EU thaws on sanctions
Saturday, 18 February 2012 00:00
Herald Reporter
THE European Union has removed 51 people, including journalists and politicians, and 20 companies from the sanctions list. The bloc will also write to President Mugabe this weekend to facilitate serious re-engagement with Zimbabwe.
EU ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr Aldo Dell'Ariccia said this yesterday while announcing the extension of the illegal economic sanctions on Zimbabwe by six months.
He said the EU had also suspended travel restrictions against Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi and Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa to enable the proposed dialogue to take place effectively.
"The European Commission and Council are also informing the President of Zimbabwe, President Mugabe, that the EU wishes to invite Zimbabwe to an intensified political dialogue," he said.
"In order to define further steps of normalising relations between EU and Zimbabwe, the EU has lifted the travel ban to two Zanu-PF ministers.
"This is a decision that has been taken, which is of immediate application and a letter will be sent to President Mugabe informing him of the decision."
A six-member committee was set up at the formation of the inclusive Government to spearhead dialogue to normalise relations between EU and Zimbabwe, but its efforts were frustrated by reluctance on the part of the Europeans.
Minister Chinamasa was held up at Frankfurt International Airport for over eight hours on his way to Belgium for the talks over visa issues on two occasions.
Other members of the committee include Finance Minister Tendai Biti, Energy and Power Development Minister Elton Mangoma (both MDC-T) and Regional Integration and International Cooperation Minister Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga and Organ of National Healing co-chair Moses Mzila Ndlovu (both MDC).
EU High Representative Catherine Ashton said the removal of individuals from the sanctions list was in light of developments in the country.
"It (EU) also welcomes progress made towards the creation of a conducive environment for the holding of free, fair, peaceful and transparent elections through the development of the roadmap sponsored by Sadc.
"It pays tribute to the efforts of Sadc and the South African facilitator (President Jacob Zuma) in accompanying the Zimbabwean people along that road," she said.
Those removed from the list are General Solomon Mujuru and former Harare Governor David Karimanzira, who are both late.
The two were declared national heroes and are interred at the National Heroes Acre.
Mr Dell'Ariccia attributed the removal of the journalists to improvements in the media, though analysts say this could be a pre-emptive measure to kill a lawsuit lodged by the six in the Supreme Court challenging the legality of the embargo and suing for damages.
When non-constituency Senator Aguy Georgias sued the EU in the British High court, he became part of the 37 individuals who were struck off the sanctions list in 2011.
Sen Georgias described the move as a pre-emptive strike on his lawsuit and pledged to press on with the suit that is now pending at the European Court of First Instance.
Media personalities who were struck off the sanctions list include Zimbabwe Newspapers group editor-in-chief Pikirayi Deketeke, Herald deputy editor Caesar Zvayi, Sunday Mail assistant editor Munyaradzi Huni, ZBH chief executive Happison Muchechetere, chief correspondent Reuben Barwe, diplomatic correspondent Judith Makwanya, and freelancer Musorowegomo Mukosi.
Also struck off the list are Zimpapers board chairman Dr Paul Chimedza and group chief executive Mr Justin Mutasa as well as Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe chairman Dr Tafataona Mahoso.
The embargo that was imposed on Zimbabwe, a decade ago, for embarking on the land reform programme to resettle the landless majority, has brought untold suffering to ordinary citizens.
This also blocked local business from accessing lines of credit from international financiers.
Over 2,2 million Zimbabweans countrywide signed the National Anti-Sanctions Petition launched by President Mugabe in March last year.
The launch drew thousands people from all walks of life.
Sadc, Comesa, the African Union, the Non Aligned Movement and other progressive people and organisations the world over have denounced the illegal sanctions, which precipitated the economic meltdown of the past decade.
