo Road, Harare-Gweru Road to Norton and Asphalt overlay from Tynwald and the round about near Snake Park.
At least US$2,9 million was used for construction and improvements of temporary tollgate shelters, construction of detours, road widening sites, traffic counts and purchase of office equipment, while US$1,6 million for purchase of 48 pick up trucks and 14 medium size lorries and vehicle maintenance and other activities.
The Harare Airport Road expenditure was US$2 million and a further US$164 447 was used for borehole drilling, fuel procurement and domestic travel expenses.
The Ministry said US$7,8 million was used for the repayment of a loan to the Ministry of Finance through the Infrastructural Development Bank of Zimbabwe.
The money had been borrowed to fund the road dualisation of Harare-Masvingo and Harare Gweru roads. Zinara recently came under fire for blowing over three times what the law allows it to spend on itself in 2010.
The Office of the Comptroller and Auditor-General in a draft audit report for 2010 noted that Zinara was allowed, under the Roads Act, to spend only 2,5 percent of the money it collected for the roads fund on administration, but it spent eight percent.
The Auditor-General said the amount could have been spent on roads.
The law expects Zinara to spend at least 97,5 percent of what it collects in tolls, vehicle licence fees, fuel levies, overload fees and transit coupon fees on maintaining and extending Zimbabwe’s road system.
While the Auditor-General made no allegations of a criminal nature it was concerned that this overspending was done without the written authority of the parent ministry, that of Transport, Communications and Infrastructure Development.
Zinara collects money for Government’s roads pool and distributes it to councils and the District Development Fund for road maintenance.
Labels: INFRASTRUCTURE, TOLL ROADS, ZINARA
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COMMENT - Dan 'Mr Diamond' Gertler was involved with the illegal ZAMTEL sale to the Libyan state's LAP Green (during the rule of Muammar Ghadaffi), through
his RP Capital Partners. I did not remember he was also an intermediary/front for Glencore International, in which future 5th Baron Rothschild Nat Rothschild is a big investor and business partner (
1,
2,
3,
4). Dan Gertler is a
partner with Glencore in Nikanor PLC. Certainly the secrecy surrounding the ZAMTEL sale will make the secrecy among his many other deals feel familiar. Of course Glencore is famous for it's tax evasion at Mopani mine. The sale of Zamtel to the Libyans only makes sense after the destruction of Libya as an independent state under Muammar Ghadaffi, by NATO. Glencore also grabbed 75% of Sudan's oil, and I'm sure they are going for 100%. Read more about Glencore in the DRC in:
GLENCORE'S CRIMES: Contracts, human rights and taxation: How a company exploits a country. To Glencore I say: you're a public company now, welcome to the Information Age.
press releaseGlobal Witness is today
calling on Glencore to explain potentially corrupt deals in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and is calling on the company to provide more details about its relationship with an Israeli businessman who is key to its substantial mining investments in the country. The concerns,
detailed in a briefing for Glencore's shareholders, are being published on
the day of the company's first AGM as a publicly listed company.Since 2010 a number of offshore companies associated with Dan Gertler - a businessman and f
riend of Congolese President Joseph Kabila - have
secretly bought stakes in several mines from the state, paying only a small fraction of their commercially estimated values. The mines were
sold without public tenders and
limited details were only released
long after the assets were sold off.
After buying the assets, at least two of the offshore companies made huge profits by selling on shares in them soon afterwards. Others are positioned to profit by collecting the mining revenues.
Some of the proceeds of mining sales in 2011 were used by the Congolese government to cover costs related to the 2011 election, which returned incumbent president Joseph Kabila to power. The polls were condemned as flawed by international diplomats and election observers and were marred by killings committed by government security forces.
Mr Gertler and Glencore have challenged Global Witness's facts as laid out in the briefing, and their views are reflected in the note. A spokesman for Mr Gertler has questioned the commercial valuations for some of the mines concerned, while both Glencore and Mr Gertler's representatives categorically deny any involvement in corruption in Congo.
"Glencore's business in Congo is intimately tied up with a controversial friend of the president," said Daniel Balint Kurti, Campaign Leader for the Democratic Republic of Congo at Global Witness. "In a country endowed with vast mineral wealth and yet ranked by the UN as the least developed nation in the world, the company owes its shareholders and, more importantly, the people of Congo, an explanation of exactly who now owns their natural resources."
Mr Gertler is a key intermediary through whom Glencore has acquired stakes in Congolese mining assets. He is also a partner in all three mining ventures in Congo in which Glencore has acquired stakes that have been collectively valued at an estimated $4.6 billion. Two of those ventures, the Kansuki and Mutanda mines, together are expected to add at least 40% to the world's cobalt output and increase Congo's copper production by about 40% (compared to 2011 production figures) once they are fully developed.
