PRI’s Sheri Finkis surprised to find herself under the protective cloud of the Mugabe regime.

She files an interesting report from there. Click here for the audio. Click here for the transcript.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Crisis

The mud cake thick charade that is Zimbabwe sunk to it’s lowest yesterday when Botswana’s president Festus Mogae officially opened the Harare Agricultural Show. That Mogae played along is no surprise, it is the audacity by Mugabe and his cronies in government to hold up a non existant relationship with a country that has made no secret of their contempt of Zimbabweans that is galling.

Years after independece in Zimbabweans and the batswana cultivated a famously cordial relationship. After all, most if not all residents of Matebeleland South province in Zimbabwe have lineages span across Zimbabwe and Botswana’s boarders. Many a Tswana were educated at Zimbabwe’s colleges university and returned to their home country for a job. Reciprocally, many a trained Zimbabwe established themselves in Botswana’s smaller, but much more stable economy during the first fifteen years of our independence.

So it only seemed natural when things turned sour in Zimbabwe, that a mass exodus for Botswana beginning first in the south of Zimbabwe became one of the most plied routes to “greener pastures” for desperate Zimbabweans. For a while, our neighbors in Botswana tolerated the surging influx of Zimbo’s. It wasn’t anything new, our countries had mutually exchanged people, skills and resources for much of the last 20 years. I can even remember a family vacation in Gaborone, Botswana’s capitol back in the day. And, if I am not mistaken, I remember my mother buying me my first “safari suit” outfit on that trip. Mugabe made safari suits popular to seven year old Zimbabwean boys in the mid-eighties.

After years of sustained heightened influx from their northern neighbors, the Batswana’s longsuffering patience began to run. They had watched better qualified Zimbabweans come and take their jobs and enjoy a better quality of life in their own country and had had enough. Right around 2000, word of Batswana’s targeted hostility began to leak out. Pretty soon after that it became news. Zimbabwean’s were being murdered by angry Tswana’s; Botswana was reipartriating Zimbabweans by the truckload everyday; Botswana was couping despertate Zimbabweans in inhumane animal pens for miniscule offences and the litany continues. There’s one headline that definitively marked a new era in the relations between our countries and our people; Botswana erected an electric fence to slow down the tidal wave of Zimbabweans.

Despite their best diplomatic efforts to project the new fence is nothing more than a measure to stem the spread of foot and mouth disease between cattle heards close to the boarders, Botswana’s government received several protests from their colleagues in Harare. All the while Zimbabwean border jumpers had figured out how isolate the portions of the fence long enough so that they could sneak back into what had become a promised land; Botswana. This controversy is well articulated in the PBS Wide Angle documentary Border Jumpers
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Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Harare Agricultural Show, Mugabe

Apparently frustrated by his party’s penchant for a quick buck and lust for power, Mugabe bombarded his party’s top members not once but twice over the weekend. Speaking to ZANU’s central committee on Friday Mugabe lashed out at the members over corruption saying,

These cases of [members] wanting to enrich themselves are increasing in number. You are not being fair — some people are just being crookish. Zanu-PF is going to embark on a major cleansing exercise to remove those elements bent on tarnishing the image of the party by their wayward behaviour with their private and public lives.

The aged leader, did not leave any stone unturned in his long harangue. Taking a swipe at the MDC over recent violence within the party, Mugabe charged lies and violence were seated deep within the party. He contended this was something western powers refused to listen to. He alsoissued a thinly veiled threat to the MDC about their planned mass action saying he wanted police given more powers to crush such revolts. He continued saying the only way to secure power was by election.

On Saturday the Central Committee found themselves under Mugabe’s cross hairs when Mugabe characterized some of them as rabidly power hungry.

The things we hear about succession, succession, succession — zvatinonzwa zvacho, zvakaoma. Hapana zvakadaro. If I were to write books, I would write volumes and volumes of nonsensical things. Vamwe vanoenda kun’anga kuti ndinoda kuita ichi. Imi weee . . . N’anga huru is the people of Zimbabwe. Hazvina n’anga mukati izvi. (We hear lots of unbelievable stories about succession. We hear some people are consulting witchdoctors . . . but the biggest witchdoctor is the people of Zimbabwe. There is no need to consult witchdoctors.)

“If you do your work and work with the people well, the people will recognise you. Unhu hwako tinenge tichida kuti hunge huri hwakanaka.” (We want people with dignity.)

Fascinating. (more…)

The Muckraker, the Independent’s satirist is juicy this week. The installment lampoons the contradictions of the Mugabe regime highlighting their onesided mentality.

Muckraker also critizes Mugabe’s press secretary George Charamba, who, while writing under the Nathaneil Manheru nom de plum, savagely attacked Jonathan Moyo in a clearly tribalistic and xenophobic outburst.