Name (and any aliases) and Number in Council
Decision 2011/101/CFSP
Barwe, Reuben 3
Bredenkamp, John Arnold 5
Chimbudzi, Alice 15
Chimedza, Paul 15
Chimutengwende, Chenhamo Chekezha 17
Chinamasa, Monica 18
Chiremba, Mirirai 24
Chitakunye, Eliphas 25
Chiwenga, Jocelyn 27
Chiwewe, Willard 29
Chiwese, George 28
Deketeke, Pikirayi 31
Dube, Tshinga Judge 33
Gumbo, Rugare Eleck Ngidi 36
Hungwe, Josaya (a.k.a. Josiah) Dunira 39
Huni, Munyaradzi 40
Karimanzira, David Ishemunyoro Godi 43
Kazembe, Joyce Laetitia 46
Kereke, Munyaradzi 47
Mahoso, Tafataona 58
Makwanya, Judith 59
Makwavarara, Sekesai 60
Manyonda, Kenneth Vhundukai 63
Matanyaire, Munyaradzi 67
Mavhaire, Dzikamai 72
Mbiriri, Partson 73
Mombeshora, Millicent Sibongile 79
Moyo, July Gabarari 82
Muchechetere, Happison 88
Mudzvova, Paul 96
Mugabe, Leo 98
Mujuru, Solomon TR 101
Mukosi, Musoro Wegomo 102
Mumbengegwi, Samuel Creighton 104
Mutasa, Gertrude 110
Mutasa, Justin Mutsawehuni 111
Mutiwekuziva, Kenneth Kaparadza 114
Muzenda, Tsitsi V. 116
Muzonzini, Elisha 117
Ncube, Abedinico 120
Ndlovu, Sikhanyiso ` 121
Nkala, Herbert 124
Nyawani, Misheck 128
Patel, Bharat 132
Rautenbach, Muller Conrad (a.k.a. Billy 134
Sakabuya, Morris 138
Samkange, Nelson Tapera Crispen 140
Sandi, Eunice Moyo 141
Shumba, Isaiah Masvayamwando 148
Utete, Charles 159
Zvayi, Caesar 163
ENTITIES (20)
Name (and any aliases) and Number in Council decision 2011/101/CFSP
Alpha International (Pvt) Ltd 1
Breco (Asia Pacifi) Ltd 2
Breco (Eastern Europe) Ltd 3
Breco (South Africa) Ltd 4
Breco (UK) Ltd 5
Breco Group 6
Breco International 7
Breco Nominees Ltd 8
Breco Services Ltd 9
Corybantes Ltd 12
Echo Delta Holdings 14
Masters Inernational Ltd 18
Ndlovu Motorways 19
Piedmont (UK) Ltd 21
Raceview Enterprises 22
Ridgepoint Overseases Developments Ltd (a.k.a Ridgepoint Overseas Developments Ltd) 23
Scottle Holdings (Pvt) Ltd 24
Scottlee Resorts Ltd 25
Timpani Export Ltd 27
Tremalt Ltd 28
Labels: ALDO DELL'ARICCIA, CAESAR ZVAYI, EU, JOHN BREDENKAMP, SANCTIONS, TAFATAONA MAHOSO
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Zimpapers, AB awarded radio licences
Friday, 25 November 2011 00:00
Herald Reporters
THE Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe has awarded Zimbabwe Newspapers and AB Communications free-to-air broadcasting national radio licenses.
BAZ chairperson Dr Tafataona Mahoso yesterday said the awarding of licences to the two firms followed a thorough adjudication process that saw them scoring higher points among the four shortlisted applicants.
The four companies are AB Communications (Zi Radio), Zimpapers (Zimpapers Talk Radio), Hot Media (Kiss FM) and Vox Media (VOP FM).
Zimpapers group chief executive Mr Justin Mutasa was upbeat.
"As the group chief executive officer, I am very excited that Zimpapers is now on the road to be an integrated media house like the Media 24 of South or The Nation Media Group of Kenya.
"This is the vision of the company. We will be on air in the next three months," he said.
Mr Mutasa said the company was now looking for general manager/station manager, programmes scheduling manager and finance manager among other personnel.
AB Communications chief executive officer Mr Supa Mandiwanzira welcomed the awarding of the licence to his company.
"We are very ecstatic as a company. We are very proud for the broadcasting industry as a whole and for writing our own piece of history for being the first private broadcaster to be licensed in this country.