Global Witness is asking Glencore and Mr Gertler to release the full list of shareholders of all the offshore companies involved - information which is currently secret. Global Witness believes there is a risk that the shareholders could include corrupt Congolese government officials or their proxies.
"Congo's natural resource wealth should benefit the country as a whole," said Balint-Kurti. "Yet hugely profitable deals are being struck in Congo by secretive offshore companies and multinationals; the Congolese state is getting peanuts and we are extremely concerned that the Congolese people are being deprived of billions of dollars."
As the world's largest commodity-trading firm, Glencore's behaviour helps set the standard for how commodities companies operate across the world. It boasts that it "will not assist any third party in violating the law in any country, nor pay or receive bribes, nor participate in any other criminal, fraudulent or corrupt practice".
"It is now incumbent upon Glencore to show that it is living up to its rhetoric and that it is ready to make public the details of its previously secret business deals," concluded Balint-Kurti.
Labels: CORRUPTION, DAN GERTLER, DRC, GLENCORE INTERNATIONAL AG, GLOBAL WITNESS (NGO), JOSEPH KABILA, MINING
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Malawi's Banda to investigate Mutharika transition plot
18 May 2012 01:52 - AFP
President Joyce Banda has announced an inquiry into an alleged plot by the inner circle of Malawi's late former leader to block her rise to power.
“By public demand, I have decided to immediately set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the circumstances and intent of the alleged coup plot,” Banda told Parliament in a speech broadcast on national radio on Friday.
Banda said she had been “receiving a lot of requests” from Malawians to institute the probe since the death of her predecessor Bingu wa Mutharika on April 5.
Mutharika, who had been president since 2004, died following a heart attack.
He had anointed his brother Peter, the former foreign affairs minister, as his heir apparent, even though Banda, as Mutharika’s vice-president, was next in line to succeed him at his death.
She was not sworn in until April 7 after two days of backroom dealing.
Media reported that several ministers had met twice to seek ways of installing Peter Mutharika as the new president instead.
“Depending on the outcome [of the inquiry], appropriate action will be taken for important lessons to be learned,” Banda said.
She also announced a probe into Mutharika’s death “to establish ... the cause of death, medical attention available to the president at the time of his death and the role and activities of various individuals during and after the transition”.
Banda has taken over an economy hobbled by shortages of fuel and foreign currency, making life even more difficult in one of the world’s poorest countries.
[Liars. Malawi is an exporter of precious gems and minerals, as well as tea and coffee. Check out Brittania Mining Malawi. The budget support was stopped because they didn't conform to the economic sanctions against the Zimbabwean government by extending a $20 million loan, and now Joyce Banda has devalued the Malawi Kwacha. And the writer talks about 'one of the world's poorest countries'? Why do they always say 'one of the world's poorest countries'? Every country in Africa is now officially 'the poorest country in Africa'. Where does the money go? - MrK]
Labels: BINGU WA MUTHARIKA, JOYCE BANDA
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COMMENT - Tendai Biti and the MDC continue the neoliberal tradition of defunding healthcare and education.
Biti blasted for freezing health posts
Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:24
Tinashe Farawo in Kadoma
The chairman of Zimbabwe Parliament Against HIV, Mr Blessing Chebundo, has criticised Finance Minister Mr Tendai Biti for freezing the recruitment of nurses, saying the move would negatively affect the health delivery system.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Zimbabwe Parliament Against HIV workshop, Mr Chebundo said
many of the aspiring medical practitioners were roaming the streets because of the retrogressive recruitment freeze. Mr Biti could not be reached for comment yesterday.
“I have always questioned the minister on this matter. We are reversing the clock, there are other issues the Government can forgo instead of freezing the recruitment of critical staff,” he said.
“We are not saying our ministers should not drive good cars, we are saying that can wait while we are recruiting critical staff in order to improve health delivery.
“Health for all must be the first priority. We will continue advocating at least 15 percent of the national budget to be allocated to health.”
Government froze staff recruitment citing budgetary constraints. This has resulted in hundreds of trained nurses failing to secure employment. Many health institutions in rural areas are operating with skeletal staff.
Speaking at the workshop, the director of HIV, Aids and TB treatment in the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare Dr Owen Mgurungi urged legislators to desist from approving budgets that do not guarantee national health. “You must use your political power not to approve a budget which does not guarantee the health of the nation,” he said.