It was Jonathan Moyo, the former information minister, who outed Charamba as the impetus behind the Manheru’s bitter protests against all government critics almost a year ago. Now, he finds himself, the object such an attack.

Known for his ascerbic two forked tongue, the former minister wasted no time firing back in this article carried by New Zimbabwe, one the Zimbabwean publications with a soft spot for the former minister best known for presiding over the closure of four newspapers deemed unfriendly.

Apparently unsatisfied by the the attention Moyo’s response garnered, New Zimbabwe editorial core decided to spinoff a tabloid style headline, “Charamba tried to kill wife…”

This should making for some fascinating reading for your weekend!

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Jonathan Moyo, Corruption

Violet: We continue the teleconference interview discussing various issues of national interest with three people who have at one time or another advised some of the key players in Zimbabwean politics - political analyst Professor Brian Raftopoulos, former Information Minister, now independent MP Professor Jonathan Moyo and leading economist John Robertson. This week we are going to be discussing how Mugabe thinks. What is his mindset? Why is he allowing the country to collapse so totally? A huge part of that collapse has been economic and so we start this week’s discussion with the economy.

With inflation nearing 1200% it’s been said the economy has become Mugabe’s real opposition. So I first asked economist John Robertson to explain the state of the economy and tell us how bad things really are.

Robertson: The state of the economy is certainly extremely serious. We have lost about half of our gross domestic product. The GDP per capita has come down to less that US$1 per day for the population as a whole and at that level we have, I am afraid, a very debilitated population. I think many, many people are suffering malnutrition and because of the treatment and the various little security measures taken by the government we have also a traumatised population. Which might explain why they have not taken mass action to date. There was some evidence of courage to do that back in 1997/ 98, but the treatment that was meted out to the people after that has left them very, very cautious and very anxious not to have that experience again.
Now these problems are mounting in such a way that the economy can no longer employ most of the people. We’ve got some 300 000 youngsters turning 18 in this country every year – about maybe 10% of them can find work – the rest of them are unemployed and unable to find any kind of suitable employment anywhere. So they have to leave the country if they want work. We’ve got many of them leaving for South Africa illegally and facing very serious problems when they do that. I think that we face a very, very long recovery unless we get a massive amount of assistance from abroad. And once again I say that South Africa’s position here is the most important. We could speak of following the same path of recovery as say Uganda or Ethiopia or Mozambique and each of those cases we are talking more than 30 years and they still haven’t come right. We could come right very much more quickly with a lot of assistance from South Africa. I believe that the South African assistance could be in the form of the assistance given say to East Germany by West Germany when the Berlin Wall came down.
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A few years ago I spent a marvelous time on the Chobe River flood plains on the boundary between Namibia and Botswana. For those of you who do not know the area, the Zambezi River runs down the western border of Zambia for several hundred kilometers and then hits a basalt ridge where it backs up and spills over into the flood plains on either side of the river creating huge seasonal wetlands.

In the south, these wet lands drain into the Chobe River and then back into the Zambezi River at Kazungula. This gives the river its May flood that makes a visit to the Victoria Falls so spectacular. When this process is underway from April to July, the waters of the flood plains drain into deep gullies that are kept open by Hippos and these run for up to 30 to 40 kilometers into the Chobe River.

We spent a wonderful day on the flood plains with a local guide armed with light fishing gear. We went up to the head of a system of drainage channels and then drifted down with the current. As we did so our guide showed us how to cast our lures into spots on the edge of the channels where a swirl indicated the presence of Tiger fish. These were hunting the smaller fish emerging from the reed beds where they had lived for the past few months.

The results were spectacular – about every third cast saw a fish rise and strike and of these we landed about one in three. We fished all day in wonderful surroundings, lush swampland as far as you could see, beautiful clear blue skies and a temperature of about 25 c. Not much game but we had to watch for Hippo and Crocodiles.

Swirls In the water. That is what we have seen all week in southern Africa. Brief statements from South African leaders about the crisis in Zimbabwe, statements from the UN in Geneva and New York. Tantalizing stuff, but what does it all mean? It probably points to political Tiger fish hunting smaller prey in Zimbabwean waters.
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All too wary of their fast deteriorating predicament, Zimbabwe’s ruling party ZANU-PF is desperate to figure out ways to rejuvinate the party’s image. Apparently the latest effort to spruce up the image, a document authored by Patrick Chinamasa the justice minister, has angered Mugabe.

Zimdaily is reporting that a fuming Mugabe ordered the party’s supreme politiburo to return all copies of the document and not discuss it with the press:

The document has angered President Mugabe to such an extent that he has recalled all copies after the meeting and ordered that members of his Soviet-style politburo do not consider it or leak it to the media.