"We would like to thank the Government of Zimbabwe for the wisdom of opening up the airwaves and BAZ for their professionalism in handling the application process," he said.
Mr Mandiwanzira said they expected to start operations within six months as they said during the public hearings conducted during the application process.
He dismissed concerns in some sectors that their company was aligned to Zanu-PF.
Announcing the winners, Dr Mahoso said AB Communications scored 99 out of 106 points, while Zimpapers got 93 points.
Hot Media scored 80 while Vox Media got 70.
"On the basis of the total points scored by the applicants, AB Communications and Zimpapers, having complied with the Qualifications Process as prescribed by law and having scored the highest number of points in terms of the objectives of the Act in the Selection Process are deemed to be the winners of the two licences for the provision of free-to-air national commercial radio broadcasting services," said Dr Mahoso.
"Having completed this phase, the authority is moving on to invite applications for the provision of Local Commercial Radio Broadcasting services in 14 urban areas. The list of areas will be provided in advertisements to be published by the authority."
In outlining the process, Dr Mahoso said the selection process started with a detailed preliminary assessment of specific areas of each application against the objectives provided by the Act and identification of candidate areas for questioning during a public inquiry as set out by the law.
A public inquiry was subsequently conducted for short-listed firms.
"The last phase of the selection process, which in fact, is the final adjudication, was a comparative process whereby, on the basis of the preliminary assessment of the specific areas of each application and taking into account the information gathered during the public inquiry, the applicants scored points against the objectives provided by the Act," he said.
Labels: RADIO, TAFATAONA MAHOSO
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Zim journalists warned over publishing falsehoods
Posted by By Our reporter at 19 July, at 08 : 36 AM
MEDIA analysts have urged Zimbabwe and other African countries to take a valuable lesson about the concept of western views on the free media from the News of the World telephone hacking scandal which has rocked Britain.
Europe and the rest of the world is shaking after revelations that News of the World, a subsidiary of News Cooperation, which is one of the globe’s most influential news conglomerates, has been hacking into people’s private telephone conversations all in a bid to get news scoops.
Media expert, Dr Tafataona Mahoso said the News of the World telephone hacking scandal shows that media practitioners in any country need some limits and guidelines as a way to deal with journalists who go out of their way committing crimes in the name of investigative journalism.
Media freedom comes with responsibility and should be within the limits of the law of the land, said Dr Mahoso.
Some journalists in Zimbabwe have committed crimes publishing personal details of individuals and alleging crimes that have not been proved in a court of law. They have also published stories alleging crimes that have not been proved in a court of law.
Dr Mahoso said such journalists should realise that the day will come when they have to answer for all allegations made in the name of free speech.
A pirate radio station based in the United Kingdom and illegally broadcasting in Zimbabwe, SW Radio Africa, has come under fire for publishing personal details of people they say work for Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation, equating it to the Wikileaks expose by Australian journalist Julian Assange.
The unsubstantiated list said to be from 2002, when it was originally published on SW Radio, had physical addresses of those operatives who were said to work for the CIO.
It is not a crime to work for the CIO and workers within the department include clerks, cleaners, receptionists, etc. Not everyone is directly involved in state security work.
In various other stories, the radio station has also alleged killings that are said to have been committed by Zanu-PF members. These allegations have not been proved in a court of law and some of them have not been reported to the police in Zimbabwe.
Many other reports on the website of that radio station make unproved claims about abductions and killings supposed to be committed by what they call elements within President Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.
Many of these claims are unsubstantiated and yet to be reported formally to the police.
A media analyst, Mr Alexander Rusero said the hacking scandal should serve as a lesson to the Third World that the concept of free media is a myth, saying people should judge from the way the British government has reacted to the scandal that even the West can not practice what they preach.
He said some of the vigilante justice practiced my media organisations who try to act like courts of law will in future see many journalists brought before the law to prove some allegations they make in the media.
He said such sensationalism in the media should be discouraged and while journalists are encouraged to expose cases of wrongdoing, they should do so in a professional manner and not act like “judge and jury”.
