Messages From Zimbabwe

Suspected war veterans and ZANU PF loyalists have seized over 20 commercial farms in Mashonaland West in the past fortnight, amid reports that a countrywide new wave of farm invasions was looming ahead of a presidential election run-off between President Robert Mugabe and the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai. The most high-profile person to occupy a farm in Mashonaland West was the Reserve Bank’s deputy governor Edward Mashiringwana. Last month Mashiringwana allegedly invaded a farm owned by South African farmer Louis Fick in the same province. This was despite a Chinhoyi magistrate’s court interdict barring the deputy central bank boss from occupying the property. Mashiringwana reportedly invaded Friedawill Farm in Lions Den, 20km west of Chinhoyi. Fick told the Zimbabwe Independent yesterday that Mashiringwana had seized his farm.

“Let me say this in short, our workers are being locked outside the farm and they are not being allowed access to the animals,” Fick said. “We have lost pigs and crocodiles. Mashiringwana - the deputy governor - is behind this.” Reports from the farm have graphically described the squeals of piglets devoured by sows driven insane by lack of food and water. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals which tried to take food and water to the farm was denied access. Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) president Trevor Gifford told the Zimbabwe Independent this week that a group of white commercial farmers in Chegutu made reports to the police that war veterans and ZANU PF supporters have forcibly taken over their farms. “We have reports that over 20 farms have been invaded,” Gifford said. “The owners made reports to the police, but they got no assistance.”

He alleged that the police displayed a lackadaisical attitude towards the invasions, which he claimed were also spreading to Mashonaland Central. “The situation is so severe, police in Mashonaland West are reluctant to deal with the invasions,” Gifford said. “It is only in a few cases that the Police Support Unit reacted.” Impeccable sources in the province said police officers were declining to enter their names in the Report Record Book (RRB) once a farmer made a report for fear of victimisation by their superiors. Police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena said he was not aware of the new wave of farm invasions. “We are not aware of those (invasion) reports at the moment,” Bvudzijena said. On why police officers were not writing their names on RRBs, Bvudzijena said it was an administrative issue that must be dealt with by a police station officer-in-charge. However, he said with or without officers’ names on the RRBs, the cases would be investigated. Gifford alleged that a white couple in Chegutu was assaulted by ZANU PF youth militia on Monday after resisting the seizure of their farm and were later admitted at a private hospital in Harare.

(Source)

Gangs of ruling party youths beat to death 11 opposition activists in a remote Zimbabwean town Monday, setting a gruesome new standard for the post-election violence surging through that nation, according to opposition party officials. Two large truckloads of youths, led by two senior members of President Robert Mugabe’s party, marauded through Chiweshe, a rural area about 90 miles north of Harare, the capital, and beat prominent members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change with branches, gun butts, bicycle chains, and whips, party officials said. Four of the victims were teachers, and at least two were elderly. The deaths brought to at least 32 the number of opposition activists killed in the past two weeks, said party spokesman Nelson Chamisa. Thousands of others have been beaten, tortured, arrested, kidnapped, or chased from their homes since the March 29 election, opposition officials say.

“They converged and they attacked,” said Shepherd Mushonga, a lawyer and newly elected opposition member of parliament who visited Chiweshe yesterday. He spoke extensively with witnesses, including several relatives of the victims, and provided a list of all 11 of the dead. Mushonga said that two were relatives of his. He said the violence was intended to weaken opposition resolve ahead of a possible runoff election. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the election but failed to reach the majority necessary for a first-round victory, according to official results. A second vote has not yet been scheduled, but violence has been focused in areas that supported the opposition. The attacks have been especially vicious in areas, such as Chiweshe, that once were strongholds of Mugabe’s Zanu PF but supported Tsvangirai in the election.

In the neighborhood where the 11 people were killed Monday, Mushonga said, Tsvangirai got 70 votes compared with 15 for Mugabe. “They want to instill as much fear as possible so either you run away and don’t vote, or you succumb and vote for the ruling party,” Mushonga said. His account was backed by a close relative of one of the victims, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear that he could be assaulted. He said he received a text message on his cellphone Monday night saying that the relative had been “murdered by Zanu PF youth.” When he arrived in Chiweshe on Tuesday, he found his relative’s body severely battered and bloodied. Funerals are scheduled to begin today. “When people do that to people, it’s not even human,” the man said. “I don’t know what will happen tomorrow.”

(Source)

ZANU PF and MDC-T have filed a total of 105 election petitions, prompting Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku to appoint 17 more High Court judges to the Electoral Court to preside over the cases.

ZANU PF is challenging results in 53 constituencies while MDC-T is contesting those in 52 constituencies. The appointments, made in terms of Section 162 of the Electoral Act, bring to 20 the number of judges who will handle the election disputes.

