Messages From Zimbabwe

Howzit

For me, this powerful posting by Eddie Cross is summed up beautifully in the second to last paragraph: “Not a single political murder since 2000 has been investigated and prosecuted…” A powerful conviction of the Mugabe regime – who, until the day they are either defeated or removed, believe that their rule – nay, their very presence – is above any law in any country, anywhere.

“When we attained our Independence in 1980, we did so in style. Changing the guard democratically, creating new democratic structures for the State and local government and at the same time we preserved a well developed system of law supported by an independent Judiciary of surprising quality and experience. These achievements after a long drawn out civil war and decades of abuse by successive governments that were determined to protect the security of the State at the expense of the rights of the individual, were significant.

Since then it has been downhill all the way. First Gukurahundi and the smashing of ZAPU as a political entity. In a savage, secret campaign over 7 years, the Zimbabwe regime under Mr Mugabe sought to achieve total hegemony over the political structures of the country. The rules of both democracy and law were flaunted; the rights of millions denied, the media controlled and manipulated and both the Judges and the international community were silent.

Once ZAPU had been silenced, the State continued its attempts to control and silence centres of dissidence. One by one the key social institutions were infiltrated and subdued until the number of truly independent social institutions in the economic system or in open society at large could be counted on the fingers of one hand. There were flashes of resistance – Margaret Dongo, Enoch Dumbutshena, but they were soon snuffed out.

By the mid nineties only the Trade Unions and some Churches remained independent of the State and able to express themselves in the interests of their members and society at large. The State was arrogant and took the view that at last it was totally in control, the one Party State had been achieved in all but name, at the expense of both democracy and the rule of law – the two great achievements of the liberation struggle over a 80 year period.

Then the MDC took shape and suddenly the world molded by Mr Mugabe looked threatened and fragile. The struggle against the rule of law and democratic forces took on a new meaning and intensity. In the ensuing battle hundreds have been murdered, millions displaced and hundreds of thousands subjected to beatings and worse at the hands of the so-called “forces of law and order”. All the basic tenets of real democracy have been abused and distorted as the regime sought to defend its hold on power with increasing ruthlessness and desperation.

At first these abuses received little attention from the world community. African leaders went one step further and tried to defend the indefensible and the unjust activities of what had become a rogue regime in every sense of the word. One by one the independent Jurists were dealt with to be replaced with pliant and complacent men and women who were willing to compromise their training and ethics for a mess of porridge.

But at last the international community came out and said; enough is enough! Recognition was withdrawn and the regime in Harare formally defined as a rogue regime. We are also now classified as a “failed State”. But it took the African States much longer to step up to the line and agree with their international counterparts. Mugabe was one of their own they argued, he was a hero of the liberation process and could not be touched. But even they have now accepted that the Mugabe regime has gone a step too far. At the SADC summit on the 29th March this year, that was in fact the main message given to Mr Mugabe behind closed doors.

At that crucial meeting the regional leaders agreed that the crisis in Zimbabwe was home grown, had gone on long enough and had to be brought to an end. They agreed hat the regime in Harare had to open discussions with the much-maligned MDC and put in place arrangements for the next elections that were scheduled for March 2008. They put South Africa in charge of the process and gave President Mbeki their total support.

And so, in a country that still claims it is a “democracy”, we have spent the past 8 months negotiating the conditions that will allow our people the simple right they fought for over a period of 80 years – the right to vote under free and fair conditions for the leadership of their choice. 8 months of tough, unrelenting, behind closed doors, negotiations to restore the very conditions that were ours in 1980.

Even as we have been negotiating the very basic conditions that should be the norm in any sane society, the regime has continued to pound the official opposition to death. Our leadership has been hounded, meetings banned, unreasonable conditions imposed on other meetings, billions of dollars of destabilization money has been poured into the CIO for the purpose of making our lives a living nightmare. They decided the urban worker was the enemy and they have set about smashing what remains of the economy and driving millions of voters out of the country. This action has been similar to a long-range artillery barrage in advance of an infantry assault over the trenches.

Many doubt we will even get to an election – let alone have a free and fair contest. I just want us to be able to vote in secret and without any fear of recrimination. The people will do the rest.