The British government has responded to the phone hacking scandal by closing the News of the World, and the scrapping of News Corporation’s proposed takeover of BskyB while a proposal to impose stiffer media restrictions is on the cards.
This has been interpreted as a clear indication that Britain can no longer afford the concept of a total free media.
News Cooperation was founded by media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, who enjoys the biggest stake in the conglomerate and has media interests across the world.
Labels: JOURNALISM, PROPAGANDA, TAFATAONA MAHOSO
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HIV, Aids and the racist fear of African unity
by Tafataona Mahoso
18/11/2010 00:00:00
MY INSTALMENT for this column on August 22, 1999, was called “Imperialism, racism and HIV/Aids”. Five years later, my concerns in that instalment were confirmed when the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) in collaboration with the University of Zimbabwe’s Centre for Applied Psychology and Gynaecology published a booklet called ‘The Zimbabwean Male Psyche With Respect to Reproductive Health, HIV, Aids and Gender Issues’. My concerns in the 1999 instalment included the following:
Whether or not HIV and Aids was the result of experiments in biological war, the consequences for Zimbabwe were going to be far worse and more complicated than those of UDI and the war of liberation. Therefore, African society in Zimbabwe needed to mount its own cultural and spiritual response to the disaster which should be far bigger and more sophisticated than previous mobilisations against war, invasion, UDI and apartheid.
Apart from mounting deaths, HIV and Aids would inflict a pervasive and intrusive destabilisation of the entire society — individuals, families, communities and institutions. This was because HIV-related diseases attacked the psychological and spiritual health of society and destroyed relationships and institutions long before it finally destroyed the infected body.
The dementia or madness which individual sufferers exhibited in cases of terminal Aids-related illness was a symptom of the collective madness which was going to descend on the entire society, hence the need for a collective cultural and spiritual response.
Because of the overwhelming involvement of donor-funded NGOs in the HIV and Aids awareness programmes, there were two obvious risks for the African community: In the name of combating Aids, donors would use the HIV and Aids pandemic and mass disaster as an opportunity to attack and overturn those African values they have always feared or viewed as obstacles to their influence.
Therefore, the confessional and individualistic approach to communication in HIV and Aids programmes and advertisements was a real risk, since it tended to vilify African society in the name of fighting stigma against individuals. It treated a mass disaster as a matter of individual fate and personal rights. It would not be possible to dignify and protect the individual sufferer while denigrating or defaming the society and community.
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In that 2004 UNFPA booklet — the authors, P. Chiroro, A. Mashu and W. Muhwava — wrote as follows: “It was hypothesised that the Zimbabwean male psyche is characterised by an internalised, insatiable and self-centred desire for sex with multiple partners, coupled with an intolerant attitude towards women who are perceived to be, primarily, objects of sexual gratification and child bearing.”
Without any reference to control studies based on other societies elsewhere in the world, the authors concluded thus: “The results of the study provide strong support for the research hypothesis in that the Zimbabwean male psyche appears to be characterised by an internalised, insatiable, self-centred desire for sex with multiple partners, coupled with an intolerant attitude towards women who are perceived to be, primarily, objects for sexual gratification and child bearing.
“In addition, the results of this study showed the following:
“Most Zimbabwean men and male youths hold very poor sexuality standards which are characterised by a strong reluctance to engage in safe sex practices during high-risk sexual encounters.”
“The study reveals that the majority of Zimbabwean men and male youths view women as inferior to men. Adversarial sexual beliefs and gender role stereotypes are used to justify violence against women and to deny their sexual and reproductive health rights.
“The culture and legal system in Zimbabwe provides a fertile ground for the propagation and perpetuation of adversarial sexual behaviour among men and male youths. This exposes them and their partners to the risk of contracting the HIV virus as well as compromising women’s human and reproductive health rights.”
In simple language, what was this UN agency and the three university researchers trying to say? The English dictionary meaning of psyche is the human soul, mind or spirit. So, in what way could the UNFPA claim to have pin-pointed and isolated a definite factor called the soul of the Zimbabwean male or the spirit of the Zimbabwean male, which could then be made responsible for the spread of HIV and Aids in this country?