Three judges - Justices Tendayi Uchena, Antonia Guvava and Nicholas Ndou - were appointed to the Electoral Court early this year. In a letter dated April 29, 2008 and copied to Judge President Rita Makarau and Master of the High Court Mr Charles Nyatanga, the Chief Justice said the appointments were made in terms of the country’s electoral laws. The appointments were also made in consultation with the Judicial Service Commission and Justice Makarau in her capacity as the Judge President and would be effective from April 29, 2008 to April 29 2009.

Justice Makarau would also preside over some of the petitions. Mr Nyatanga confirmed the latest development saying the Judge President had scheduled a meeting with lawyers handling the petitions for 10am this Friday at the High Court. “All the lawyers who are dealing with election petitions (are invited) to attend the meeting where the procedure would be discussed with the Judge President chairing. “The JP (Judge President) is going to issue a practice directive on the procedures to be followed in dealing with the petitions,” he said. Mr Nyatanga said his office had received 105 petitions, which have to be determined within six months in terms of the Electoral Act.

He said both parties filed more or less an equal number of petitions challenging results of the concerned constituencies countrywide. In its petitions, ZANU PF will, among other issues, contend that MDC-T bribed election officials while the opposition party will argue that ZANU PF candidates and its supporters bought votes and interfered with the voting process.

In the synchronised presidential, parliamentary and council elections the opposition MDC-T won 99 seats against ZANU PF’s 97. The MDC got 10 seats. ZANU PF won the Senate while no absolute winner emerged in the presidential election, which now requires a run-off between President Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai.

(Source)

Do we really know why our president supports the old tyrant next door…

Over the past eight years President Thabo Mbeki has endorsed ZANU PF’s victories in a string of stolen elections, opposed the imposition of any sanctions on the regime in Zimbabwe, acted to shore up Robert Mugabe’s support within SADC, and successfully diverted international outrage into various meandering and ultimately futile diplomatic initiatives. The only surprise about his obdurate refusal to do or say anything constructive about the latest crisis is - as Tony Leon noted in Business Day recently - that “we are at all surprised.”

Still, the extremes to which Mbeki has, apparently, been willing to go in support of Mugabe still has a residual capacity to shock. On Friday the Mail & Guardian confirmed that Mbeki had both known about and condoned the transhipment across South African territory of the Chinese weapons, intended for the Zimbabwean military, aboard the An Yue Jiang. Indeed, the newspaper reported that according to its sources Mbeki had given a “direct order” to the ministry of defence and national conventional arms control committee that the weapons be waved through. This revelation seems to contradict Mbeki’s statement to journalists in New York on April 16 that “those weapons would have had nothing to do with South Africa. I really don’t know what Zimbabwe imports from China or what China imports from Zimbabwe.”

The fact that cabinet clearly knew about the arms from early on also casts doubt on Aziz Pahad’s denial of any knowledge of the shipment. The deputy minister of foreign affairs told journalists on April 17 “We are not able to determine as Foreign Affairs what are the goods that are going from one country to another. We are not aware of any nature of the consignment because we don’t have the capacity to go and check on any consignments on any ship coming into South Africa.” Over the past month numerous formerly supportive politicians, commentators, and diplomats have pealed away from Mbeki on the Zimbabwe issue. Indeed, according to the Mail & Guardian, his insistence on letting the weapons through has alienated some of his closest allies in government. “Everyone is asking what has happened to him” it quotes one person as saying. “It is very hard to explain.”

If there is now a consensus that Mbeki supports Mugabe - and has done since 2000 - there is a lot less certainty about why this is the case. The destruction of the Zimbabwean polity and economy was never in South Africa’s national interest. It has done no good for Mbeki’s international reputation. And it wasn’t obviously in his political self-interest either - it was one of the contributing factors to his downfall at Polokwane. Between 2000 and 2003 Mbeki argued that effecting a final solution to the “legacy of colonialism” was the overriding priority in Zimbabwe. But the great majority of white farmers were forced off their land years ago - and so that consideration can hardly still apply.

Mark Gevisser, has ascribed Mbeki’s approach towards Mugabe to a combination of “filial obligation”, “diplomatic strategy”, stubbornness, and a belief that ZANU PF would never concede power anyway. Professor Stephen Chan makes similar claims. He has argued there are five reasons for Mbeki’s “extraordinary patience” towards Mugabe: 1.) Mbeki knows that Mugabe is backed up by “his hardline generals” - people who will not just disappear at his say so; 2.) He does not see Tsvangirai as a “viable alternative president”. 3.) Mbeki and Mugabe “simply get on intellectually” 4.) Mugabe holds Mbeki in “thrall” as the “grand old man of liberation”; 5.) Mbeki “has blind spots” and is stubborn. When one measures these putative reasons against the thing they have to explain these explanations cannot but come across as faintly inadequate. Like darts thrown against an elephant they can’t but hit the target - but they fail to penetrate very deeply.