As for the rule of law! You must be joking! We have a Chief Justice who occupies a farm stolen from its rightful owners and who last week gave his assent to the wholesale theft of private assets from farms. A Chief Justice who pays scant regard for the welfare of his colleagues and the lower ranks in the Judiciary. We live in a society where even if you can clearly identify the killers and link them to an incident of political murder, no dockets are opened and no prosecutions are mounted. Not a single political murder since 2000 has been investigated and prosecuted – not a bad record for a so-called system of Justice.

In fact we live in a society where the whole system of Justice has been subverted and citizens have absolutely no recourse when it comes to the protection of either their person or their property. In 1980 I would never have imagined that we would be in this state of affairs some 27 short years down the line.

Eddie Cross
Bulawayo, 11th November 2007″

Take care.

‘debvhu

There were few guarantees that the coming elections in Zimbabwe would be free and fair, because of widespread police abuses, a report by the International Bar Association said yesterday.

The association’s human rights institute said it found evidence of police torture, intimidation and illegal arrests, which threatened parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for March.

“Police officers are responsible for some of the most serious human rights and rule of law violations,” the report said. “The police have consistently shown disrespect and contempt for the law, lawyers and judicial authorities to an extent that has seriously imperilled the administration of justice and the rule of law.”

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, in power since 1980, has denied carrying out political violence and human rights abuses against his opponents.

His government has come under increasing international pressure to adopt democratic reforms as the country faces a crippling economic and political crisis.

The ruling ZANU PF has been in negotiations to resolve the crisis with the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which has accused Mugabe’s party of stealing a series of elections since 2002 through intimidation.

The institute said after interviews with several government officials, legal professionals and nongovernmental organisations that it had come across several cases of police torture, arbitrary arrests, disobeying of court orders and intimidation.

“If this is what is occurring at the level of the administration of justice, then everything bodes poorly for the elections,” said advocate Andrea Gabriel, a member of a team that visited Zimbabwe in August.

The report called on Harare to establish an independent system of monitoring the police and urged leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to address police abuse as part of efforts to resolve the crisis.

Prof Danny Titus, deputy dean of the law college at the University of South Africa and a member of the fact-finding team, said the findings raised concern that the police would be used to subvert the electoral process. “Without accountable, impartial policing that protects human rights, it will be difficult and perhaps impossible for the citizens of Zimbabwe to participate freely in any democratic process, including elections,” he said.

Separately, the MDC said two MDC-supporting youths, Taurai Chigede and Clement Takaendesa, had been shot in Kwekwe, central Zimbabwe, allegedly by a Brig Mavenge, whose first name was not immediately known. Takaendesa died on the spot and Chigede was taken to hospital, said the MDC. Mavenge had been arrested.

(Source)

As the country she loves plunges into economic and social meltdown, a white Zimbabwean woman writes to her family in Britain about life amid runaway inflation, police repression and a defeated people.

Hello, darling

Home. Strange but familiar. Scary but welcoming. Three months away from Zimbabwe is a lifetime. People in normal countries return to their homes after a time away to find nothing changed. Not here. The drive home is spent dodging the same old potholes, ducking and diving with the cars and lorries belting across crossroads where traffic lights still don’t work, staring out at the rusted and buckled street lamps that have had unsuccessful altercations with Zimbabwe’s death-defying drivers.

And home – with its magnificently flowering petrea entwined with yellow and white banksia roses, the heavily scented Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (brunsfelsia) bush of purple, mauve and white blossoms, the bougainvillea spilling great masses of scarlet and cerise blossoms over the driveway, the delicate pink and white bauhinia spreading its tangled branches, all under a flawless, balmy, blue sky, so warmly embracing. I loved coming home… to the hysterically barking dogs and Moses, standing at the front door with his broad, delighted grin displaying the loss of another front tooth.

Until, that is, I decided to tackle the shops. The Mazda, left in June safely parked and locked in the garage, provided me with my first shock. The upper side of the boot had a rumpled look to it and it was a different white from the rest of the car. I sought out Moses, dear trusty concerned Moses, majordomo, carer, friend.

“Have you anything to tell me, anything that happened while I was away that I should know about?” I asked.

“Well I told you I broke a plate and that I used your cooking oil; but nothing else,” he replied in a puzzled tone.