Labels: HEALTHCARE, NEOLIBERALISM, NURSES, TENDAI BITI
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Dog eat dog over Zimbabwe gems
Saturday, 12 May 2012 21:12
Mr Farai Maguwu
Sunday Mail Reporter
Western-funded organisations that are campaigning against Zimbabwe’s diamond sector are failing to find common ground ahead of a crucial Kimberley Process Certification Scheme meeting scheduled for the United States next month, it has emerged.
The Sunday Mail can exclusively reveal that Mr Alan Martin, the research director of an anti-Zimbabwe lobby, Partnership Africa Canada (PAC), told a two-day workshop in Vumba on May 9 and 10 that the “human rights violations” argument was likely to flop this time around because the governments of Canada and Belgium have now conceded that the absence of conflict in Zimbabwe has made it tough to sustain the “blood diamonds” allegations.
Mr Martin said Canada and Belgium would favour a new approach centred on the lifting of sanctions on Zimbabwe’s diamond sector. The lifting of sanctions on the State-owned Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation and the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe would serve two purposes: enable Western nations to place Zimbabwe’s diamond production and revenue figures in the public domain for regime-change purposes, as well as give Western diamond cartels enough breathing space to deal with the glut of Zimbabwean gemstones which has sent prices tumbling on the international market.
However, Mr Farai Maguwu, a leading Western-aligned campaigner who heads the Centre for Research and Development (CRD), did not agree with Mr Martin’s recommended strategy, saying he saw no reason to keep quiet on “human rights violations”.
“A lot was discussed in that closed-door meeting. Alan Martin of Partnership Africa Canada announced a doubling in the funding of civil society groups in Zimbabwe, but he gave them a condition: they would only get the money if they succeed in crafting and implementing strategies that will restrict the flow of Zimbabwe’s diamonds into the international market,” said a reliable source.
“Martin said the governments of Canada, Belgium and other Western nations, possibly including Australia, had realised the folly of continuing to recycle allegations of human rights violations in Chiadzwa.
“Canada and Belgium have said you can’t have blood diamonds in the absence of conflict. There’s no conflict in Zimbabwe,” added the source. As the anti-Zimbabwe lobby gets more disjointed, Mr Maguwu has vowed to continue talking about “human rights violations” in Chiadzwa.
In total disregard of Mr Martin’s recommendation, Mr Maguwu will present a speech at the Rapaport Free Trade Conference in Las Vegas, US, on June 3, where he will continue accusing the Government of Zimbabwe of using the army and the police in perpetrating gross violations of human rights. Rapaport Network last year banned its members from buying Zimbabwean diamonds.
“Maguwu is not giving up. He says he has photographs of people he claims were bitten by dogs and another which he says is of a person who was shot through the eye in the Chiadzwa diamond fields this year,” said a source. Speaking at the Vumba workshop, Mr Maguwu tried to convince the gathering that human rights abuses were rife in Marange but was exposed when members of the Chiadzwa community who were present at the meeting challenged him to provide proof of the cases. He then said he was referring to unnamed illegal panners.
The Minister of Mines and Mining Development, Dr Obert Mpofu, yesterday told The Sunday Mail that the non-governmental organisations are now divided because their agenda is illegitimate. “They are pursuing a political agenda bent on regime change, but because they have invested so much in this campaign they will try every trick in the book to peddle lies against Zimbabwe,” he said.
Dr Mpofu said the African Diamond Producers’ Association (ADPA), a caucus within the Kimberley Process grouping, has vowed to resist “clandestine manoeuvres” by some Western governments to demonise Zimbabwe’s diamond sector.
“ADPA will resist all these moves. We know, for instance, that some Western members want to push for the amendment of the KP constitution to re-define blood diamonds so that they include arguments about human rights. ADPA will shoot down all these attempts,” said the minister.
Organisations that were represented at the Vumba workshop are the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (Zela), Centre for Research Development (CRD), National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (Nango), Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition and members of the Chiadzwa Community Development Trust (CCDT).
Crisis Coalition and Nango refused to immediately endorse Mr Martin’s new approach, saying they needed to consult their structures before changing strategy.
The NGOs are re-grouping in Harare this week on Tuesday for a meeting under the banner of Publish What You Pay coalition, as they fine-tune their disjointed strategy ahead of next month’s Kimberley Process Inter-sessional meeting which will have far-reaching implications for the future of Zimbabwe’s diamond mining.
The civil society groupings are planning to rope in the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy through a jointly organised workshop funded by the German
Agency for International Co-operation (GIZ) and Action Aid Netherlands set for May 17 at Caribbea Bay Resort in Kariba as they continue to seek legitimacy for reports to be presented at the Kimberly Process meeting in Washington DC.
Labels: KIMBERLEY PROCESS
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