What man would stand back and allow the utter immiseration of a country just because he views its despotic leader as a kind of dad? Or, because he regards the head of the main opposition party as beneath him intellectually? A more substantive explanation has recently been provided by two observers on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. In an essay on the Zimbabwe crisis in the latest edition of the London Review of Books, RW Johnson argues that “Mbeki’s fundamental position was that, as a fellow national liberation movement (NLM), Mugabe’s ruling ZANU PF had to be maintained in power at all costs.” This is a view shared by the SACP’s Jeremy Cronin. In a speech last week he said he personally believed “that what informs much of President Mbeki’s Zimbabwean strategy is the belief that national liberation movements in our region should close ranks. This is informed by a conviction that the crisis in Zimbabwe is being used as an entry point by imperialist powers to reassert hegemony over a former colony and eventually over our whole region.” Still, one wonders whether this explanation can bear the entire weight of that which it seeks to explain. The bulk of the ANC leadership - including Jacob Zuma and Kgalema Motlanthe - once went along with this line of thinking.

But it seems that they have now realised that at some point it becomes barbarous to persist with this course of action. Once it became clear that the presidential and parliamentary polls had been lost to ZANU PF, Mbeki had a great deal to gain from ensuring Mugabe’s peaceful exit from power. His decision to back Mugabe from 2000 onwards had had disastrous consequences for the region this provided him with an out. His spindoctors were already spreading the message that “quiet diplomacy” was on the verge of vindication. But he humiliated them and himself by standing by Mugabe after the old tyrant decided to stay on. His stance has left him isolated both at home and abroad. The only obvious beneficiary has been ANC President Jacob Zuma, who has been made to look positively statesmanlike by comparison.

There are other curiousities about Mbeki’s relationship with Mugabe. The cover of a recent issue of the British magazine Private Eye has a picture of Robert Mugabe and Mbeki under the heading “Zimbabwe crisis talks”. Mugabe says to Mbeki “I’ll resign if I can keep my job.” To which a smiling Mbeki replies, “Anything you say boss.” Gevisser observed in his article that on Mbeki’s recent visit to Harare, “Fondly clasping Mugabe’s hand, he averred that there was ‘no crisis’ in Zimbabwe. The smirk on the father’s face left no doubt about where the power in this relationship lay.” In a column a couple of weeks ago Justice Malala derisively described Mbeki as Mugabe’s “foreign minister.” All three comments point at the same thing: despite his obvious vulnerability it is Mugabe who holds the whip hand in their relationship. If one did not know otherwise one would almost think - as Malala’s ‘foreign minister’ jibe suggests - that it is Mugabe, not the South African taxpayer, who pays Mbeki’s salary at the end of every month.

So, the honest answer then to the question of why Mbeki has backed Mugabe is that I just don’t know. I get the sense that there is something else - some strange and secret bond - that binds Mbeki and Mugabe together. I would almost class this thing as a “known unknown.” It is there and if we only knew what it was a lot which currently appears inexplicable would suddenly make a lot of sense.

(Source)

ZNU 119 released. In this programme I look at the problems facing the MDC with the surprise release of the long-awaited Presidential election results, now to be followed by an election second round runoff.

The programme can be heard using the multiplayers in the right hand sidebar of The Bearded Man blog, on Odeo, here or even downloaded or played here.

All of my podcast programmes are available to play or an ‘as required’ basis on my Odeo page.

You may be interested to know that my podcasts have been played an average of 104 times each. I thank you all for the support of my podcast endeavours.

Take care.

‘debvhu

The opposition candidate who bested Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe in the March presidential balloting is in no hurry to announce whether he will participate in a runoff election, his spokesman said Sunday. A day earlier, a spokesman for Morgan Tsvangirai said the opposition leader would make an announcement Sunday. “This is a historic decision. The party is still consulting,” spokesman George Sibotshiwe told CNN Sunday morning. “We need to ensure that the decision we make is a people’s decision. The date of the run off has not been set yet so there is no urgency to make an announcement.” A runoff is required under Zimbabwean law if neither candidate gets 50 percent plus one vote in an election. The African nation’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, has refused to agree to a second round of voting, claiming its candidate already has enough votes to replace Mugabe.