“Nothing on the property,” I probed gently. “Nothing to the car?”

And so the story emerged. Apparently Moses (whose driving lessons I had sponsored earlier this year – coincidentally?) had decided to wash the car and, for an inexplicable reason, had pushed it out of the garage and it had “rolled” into a pillar. This, he claimed, had buckled the boot. So he found a hammer, used it to try and iron out the creases in the metal (unsuccessfully), bought/borrowed/begged (a shifting account here) an aerosol can of white paint – and sprayed. Why hadn’t he told me on my regular phone calls from England, or my friends keeping an eye on the house? “I forgot,” he said, eyes blank and depthless. “It was a mistake.”

Perhaps I overreacted. But I was consumed by the sense of betrayal – betrayal unhappily too common here in these troubled days – which upset me far more than the damage to the car.

Shock No 2 was TM Supermarket. Somehow I thought the stories and pictures of empty supermarkets were an exaggeration. But they weren’t. Outside the shop was a motley gathering of mainly women and children. The effect was one of darkness and drabness (worn, torn, grubby clothes), weariness and defeat (unsmiling, silent hopelessness). I asked a woman what she was waiting for. Perhaps bread, she shrugged, or sugar or maybe mealie meal [the staple]. But more likely nothing.

I went into the shop. And the empty shelves and freezers took my breath away as fresh memories of yesterday’s Sainsbury’s and Waitrose obscenely filled my mind. Many of the metal shelves were entirely bare; others contained a single row of one commodity. For instance the tinned vegetables shelf was taken up with can upon can of tomato purée – and nothing else. Another “full” shelf held a line of loo rolls, while packets of loose tealeaves decorated another. The only meat was packets of one brand of pork sausages and another of frankfurters. There were no dairy products – milk, butter, cheese – no eggs or bread or biscuits or cereal or flour or sugar… but there was a small selection of fresh vegetables and one brand of washing powder.

I left the shop with a packet of washing powder and two tins of grapefruit segments – the only tinned fruit. My three items came to Z$533,000 – about 90p. Living here, I thought, is going to be cheap; not to mention provide a fast-track diet.

Love and miss you, darling, Mummy

Hi darling

Yesterday was a bad day. As you know, I didn’t leave my potent English bug behind along with the cheddar cheese I couldn’t squeeze into my ridiculously laden hand-luggage. So feeling really rough, dragged myself to the doctor and she put me on an antibiotic and a course of vitamin B injections to try and boost my flagging system. She also told me that the results from a sugar test, done before I left here, had shown I was pre-diabetic and I was to go on to a sugar-free diet. Hmmm, I said, that’s not too hard here; just as well you’re not telling me to go on to a sugar diet.

This new medical development, with the high blood pressure and high cholesterol, apparently is just another indication of Zimbabwe’s endemic stress level. Talking of which, I suggested perhaps I should come off the old Prozac. It’s been a long time. Wait, she advised. You’ve been back in the country only a matter of hours. I’m putting patients on to Prozac, not taking them off.

I had chatted to a patient in the waiting room. She came here from England a couple of years ago with her family in search of a “better life” – and found it. “There’s no way I’d go back to the UK,” she said. “I’d much rather scout round for fuel and food here than bring my kids up there. We had no quality of life. I had two jobs, running ragged, and my kids were being brought up by child carers. What kind of family life is that? Here they have open space, sunshine and a mother and father.”

My doctor was very kind and understanding of my pecuniary circumstances. She charged me only Z$1 million (£1.80) for the consultation and first injection. The pharmacist wasn’t so sympathetic. My monthly medication and the antibiotic came to more than Z$13 million. I reeled. In real money that’s just over £20 at yesterday’s black-market rate. But all those zeroes are frightening and it’s amazing how easily they add up to lots of pounds.

I came home with my bag (we don’t use purses here any more; they’re simply too small) a good deal lighter than when I went out (Z$14 million are a lot of notes) and found an electricity cut. The power’s off most days, but apart from not being able to use the computer, I don’t mind it too much during the day. I try to get up around five in the morning, boil the kettle and put some hot water in a Thermos. On the days I don’t wake in time to carry out this ritual, it’s pretty miserable. Usually the power’s off all day, so I’m parched by evening.

