Messages From Zimbabwe

PRESIDENT TSVANGIRAI’S ADDRESS TO THE MDC PARLIAMENTARY CAUCUS ON THE DEEPENING CRISIS IN ZIMBABWE

“Honourable Members of Parliament,

On the 9^th of July 2007, the MDC alerted the nation to the dangers of the state-sponsored siege on our struggling business community following a decision by the Robert Mugabe dictatorship to slash commodity prices and promote a run on all businesses. Mugabe and ZANU PF have sabotaged the economy through policy inconsistencies and reckless populism.

Today, the situation has become totally unacceptable. We are at risk, without food, without water, without electricity and without basic means of sustenance. Our schools opened for the third term this week. Headmasters and school administrators countrywide are so desperate for basics to keep these already squeezed institutions open. Possibilities exist for some of the schools to close before the end of the year. Our hospitals can no longer feed patients. Our hotels and food outlets are failing to access essentials to ensure the viability of the hospitality industry. Even our prisons have reduced their rations to life-threatening levels.

Literally, every ordinary person, state and private institutions and the business community have been forced to source food and other scarce necessities on the black market because of a systematic destruction of the formal sector. An informal market ravages the poor in any society as speculators and beneficiaries of a government patronage system thrive on the scarcity of goods and services. The poor cannot afford the goods sold on the parallel market.

Businesses are closing down. Thousands of jobs have been lost and more are on the firing line. That our shops and market shelves are already empty is common cause. Our families are exposed. Mugabe and ZANU PF continue to bicker and to sacrifice the people’s livelihoods for political expediency.

The plan is to drive the entire nation into destitution for easier control and punishment for rejecting ZANU PF rule. To those in urban areas, the onslaught began with operation Murambatsvina in 2005. Mugabe’s intention is to push everybody into a hunter-gatherer subsistence mode of life and to scatter whole communities into the countryside in search of food. The plan is to weaken and liquidate organised constituencies and organised life in Zimbabwe.

I salute you, Zimbabweans, for remaining focussed on the goal; for rejecting the selfish and poor ZANU PF election gimmicks. Our experience shows once a key economic sector is targeted by this regime, the poor and vulnerable often bear the brunt of such recklessness. I salute you, brave mothers and fathers, the workers, commuters, students, businesspeople, the unemployed and all our children for the discipline you have maintained in the face of such naked provocation from Mugabe and his regime.

We have a scheduled election in March 2008. In stable societies, a free and fair election opens up a host of opportunities for citizens. In our case, the conditions are so flawed that our voices are often muzzled. We must get the right conditions to pull through an election process that works as a catalyst for a holistic transformation of our society.

For 27 years, Mugabe and ZANU PF have proved beyond reasonable doubt that they are unable to lead us to the desired national destiny. Under this regime, Zimbabwe shall never realise the ideals of the liberation struggle. Mugabe and ZANU PF simply enjoy the blame game.

For nearly three decades, they have targeted the opposition and people of Matabeleland and the Midlands to defend their power-base. Mugabe has smashed the media; he has attacked white Zimbabweans, white farmers and the West; he has gone for the church and church leaders; now he has turned his axe onto ordinary people by smashing the conventional business environment.

We can reverse the decay. We have the power to restore our dignity. We can turn around our fortunes, our economy and enjoy our self-esteem. We can reclaim our sovereignty and our freedom. We pledge to lay before you a new breed of leaders, a new generation of committed patriots, ready to tackle the complicated task of putting permanent structures for a new Zimbabwe.

The choice is simple: either take the country into a new era or maintain a decaying status quo. A free and fair election can assist in lifting us from this scrap-heap, restore our respect among nations and rest our restless population in its own natural home. A free and fair election, given the right political will, is possible.

With a worthless currency, a huge budget deficit, a shocking external debt, nearly 100 percent unemployment and a devastating HIV/Aids pandemic, fellow Zimbabweans, the time has come for us to swear that we cannot take in any more battering.

