Mon 23 Apr 2007
Howzit
I’m up early as I have to go into town first thing (I’ll be back to 9 o’clock) and then it’ll be a case of waiting to find out what decision the doctor will make over B. And believe it or not I’ll have to go back into town later on today to do other bits and pieces.
My flu hasn’t broken and I still feel like I’ve been swimming in a heavily chlorinated swimming pool.
Never mind…
Foreign currency mid-rates updated…
B phoned just before 11 and told us that we can collect her at midday. Yes!
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Addressing journalists at the Quill national Press club in Harare, Ndlovu said the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) would not be changed because they were necessary to control ‘irresponsible journalists’ who wrote lies about the country.”
This is Mugabe’s paranoia manifesting itself, not only in law, but in so far as no journalist can work in Zimbabwe unless they are accredited and vetted by ZANU PF. Accredited journalist are subject to serious observation when they do work in Zimbabwe and the stories that they write must conform to the ZANU PF line.
Journalists working in Zimbabwe without accreditation - and there have been a few - are routinely arrested, thrown in prison and left to rot for a few days before being dragged in front of a Magistrate who hits them with a fine and the journalist is then advised to leave the country.
Alex Perry of Time magazine spent five days in prison in Gwanda, and when he was finally brought in front of the beak, he was fined the equivalent of 1/2 a US cent!
“Besides journalist being required to obtain licences, newspaper companies are also required to register with the state commission with those failing to do so facing closure and seizure of their equipment by the police.”
(In my case they would just take a shorthand notebook and an old BIC biro!)
“Under POSA, journalists face up to two years in jail for publishing falsehoods that may cause public alarm and despondency, while another law, the Criminal Codification Act, imposes up to 20 years in jail on journalists denigrating President Robert Mugabe in their articles.”
Oh dear. I am not a journalist and write what I will, when I will. I have no accreditation and say what I want about Mugabe.
I guess it’s safe to say that if I was in Zimbabwe I would be watching life from the inside of a prison cell.
And these are laws brought into place by a man in charge of a government that has single-handedly ruined the economy of the country. He will deny the charge - stating that the West has broken the country by implementing sanctions - but this man broke the agricultural sector, rearranged the settlement of people with Operation Murambatsvina, and now is intent on reworking the constitution and rigging the ballot box so that he can continue with his reign of megalomania.
“Quizzed by journalists at the Quill, Ndlovu professed ignorance of the abduction of journalists although he said in some cases police arrest journalists for writing ‘blatant lies’.
He said: “I am not aware of such acts (abduction of journalists). I do not have any report from the police or the responsible ministry that there has been any abduction. What you call abduction may be arrests of some journalists for writing blatant lies.”
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Mugabe, who has ruled the former British colony since independence in 1980, has in the past been accused by the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party of cheating his way to victory in major elections since 2000.”
Mugabe has always, for some reason, had his workings behind the scenes in ballot rigging and voter intimidation either ignored or attention is deflected by another world event.
Because of this, he believes he is protected by some sort of divine intervention. And he believes that whatever he does is right and proper and that everyone else is wrong.
This is an age-old assumption by ZANU PF who labour under the misapprehension that what they do and say is correct and everyone else has got it wrong.
“The government’s critics see the attacks on the opposition as the beginning of a strategy to ensure that the MDC will be unable to win even a reasonably fair presidential race,” the New York Times newspaper said in a recent commentary.
Analysts said violence and terrorism charges slapped on opponents in recent weeks were a tactic to bog down the opposition in endless court appearances, while the clock ticks towards March 2008.”
ZANU PF knows no ‘free and fair’ elections or a level playing field - something akin to the recent elections in Nigeria.
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Power cuts have got worse in the past two weeks. There is a shortage of coal and several of the generators at Hwange power station are broken, awaiting new parts to arrive from who knows where. The Electricity Regulatory Commission has announced that bills will rise by 350 per cent within the next six weeks.
In downtown Harare Gardens a humming generator keeps the spotlight running inside the tiny Theatre In The Park - built like a traditional thatched hut, wooden benches circling a dirt floor stage where an actor in army fatigues is battering a dummy so hard the stuffing is oozing out on the floor. The soldier’s instructions come from a loud voice on his mobile phone; the louder the voice gets, the more the audience fidgets.”
So even attending a political satire is deemed illegal or against the law. Even if the subject matter is true to real life…
“Political satire is illegal in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and this is powerful stuff. The Good President tells the story of a ‘gogo’ - grandmother - who comes to the city for medical treatment and tries to raise the bus fare to return to her village to vote back the ruling President in the coming elections. This is the same President who murdered both her sons in the gukurahundi - the opposition purges by Mugabe in 1983 which left thousands dead. It’s a deeply taboo subject.