But it’s the black nights I hate most. Last night was awful. I came home from walking the dogs on the golf course and heard that dreaded deep-throated burrrr of the surrounding generators, and found the house still in darkness. I don’t use my baby generator. Somehow it seems extravagant to spend a few hard-to-come-by litres of petrol on the couple of lights and television it will power.

Cathy had left me some candles. I searched in vain for matches. I lay in bed in that thick enveloping African blackness, sick and hungry, lonely and despairing, worrying that Moses was a good deal less faithful than I had believed… and I decided everyone has a line in life that they can’t cross. And I feared that perhaps I’d reached mine.

I’ve now heard that British Airways is stopping its thrice-weekly direct London-Harare flight. A friend, whose daughter booked and paid in May to come home from England to Zimbabwe this Christmas, has been advised by BA that she will be refunded her money (which the airline has had the use of all these months). But the new fare will be more than twice the amount she receives because the route now takes in a stop-over in Johannesburg.

And so our isolation continues, our troubles worsen.

Sorry I’m so maudlin. I love you, Mummy

Dearest darling

Thought I’d better send the following e-mail as a guideline for our future communications: PLEASE TAKE NOTE AS THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS MATTER WHICH NEEDS TO BE CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD.

As you might have read in the papers, the INTERCEPTION OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS or THE ANTITERRORISM AND COMMUNICATIONS BILL is now LAW.

PLEASE BE WARNED AGAINST SENDING e-mails with political connotations, or any unfriendly verbatim, like the use of known nicknames of political figures. The Mail-Marshal can easily detect these. Let’s try to avoid any unwarranted arrests in our individual capacities, or as a company (companies can be sued according to the companies Act chapter 23 section 12).

You might also want to advise any colleagues who you might have been in the habit of exchanging potentially dangerous political views/jokes over e-mail. Your landline phones are also not spared from this. Mobile phones can also be tapped but only to a certain extent.

Not sure what constitutes “terrorist-inspired” musings between mother and daughter, but had better watch my Ps and Qs.

If I’m struggling to find food, can’t imagine how the 80 per cent (actually, now considered closer to 90 per cent) of unemployed are managing. No wonder they appear so thin and emaciated. And from being a nation of jolly, pleasant, contented people (as Zimbabweans were by repute and fact), those men, women and children who tramp the dusty streets unable to afford the bus fare home, look as though a smile requires more effort and energy than they have.

I drove out to Borrowdale Brooke to visit Jill last week. As I passed the powder blue-painted walls – disappearing in every direction to beyond where the eye could see and guarded by camouflage-clad, rifle-at-the-ready, sinister-looking men whose stance definitely discouraged eye contact – sheltering ******* rambling multi-roomed residence, I marvelled at the man’s lack of conscience at his people’s anguish. And those people’s passive acceptance of their sorry lot.

Today heard the British Shadow Chancellor telling the Tory conference: We have changed our party to face the modern world; now let’s change our country. Thunderous applause and acclaim in a country that to us is little short of Utopia (with its freedom, democracy, rights, choice – not to mention food)… and yet here, where there are no such things, we have no such promises. Just a governing party that expects its 27-year rule under one man to continue through next year’s ********* into a never-ending inglorious future.

Delighted to find the Borrowdale Brooke Spar far better stocked than TM Supermarket. Bought heavy brown sugar, Nescafé, light bulbs, dog biscuits, carrots, a packet of pork sausages AND butter (I salivate at the memory) for a cool Z$5 million (possibly what many receive for a month’s work). Now on a diet of sausage and sausage and more sausage. By Friday I was desperate for stodge. I wanted to feel full. I longed for thickly cut, generously spread, bread and butter. But I’ve seen no bread since my return.

So I set off to find flour. Not in the shops, of course, which haven’t had flour on their shelves for months, but from within the “informal trading sector”. (The wheat crop failed, we are mollified by a government report, because of constant power failures – no mention being made of the fact that all those commercial farmers who used to supply this bread basket of Africa were hounded from their now mostly fallow lands.)