Mugabe and ZANU PF have lost interest in turning around the damage they have caused. They are hopelessly weak and tired. The regime no longer has the capacity nor the national interest to clean up the mess. The time has come for us to start afresh. The answer lies in the manner in which we organise ourselves for an orderly regime change.

Organise yourselves in every village, at growth points, in your streets and at meeting places to raise the nation out of this deepening crisis. Talk to your neighbours, engage each other in your churches and at gatherings. Talk about the future. Talk about Zimbabwe. We are ready to provide the leadership. Resist Mugabe’s attempts to scatter the nation into various tribes and clans. Maintain the thread that links us to a single nation and a single identity. Fight the fragmentation, endure the temporary setbacks and overcome fear. Keep hope alive.

My vision rests on a flourishing, tolerant society that respects our diversity as a source of strength. We have already put together a post-Mugabe reconstruction and reconciliation plan in line with our national healing focus.

We need a spirit of togetherness and must come to terms with our disruptive past in order to iron out any traces of covert discrimination based on a person’s ancestry and geographical station in Zimbabwe. A new Zimbabwe shall respect the people’s right to decency.

Zimbabweans require a minimum state involvement in the economy. Zimbabweans require a cafeteria environment to explore their dreams and to realise their full potential as a people.

Given the pressures on our young people - a generation that has borne the brunt of this dictatorship most - we shall put in place a Marshall-plan type of programme to rescue the jobless millions through viable placements in all sectors of the economy in order to offer them a belated head start in life.

Zimbabweans stranded in neighbouring countries and beyond, searching for food security and economic opportunities, shall rejoin their families at home. We pledge to make this possible within a short space of time. We have a committed leadership, a leadership for change, a leadership ready for a new Zimbabwe.

Prepare yourselves and your communities for a new Zimbabwe. Let us stand ready for a society awash with food and jobs for our people. The temporary setbacks we are all facing shall vanish as soon as we mobilise and claim our space. The time for a new Zimbabwe is now with us.”

Morgan Tsvangirai,

President.

I noted with some concern that Mugabe’s government has taken over Olivine Industries in Zimbabwe. I do not mind the actual take-over, but am concerned that the government somehow stumped up US$6,8 million.

It is a well known fact that the Mugabe government is broke. They even admit to it, and you read appeals for the private sector to make contributions to various national celebrations (which I note are only attended by the rich and powerful - not the people who contribute…) and they have also taken to making compulsory deductions off the salaries of civil servants to fund these forays…

So where did this money come from?

I cannot see Mugabe ordering Gideon Gono (manager of Bob’s take away, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe) to print the bearer cheques - because I don’t think that Zimbabwe has that much paper… bear in mind that the bearer cheques in circulation at present are printed on normal paper and have no real security features, and are not recognised in a court of law in Zimbabwe as legal tender.

If Mugabe had ordered Gono to print this money for exchanging in the black market (just about the only place in Zimbabwe where one can buy foreign currency), they would have to print off ZW$ 2150000000 worth of bearer cheques - working on a very rough rate of ZW$250000 to the greenback.

That would work out at 430 million ZW$200000 bearer cheques.

Any conversion like this in Zimbabwe would have to be on the black market.

How do I know this? Gideon Gono, in his wisdom, pegged the US dollar at 250:1 and stated that the rate would only change when a certain amount had been traded on the stock market in any given day - I did look to see if I could identify that figure, but failed…

Now, to achieve the amount that they needed to buy Olivine Industries, and so as not to raise any suspicion, this money would have had to be exchanged either in small quantities, making time a factor - or on the black market.

Now you know that Mugabe and his government are never going to do anything up front and by the book, so where did they really get this money from?

We will probably never know the truth to this question, but rest assured that it was done behind closed doors, under cover of darkness and with one objective in mind - to take over a foreign concern in Zimbabwe. Not that I mind that, but feel that the people that will be given some sort of control in the day-to-day running of that company will be by government appointment and the decisions they make will be politically based, not business based… that is assuming that they attempt to run the company, as opposed to asset strip it…

I continue to watch the events unfold in Zimbabwe, but fear that there will be no let-up in the activities practised against the good people of that country.