Indeed, the UNFPA and its consultants attempted to tell the whole world not only that there was definite, separable power called the Zimbabwean male psyche but also that they had demonstrated that this definite force or power was responsible for promiscuous sexual behaviour, lust, discrimination against women, abuse of women and girls and the spread of HIV and Aids. They also meant that the Zimbabwean male psyche was so different from the psyches of other societies that it could be identified as typically Zimbabwean.
What the authors also implied was that we could select indigenous African foods such as dovi, muboora, nyemba, madora and grains such as mhunga, mapfunde and rukweza for use in fighting HIV and Aids, but the culture which created the ingredients forming this healthy diet was no good, especially in its male form. That culture had to be suppressed together with the virus itself. Since that time, the defamation of the African in HIV and Aids campaigns and adverts here has followed that highly questionable theory of African tradition and the presumed inherent nature of the African male psyche and male sexuality as responsible for the spread of HIV and Aids.
Although it does not require a great scientist to prove that the allegedly inherent African male psyche is neither typically African nor typically male and Zimbabwean, too many African scholars have complained privately and never dared to challenge this racist re-invention of the 400-year-old myth of African sexuality for fear of losing donor support and fear of being labelled male chauvinist pigs. Yet one simple way to demonstrate that this thesis of an inherent Zimbabwean African male psyche is a fraud would be to look at scholarly studies of sex and sexuality in non-African societies in other countries.
‘Re-Making Love: The Feminisation of Sex’, is a book published as far back as 1986 by North American white female researchers and dealing primarily with what can be called the response of the white middle-class woman to the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s. Chapter 6 of that book is called ‘The Politics of Promiscuity: The Rise of the Sexual Counter Revolution’; and it documents cases of sexual promiscuity and sexual aggressiveness among white North American women.
The promiscuity and aggressiveness are almost identical to the sexual promiscuity, aggressiveness and casualness which UNFPA and the UZ writers chose to present as caused by a typical Zimbabwean male psyche. In the North American book, the chapter on ‘The Politics of Promiscuity’ opens by introducing Ellen (34), who thinks she has made “a nice little life for herself”, because she has earned enough to buy a small house and because she has “what used to be called All-American good looks — straight, gleaming hair, and clear blue eyes” which enable her to attract the lovers she wants.
“Her present relationship is just one more phase in her continuing sexual exploration.” She was “randy as a teenager” and it “was a relief to let my sexual needs explode . . . I made a lot of demands on men too. I chose them for their sexiness and sensuality.”
But readers may say that is just one woman; what about collective surveys? Redbook magazine sent out a sex questionnaire to which 100,000 women happily responded in 1975. And “a considerable number were having affairs while happily married to men they loved and nine out of 10 of the young women . . . were engaging in intercourse before they married.”
Five years later in 1980, Cosmopolitan magazine also sent out a sex questionnaire to which 106,000 women responded, reporting that “on average, they had had nine lovers”.
One of them was quoted as saying: “I have lovers because what else is there in life that’s so much fun as turning on a new man, interesting him, conquering him?
By 1983, three magazines — Playboy, Family Circle and Ladies Home Journal — decided to survey married women whom they described as “sexually enthusiastic, confident, romantic and satisfied”. Whereas in 1958 Alfred C. Kinsey had reported that 6 to 26 percent of married women were engaging in extramarital affairs, the 1983 surveys showed that the percentage had jumped to between 21 and 43 percent, depending on the type of magazine doing the survey and the type of readers.
“Among Playboy’s readers, young married wives were ‘fooling around’ more often than their husbands”.
The attack on the Zimbabwean male by UNFPA and its sponsored authors can be explained by quoting a passage from Re-Making Love:“These experts all assumed that women hated casual sex and (were mere victims of male lust and aggression), but they offered no explanation for why so many women were engaged in it.”
One woman tried to correct the misperception about men saying: “If you (as a woman) go ahead and give in to your desires (not his desires) . . . and you do go to bed with him, then lots of times you really will lose the man because they (the men), without even realising it, feel like you’ve been too quick and too easy.”