These traders operate from well outside the shops, and as you approach their territory you are surrounded by feral-looking men, eyes darting on the constant lookout for police charged with plugging the thriving black market: madam, madam, they screech, elbowing their fellow hawkers away, and proffering cartons of cigarettes – no longer available in the shops of this once prime tobacco-growing nation – while suggesting, sugar, cooking oil, and mealie meal can be obtained. I make my shopping request: flour.

All but one man fall away to descend on another potential customer. My man, who introduces himself as Eddie, starts the long haul of negotiation. Six million for 5kg, he offers. Four million, I counter. And so we haggle. In the end I paid Z$4,600,000 (£6.50), thrilled with the deal and yearning to make muffins and scones and biscuits and pizza… but I had no power that night and none for 13 hours the following day. But what a magnificent Saturday night I had… cooking and baking AND eating. In haste for the kitchen, all love, Mummy

My darling

I write in some trepidation. Went to dinner with Lizzie and Lindy the other evening and heard a horror story. Apparently Lizzie’s boss arranged to meet a client for a working breakfast at a coffee shop. When she got back to the office, she was met by a number of plain-suited men. They identified themselves as policemen and wanted to know who she had met, why and what had been discussed. We live in a country where our rights have been totally eroded – and we accept that as the status quo. Scary.

Meanwhile, costs continue to spiral. Moses – who hasn’t had meat for months – found some dried fish (kapenta) the other day for Z$900,000. Of course, he didn’t have the money to buy it. So I gave him it the next day, but when he got to the shop it cost Z$1.4 million. Having not learnt the dither-at-your-peril lesson (golfers buy their mid-game drinks at the start of the 18 holes because their prices will have increased by the ninth hole), I gave Moses the money the following day. The wretched fish by then was Z$2.2 million – and when he went back for the third time, it had sold out. Sod’s Law.

Had a similar experience with the cars’ tax this week. I could buy the single-term tax for only one car because, as I reached the counter, the office ran out of one-term discs. It cost an extraordinarily reasonable Z$30,000 (20p). When I went back the following day to tax the second car, the identical one-term tax cost Z$480,000. How’s that for inflation?

Just been chatting to Maximus at the gate. Grizzled and looking his age – he tells me he was born in 1927 – he still cycles round the suburbs selling vegetables. I was shocked at the price of his potatoes (a million for 2kg). Ah madam, he apologised; this country. What will happen to us God only knows. My heart breaks for him and the millions of others suffering under these unbearably harsh conditions. I asked him if he was still making a living. Barely, he replied, but for the help of a granddaughter living and working in England as a nurse.

Not only is Maximus physically fit, but he’s mentally as sharp as a pin. Getting off his bike and rubbing his steel-grey wire-brush head in memory of better times, he reminisced about the Federation (you wouldn’t know, but that was of Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland – Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, 1953-1963) and what good years they had been. “I can’t understand why this country had to seek revenge,” he mused. “Swaziland and Basutoland, South Africa and Botswana, Malawi and Zambia, Tanganyika (oh no, they were ruled by the Germans) and Kenya, Ghana… they fought for their freedom but they didn’t seek revenge from the British. It confuses me why this country had to attack the white people.”

And me. With perhaps only 25,000 Zimbabwean whites left in the country (at its peak there were 250,000), we are right down to those committed to the country because they so choose – or they have no other choice. We are a largely ageing population, at ease in a society that has forged a network of friendship, affection and community-ministering through a tough and testing shared history. To what alien world do we turn with a suitcase and a truckload of useless Zimbabwe dollars?

Is this the Final Push? First the farms – with any white farmer remaining on his land now considered to be trespassing – now last week’s Indigenisation and Empowerment law calling for 51 per cent of all foreign and white-owned businesses to be given to black Zimbabweans; how long before our homes?

Returned to exercises this morning, held on Cathy’s lawn under the spread of the most magnificent Jacaranda tree. We twist our torsos and flex our limbs, stretch spirits and souls, while staring up at a lacey purple canopy filtering an emerging sun in a duck blue sky. The birds are in full voice, banks of dazzling spring colour flank us, the dogs race round as I watch a colony of ants on the march away from this group of middle aged women working their bodies as they do all over the world… but surely seldom in such magical surroundings.

I guess, simply, this is where I belong.