Hang on - it’s going to be a rough ride!

Take cae.

‘debvhu

I was aghast at an article I commented on this morning where the Equatorial Guinea leader made claim that Mugabe’s land grab was a work of some standing and that Zimbabwe had a brilliant agricultural sector.

As I said in my comments on my main page, was Obiang talking in the past tense - as the agricultural sector in Zimbabwe is virtually on its knees.

The land was taken forcibly, the cream of which was handed out to Mugabe’s biggest supporters within government - some even helping themselves to more than the mandated ‘one farm one family’ ruling (Mugabe’s family has three farms at last count)…

The last of the white commercial farmers are due off their land this month.

I have mentioned the Lancaster House agreement - and in typical Mugabe fashion, he heaps the blame on his economic woes on the English. He says that the UK should pay compensation to the farmers.

Now - we must bear in mind that the Lancaster House agreement agreed that the land reform programme would be on a ‘willing buyer-willing seller’ basis. I saw nothing willing about Martin Olds been brutally shot dead by invaders.

Nothing willing when Dave Stevens met his end at the hands of the people intent on taking his property by force.

Nothing willing when the farm workers were turned off the land - mainly because the new owners were only interested in asset stripping the farm and the workforce were just another hole to fill with money. Not only that, but the workforce were labelled unpatriotic as they worked for the white ‘supremacists’ so they had to go…

As the farm takeovers began to translate into a productivity downturn, Mugabe began to lay the blame at the feet of the West in general - the UK in particular. Something which he still does today.

His policies and regulations - perpetually tinkered with - along with the almost unrecognisable Constitution, are his greatest tools and in the recent past he has discovered the Presidential Decree.

But let’s go back to the land grab. Mugabe has stated on many, many occasions that compensation for the removed white farmers is to be paid for by the British - something that was agreed on in the agreement of 1979.

It is a little known and even less acknowledged fact that Britain handed Mugabe £114 million in the early 1980 to be used as compensation for the land.

Mugabe has never been asked for an accounting of this money - but it certainly has not been used to pay off any farmers. Why has he never been asked to account for this money?

Any compensation paid by the Mugabe regime has been for non-removable improvements to the land by the farmer, and the values of this have been calculated by Government paid assessors who have been instructed to give valuations of a much lesser value - sometimes as low as 3% of the value.

The compensation money has then been dangled in front of the dispossessed farmer – himself in dire straits having lost the bulk of his possessions - who have accepted it before half a loaf is better than none.

The land grab itself was a terrifying time for the farmer and farmworkers alike. If you get the chance, then buy yourself a copy of Eric Harrison’s “Jambanja” (linked in the right hand sidebar of “The Bearded Man”).

Eric’s book tells the story of how he came to be in the Lowveld and how he prospered at Mkwasine Estates, and participated in the production of all manner of fruit and sugar.

I first met Eric when I worked in Chiredzi in the late 1980s and recognised that this was a self made man who worked hard to better the lives of his workers, his family and himself - in that order.

Jambanja tells the story of the reign of terror that Eric’s family was subjected to by State-sponsored thugs, resulting in him finally giving up the farm.

On this page I have also published an update on Eric’s farm, following his return to the Lowveld to have a look.

The farm was virtually abandoned and little work had been carried out. The crops - what little there were - were in poor shape and much of the work that Eric had put in (irrigation systems) had been ripped out and removed - probably for sale on the black market as scrap iron.

And Eric is not the only one telling this story. We read them often. Farmers who have lost everything going back to have a look at their life’s work only to find it brutalised, raped, robbed and pillaged…

And Obiang says that the Zimbabwean agricultural sector is a beacon of hope, a testimony to Zimbabweans…

I don’t think so!

Take care.

‘debvhu