The MDC says the initial tally of votes showed Tsvangirai garnering 50.3 percent of the vote in the initial tally from the March 29, before a verification of the numbers was done this week. That official tally was released Friday by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, showing that Tsvangirai won 47.9 percent of the vote compared to 43.2 percent for Mugabe. MDC Vice President Thokozani Khupe held a news conference Saturday after a meeting of top MDC officials, who she said agreed that a runoff was unnecessary. If they refuse to support a runoff, Mugabe will retain the office. “We need to be convinced that there is need for a runoff,” Khupe said. “The verification process was not done properly. In other words, there is a deadlock resulting from the (ZEC’s) failure to execute its duties as required by the law.” The Tsvangirai spokesman told CNN the candidate was consulting with political leaders in the region, in hopes they can convince Mugabe to step down. Tsvangirai also was traveling to Ghana to meet with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

(Source)

Zimbabwe’s presidential poll results announced on Friday “lack credibility”, Britain’s Foreign Office said, adding that a second round could not be fair unless more international monitors were present.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was finally declared the winner of the March 29 vote but fell just short of toppling incumbent Robert Mugabe.

“The election results released five weeks after polling day lack credibility but it’s clear that at least 60 percent of the population voted for change in Zimbabwe,” a Foreign Office spokesperson told AFP.

“President Mugabe’s campaign of violence and intimidation, coupled with the arrest of 99 electoral commission officials in the last month, show exactly how (his ruling party) Zanu-PF would approach any second round.

“Without an immediate end to violence and the introduction of a wider range of international monitors and in much greater numbers than were present for the first, no second round could be free and fair.”

Nearly five weeks after polling day, Zimbabwe’s electoral commission announced that Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, had won 47.9% against 43.2% for the 84-year-old Mugabe and the pair will now face off in a run-off on a date yet to be announced.

A third candidate, former finance minister Simba Makoni, won 8.3% and now drops out of the contest.

(Source)

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai beat Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe’s presidential election, winning 47 percent of the vote against the president’s 43 percent, senior government sources said on Wednesday.

One source, declining to be named like the others, told Reuters a run-off would be needed because Tsvangirai did not win enough votes for an outright victory.

Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has said he won the March 29 vote outright and accuses Mugabe - in power for 28 years - of delaying results to rig victory.

The standoff over the election has raised fears of widespread bloodshed in a country already battling to cope with economic meltdown.

The MDC said on Wednesday 20 of its members had been killed by pro-government militias in post-election violence and that soldiers had taken part in the attacks. “Only over the past two days five MDC activists have been killed,” it said.

The government has denied waging a violent campaign against the opposition and accuses the MDC of carrying out attacks.

Tsvangirai has said there is no need for a second round because he won outright but has also suggested he could take part if there were international observers led by the UN.

If Tsvangirai refused to take part in a run-off, Mugabe would be declared the winner, according to election rules.

The MDC leader, who has been touring Africa seeking support, says he is a prime target for Mugabe’s security forces but would return home when conditions were right.

The state-run Herald newspaper reported police wanted to question MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti for illegally declaring results and were concerned he was “urging and abetting political violence”. Biti is believed to be outside Zimbabwe.

Police have arrested 10 MDC activists on allegations of violence, kidnapping, attempted murder, the Herald reported.

There was no immediate comment from the Electoral Commission or opposition officials on the leaked result. The commission has invited candidates to start verifying the count from Thursday.

A top official in Mugabe’s ZANU PF party said: “Those figures are in line with the official figures and the MDC knows that the official tally is more or less around that but they have been inflating their numbers to claim a false victory.”

Zimbabweans had hoped the election would ease economic turmoil. Instead, severe food, fuel and foreign currency shortages are worsening and there are no signs an inflation rate of 165,000 percent - the world’s highest - will decrease.

The MDC and human rights groups allege ZANU PF has embarked on a violent campaign to scare Zimbabweans into voting for Mugabe in a run-off, accusations the government denies.

Earlier, Mugabe’s government dismissed the United Nations’ first session on Zimbabwe’s election crisis as “sinister, racist and colonial” and said it would have no impact on the country.

At the UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday, Western powers pressed for a UN mission or envoy to visit Zimbabwe.

“For us, this (UN session) is a sign of desperation by the British and their MDC puppets,” Zimbabwe’s Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga told Reuters.

European countries, Latin American UN members and the United States supported sending an envoy, diplomats said, but South Africa, which currently holds the council presidency, said such a move was not a matter for the council.

South African President Thabo Mbeki has come under attack at home and abroad for his “softly, softly” approach to Zimbabwe.

Former colonial ruler Britain has been at the forefront of international pressure on Mugabe. It is seeking an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, an investigation into post-election violence, and has called for the election results to be issued immediately.

(Source)