My love, Mummy

(Source)

If you live in Zimbabwe and only have access to the local media or even if you live abroad or in South Africa, I would expect that you are very confused about the MDC and the state of play in the country at large! About the only thing that is straight forward is the fact that we are in a total mess and the economy is in meltdown.

The reason for the confusion is quite clear – we (the MDC) are being subjected to a total onslaught in the media driven by a variety of political interests who are all committed to ensuring that the MDC does not win the next election. It’s a long and convoluted story but I will try to summarise and map out the essential elements to try and help you understand what is going on and why.

The domestic agenda is the most easily understood. When ZANU PF accepted that they faced an election in March 2008 and that this could not be postponed as they had wanted to 2010 and on top of that they would be required by regional leaders to put on a show for the world community that they were able to organise a ‘free and fair’ election, they went into high gear..

As with most major developments in Zimbabwe, the planning and the final decisions were taken by the Joint Operations Command (the JOC) and selected senior ZANU PF functionaries. The strategy was quite simple – smash what was left of the MDC and support minority elements in the opposition and intensify ZANU PF/JOC political control of the rest of the country. This involved tightening their grip on the rural areas and reducing the population of the urban centres.

Since then we have seen a wholesale physical attack on the MDC leadership at all levels, the systematic dismantling of MDC structures especially in the rural areas and an intensified media blitz. This past week the MDC has been headlines every day – all negative stories designed to show that the MDC is divided, its leadership weak and indecisive and that we are incapable of really effecting change.

While this has been going on, we have seen the renewed offensive on the commercial farming industry and a new, dramatic and comprehensive assault on the private sector in all other sectors of the economy. Through price control and ‘indigenisation’ initiatives what remains of the private sector and the economy is being brought under Zanu control or liquidated. This is being supported by the deliberate sabotage of urban essential services – especially water. As a result they have started a tidal wave of migrants into neighbouring countries – especially South Africa and this is reducing the urban population.

In this struggle inflation is accepted as one of the tools they have available to them and they are determinedly driving the rate of inflation to new record highs – it is a real possibility now that we will see rates as high as those predicted by the IMF some months ago of 100000 percent by Christmas. To demonstrate that, the Reserve Bank is understood to be buying foreign exchange on the parallel market and selling it to ZANU PF and State linked individuals and companies at the official price.

We have not been able to buy seed maize for resale at all this winter. I now understand that ZANU PF is distributing 5 kg packs in the rural areas – and demanding that recipients hold ZANU PF cards. Maize meal is being distributed in the same way – I heard on Friday of a ZANU PF office in Borrowdale distributing maize meal to local people – I assume on the same basis.

When it comes to the media and the State funded campaign against the MDC, you have got to understand that this is directed only at the organisation to which I belong and is led by Morgan Tsvangirai. As far as the media and the CIO are concerned this is the enemy – there is no other. And they are right. The latest polls indicate that there is only one real opposition grouping capable of taking on ZANU PF and winning and only one individual who could defeat Robert Mugabe and that is the MDC led by Tsvangirai. They know that and have been working on that assumption since March.

So when we have an internal problem – such as the collapse of confidence in the leadership of the Women’s Assembly of the MDC and the need to elect new leadership, you can expect that we would be subjected to an intensified campaign. We duly dissolved the Women’s Assembly leadership and held a special Congress to elect new leadership. The Congress was eventually held – after two last minute changes in venue following intelligence that the meeting was to be disrupted and the delegates (from all Districts and Provincial Leaderships) duly elected new leadership – pretty much unanimously.

Under normal democratic conditions this would have gone by without much controversy – but not in Zimbabwe. The headlines bellowed ‘Split Looms in the MDC’ and worse. We of course get no media time in Zimbabwe. The newspapers are all to a lesser or greater extent hostile to us and the State controlled media are just a propaganda arm of the State and ZANU PF. Who hired busses to carry women and young people from all over the country to try and gatecrash the Congress?

It is clear that the South African leadership have been hostile to the MDC from day one. The reasons were the perceived threat that we posed vicariously to the ANC alliance through COSATU. Now that that falsehood has been laid to rest, we are still viewed with some hostility in South Africa and I have no doubt that some elements there would like to see a ‘reformed ZANU PF’ solution.