‘The actors are brave to say this dialogue, but anyone who comes here has courage,’ says writer Cont Mhlanga. ‘Last night, when we opened, the audience was swollen by secret police, about 10 or 12 that we could tell. I wrote this script in two days after the opposition were beaten on 11 March. It’s about the cause of our problems not being political, economical or external, but cultural.’
Mhlanga was arrested last year for ‘mobilising illegal protests against the government through theatre’. Now he waits for them to come back, to close his play down or worse.”
Elsewhere in the article, much to my amusement, I see that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has been dubbed “Bob’s Take Away”! I love it!”They are scared: Mugabe is deeply paranoid and well known for keeping fat files on friends as well as enemies. ZANU have made their wealth, their land, their houses and their children’s foreign university fees all from him. But they are not stupid; he is an old man. We are close to breaking point, but we are not there yet. There is potential for serious civil unrest, but people are frightened. But the more hunger they feel, the less afraid they will be,” the opposition source said. Showing documents to back up his claims, the adviser to MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai said he believed the end of 27 years of oppressive rule was in sight, before next March’s elections. “We cannot ask people to demonstrate any more, to get beaten. But we need children back in school. The investment in education that took place in the first 10 years after independence can mitigate the present. But I can’t see us lasting another five years - something has to give now.”
The world has gone crazy - especially when you read: “Last Monday a black man was beaten up by two police officers after hugging a white Zimbabwean, an old school friend, in a Harare street.” Colour doesn’t enter into it - or it shouldn’t at the very least.
But ZANU PF will use whatever it can to deflect attention on themselves.
I did notice this comment in the article as well. “You know The Last King of Scotland? Last night I watched it for the third time. It is so familiar, it is the same as here - only Mugabe is cleverer than Amin, but the brutality is the same. This old man’s terrible destruction of this country will end too - and soon. We will need help from you, from the West, but you must back us, not try to overrun us. We have the people and the ability to sort this out. Then Zimbabwe can celebrate independence.”
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Meanwhile, police blamed government opponents for an eleventh gasoline bombing. The attack occurred early Saturday in Harare’s Glen Norah township at a row of houses occupied by police families, the state Sunday Mail reported.
Property was damaged, but there were no injuries, police spokesman Andrew Phiri told the newspaper, a government mouthpiece.
“Such bombings show that thugs and people bent on causing mayhem in the country are at work. We will not let people engage in acts of terrorism,” the paper quoted him saying.
The government has clamped down on critics, including opposition Movement for Democratic Change leaders who were arrested and badly beaten last month for trying to attend an unauthorized meeting.”
Why is it that WOZA is targeted like this - they are pro-democracy - they are not political. And if they are pro-democracy and the police arrest them, does that mean that the police, representatives of the State, are anti-democracy?
Of course they are!
The security forces, including the youth militia, the war veterans and any other militant group affiliated with ZANU PF are happy enough to carry out the blood work of the ruling party, knowing full well that they are protected from prosecution by the ruling party who have basically legalised torture and violence - if it is against the MDC and their associates - which now would appear to include WOZA…
“Eighteen women were stripped and held in Bulawayo police station cells. They spent “the whole day in a state of undress,” in violation of the nation’s customary moral values, the group said Sunday.
“When two members of a support team attempted to bring food, they too were arrested,” it said. The group were mostly mothers, who in the past have also clanged empty pots and pans on the streets to protest food shortages.
One supporter, Clarah Makoni, was subjected to what officers termed punishment that included threats of torture and being shown purported torture cells, the group said. The 18-year-old single mother was beaten across the kidneys by police who later drove her into the bush, a common scare tactic, according to women’s group leader Jenni Williams.
She was forced to crawl under an electric fence and run through scrubland to the nearest road, her clothes torn and covered in dirt and vomit. She was picked up by a passing motorist and treated for shock and vomiting spasms, said Williams.
Williams said the group demonstrated with placards Thursday outside facilities of the state power company. Zimbabweans suffer daily power outages in the nation’s worst economic crisis since independence.
Police in Bulawayo were not immediately available for comment.”
How convenient! And by the time they do cook up some rubbish to say, the event would have been superseded by more human rights abuses.
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I have every intention of recording a podcast today and releasing it today. I will let you know when I am done.
Take care.
‘debvhu
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