It is also implied in the foreign-modelled HIV and Aids campaigns that the societies whose donors fund our pseudo-feminists here have solved the problems of gender violence. In fact, they are very sick violent societies.
Here is a description of US society borrowed from a male scholar by feminist Professor Mary Daly for her book called ‘Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy’; “Culturally, the emergence of male homosexual sadomasochism from underground has coincided with a burgeoning of overt sadism against women in all the communications media. This coincidence has not been by chance. While gay activists were campaigning against stereotypical images of ‘gay people’ in the media, male homosexuals who have direct access to media have been promoting with a vengeance all stereotypes of female masochism.
‘We are witnessing (throughout Western society) the convergence (coming together) of what was once deemed a gay sensibility with what was once deemed a ‘heterosexual sensibility’. That convergence . . . now reveals itself as fully thriving on female degradation.”
It, therefore, means that the UNFPA and its UZ consultants put forward a generalisation which can be dismissed objectively as a fraud. They failed to separate and define such concepts as culture, instinct, drives, habits and needs. They presented an ideological assault on the African male as if it were a new scientific discovery. In doing this, they adopted a racist strategy and technique established way back in the days of slavery.
When it ceased to be feasible to justify slavery on the basis of religion, white society invented anthropology as a pseudo-science to do the job, because a “scientific” justification would appear to be unquestionable. This is indeed the subject of Professor Bernard Magubane’s book, Race and the ‘Construction of the Disposable Other’.
The disposable other in the UNFPA study is the resurgent African male whose energies need to be separated from the energies of the resurgent African woman in order to keep Anglo-Saxon imperialism in power for a bit longer. There is therefore a need for a different approach to Zimbabwe’s struggle against HIV and Aids.
More on this later.
Tafataona Mahoso is a columnist for the Sunday Mail newspaper
Labels: FEMINISM, HIV/AIDS, TAFATAONA MAHOSO
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COMMENT - Excellent point. You then have to wonder whether the agricultural sector is the only one that is profitable under this post-landreform economy.
The anti-land reform cookie crumbles
By: SuperT
Posted: Monday, September 27, 2010 2:29 am
DEAR EDITOR - While I agree with Dr Tafataona Mahoso's piece entitled "Terror beneath Tendai Biti's jumping figures on the economy" 100 percent, I believe he has overlooked Zanu PF's foresightedness in keeping the neo-colonial agents in check.
Dr Mahoso has not given Zanu PF due credit for keeping the enemy exposed at bay. Zanu PF rightfully demanded and got control of the key productive ministries; agriculture and mining which are the key economic drivers.
By so doing Zanu PF ring fenced Honourable Biti in that he cannot afford to lie to people because the statistics from those sectors are not under his control and hence he cannot manipulate them as they are manned by ministers from Zanu PF.
This has put Mr Biti in a 'Catch 22' situation in that if he blatantly lies to the nation the contradicting situation on the ground will prove too detrimental to his political career, hence the numerous, unprecedented growth revisions by the minister.
That is to say the Inclusive Government has the necessary balances and checks that will expose Mr Biti's shenanigans.
That point grows in importance when you consider the fact that the President is the Chair of the Finance Committe to which Mr Biti reports. So Mr Biti can lie, but he will be stopped right in his own tracks.
Zanu PF has always precisely argued that: 'The land is the economy and the economy is the land'.
Zanu PF is being vindicated by none other than Mr Biti himself - their chief arch-enemy and antagonist within the government.
Mr Biti is in a very real quandary and he will sink deeper in the coming months as agriculture, driven by the much maligned Africans, reclaims its rightful place in the national economy and send prophets of doom sprawling for cover.
Here comes the fruits of Chimurenga 2. With President Mugabe's foresightedness, we can never go wrong.
Let us not lose track of the big picture. The anti-land reclamation cookie is crumbling right under Mr Biti's nose. More is to come. Keep your eyes on the ball. Watch this space.
Ndatenda Hangu/ Siyabonga
Labels: LAND REFORM, LIBERATION, TAFATAONA MAHOSO, ZANU-PF
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