At the same time we have our domestic detractors who argue that the MDC does not have the capacity to govern or that Morgan Tsvangirai does not have the education or the characteristics required for national leadership. You all know that I think this is twaddle and that Morgan has a sound track record of achievement and management at national level. That aside – he is the person in whom the Nation as a whole has invested its trust and he is the only individual who can defeat Mugabe in an election today.

So we struggle on – preparing for an election campaign, continuing with the negotiations for free and fair conditions – and believe me when I say that the negotiations are often one against the rest, trying to contain the effects of the ZANU PF and media campaign against us, coping with limited resources as domestic business is terrified of being associated with us in any way and major political donors who are committed to the democratic struggle prevaricate. Trying to keep our people spirits up and believing that the end is now in sight. Trying the force regional power brokers to act when Zanu PF flagrantly violates the principles being negotiated and agreed at the South African talks.

The talks in South Africa are almost concluded – 5 months later than originally intended, the date for the elections is yet to be decided (there is a lot of disinformation about the talks in local and international press) and then we get into the issue of the transition and the management of the election itself. Believe me, this is going to be a fight to the finish and the outcome will depend on you and me.

Eddie Cross

Bulawayo, 5th November 2007

(Source)

Howzit

There was more information out today on the killing of one man and the injuring of his brother in Kwe Kwe recently.

I am working on an exhaustive listing of cases like this where court orders are ignored, or people are not taken to vourt, or are even rewarded for their actions – either by way of a farm or a motor vehicle.

Duplicity knows no bounds in Zimbabwe – and if the victim of the crime is a known member of the MDC, there is little hope for any justice.

“The MDC has supplied diesel and food for the funeral of the Kwe Kwe victim. It has also put 50 million in for the coffin and transport.

The two injured men Taurayi Chigede (brother of the deceased) and Samuel Sithole are in a private Hararehospital. Taurayi was operated on yesterday to fix his shattered femur. He is in High care. Brig Gen Mabenge fired at them, the bullet went through both of Taurayi’s legs and hit his brother killing him instantly.

In a seperate incident, Samuel sithole was gathering wood on the plot “owned” by Mabenge, which borders on the Bembezaan River. (The property that Mabenge’s on was a commercial ranch sold to the Kwe Kwe urban council a few years ago, as it borders on Mbizvo township.)

There were two other people with a wheelbarrow also gathering wood. Mabenge carrying a rifle in a case slung over his shoulder, and brandishing a hand gun, told Sithole to sit on the ground. He took away his axe and asked him four times if he would like to be beaten or shot. While asking him, Mabenge was pointing his hand gun at Sithole. Sithole did not respond. Mabenge then proceeded to hit him with the butt of the rifle in the back, buttocks, side and stomach. He then smashed his left knee with the rifle, hit him on the feet and the the right knee. Mabenge told the couple with the wheelbarrow to go and left Sithole there. While he was beating Sithole, Mabenge was saying “you are cutting wood for the MDC”.

Mabenge was a close ally of Munangagwa for many years. Mabenge was at the forefront of the burning of Hon Chebundo’s home and the MDC offices in Kwe Kwe in 2000. It is also believed that he was involved in the killing of Henry Elsworth (a farmer and independant MP in Kwe Kwe).

His son visited the family of the deceased this weekend offering to pay for the funeral etc. The family declined, they are understandably very angry.

This is just like the Gutu killing of Mafukidze when the VP is alleged to have paid out the family to withdraw the murder charges. Once again it must be reiterated that our members lives are non negotiable. Mabenge MUST face charges of Murder and Assault GBH.”

Take care.

‘debvhu

I was very pleased to see my posting about “Hearsay vs Heresy” making appearances on various other web pages on the internet.

About which I received my daily dose of emails which brand me a ‘reactionary’, a ‘racist’ and generally someone who is stirring up trouble for the Mugabe regime.

Which got me thinking. I write about the events in, around and concerning Zimbabwe every day. And each day I receive emails that either praise me for what I do and say, and others that accuse me of things much worse than Mugabe himself.

That people should stop everything in their busy lives and take the time to pen an email to me – of either category – it means that I have either struck a chord or hit a nerve.

And I don’t mind which, as it means that I am being heard – which means that the story of Zimbabwe is being spread. The mission continues.

Take care.

‘debvhu