This despite the fact that the author of the document, justice minister Patrick Chinamasa, was requested by the party’s leadership to write and present a discussion paper on the party’s rejuvenation in the face of growing anger against the regime. “It is brutally honest,” said a politburo member speaking on condition of anonymity. “It opened a few eyes and that you can’t change if you want to keep on doing the same thing.”

Chinamasa calls out ZANU-PF tribal’s and “personality worshipping politics” in the document. This is apparently what got Mugabe angry, I wonder why?
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For only the second time in the history of SW Radio Africa, Robert Mugabe speaks to the nation as we bring you a repeat of the Independence Day special, first broadcast in April 2003, documenting his pre-independence visions and promises and the reversal of policy that shocked many and destroyed the country.

Mugabe famously said in 1980;

“Tomorrow is thus our birthday, the birthday of great Zimbabwe and the birthday of its nation. Tomorrow we shall cease to be men and women of the past and become men and women of the future. It is tomorrow then, not yesterday, which bears our destiny. As we become a new people we are called to be constructive, progressive and forever forward looking. For we cannot afford to be men of yesterday backward looking, retrogressive and distractive.”

Sadly, as Zimbabwe celebrates 26 years of Independence Mugabe has failed to be constructive or progressive. In fact he has indeed regressed. Inflation is the highest in the world, health and education have collapsed and 5 million Zimbabweans are estimated to be living outside the county.

The documentary “Mugabe at Independence 1980” looks at what he said versus what he did. Introduced and produced by Violet Gonda

You can listen to the programme Hot Seat (today) at www.swradioafrica.com at 6pm (UK time).

If you miss the live broadcast ARCHIVES are posted after 7pm (UK time) - Hot Seat TUESDAY 18 APRIL 2006

Archives are kept for two weeks.

Violet Gonda
Producer/Presenter
SW Radio Africa
Email:
Website: www.swradioafrica.

Zimbabwe commemorates the 26th annivesary of it’s independence today. As has become customary over the years, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe used a gathering to commemorate a national event as a platfrom for another vitriolic attack on his opponents. There was very little celebrating at the National Sports Stadium in Harare today, Mugabe had a lot on his mind.

Mugabe, fresh from publicly deriding Tsvangirai a couple weeks ago at the burial of Winston Changara at the national shrine, fired another salvo at Tsvangirai. Said Mugabe,

“There are some who say they no longer want elections saying they now will change the government through mass protests …. I warn them, they are playing with fire and they should stop.”

Tsvangirai has been holding rallies across the country in preparation of what many expect to be mass demonstrations planned to force Mugabe’s government to quit.

One would be forgiven for thinking that when the old man stepped to the podium today he’s ascerbic aresenal would be low since he just attacked Tsvangirai at another national event weeks ago. But there are there things bothering Mugabe in a very real way.

Masked beneath the thin veneer of boisterous threats is genuine fear and trepidation in ZANU-PF. Speculation is rife that he and his cronies are nervous about the possibility of mass revolt. There even is some speculation that he is talks with the MDC about a peaceful transition.

The proposed plan, tipped to be UN Secretary General Koffi Annan’s last hooray before retirement, will see Mugabe retire in 2008. After Mugabe’s retirement, a coalition government led by a ZANU-PF transitional president will preside over the country before elections in 2010.

The key element of all this is the claim that the composition of the transitional government will, “reflect on the country’s ethnic and gender balance.” Why? Because as Jonathan Moyo (a former ZANU-PF henchman) reveals in this article

The top four leadership positions in the ruling Zanu PF - president and first secretary, two vice-presidents and second secretaries and national chairman - which make up the party’s presidency, should reflect Zimbabwe’s regional diversity and ethnic balance between and among the country’s four major ethnic groupings, namely Karanga, Manyika, Zezuru and Ndebele in order to promote and maintain representative national cohesion, development, peace and stability while fostering a broad-based sense of national belonging and identity; that the top position of president and first secretary of the party should not be monopolised by one sub-tribe (or clan) but should reasonably rotate among the four major ethnic groupings; that the filling of these top four positions should not be by imposition by the party hierarchy but through democratic elections done by secret balloting; and, that the filling of the top four leadership positions and the democratic elections should be defined and be guided by and done in accordance with the constitution of the party to promote the rule of law within the party as a foundation for maintaining the rule of law in the country.

ZANU-PF has long been wary of disproportionate gender and ethnic balance of the country’s top leadership. The presence of concern for the same principle in speculated plan lends credibility to the proposed plan.

As we have now come to expect, when national events like this happen, Mugabe will address not the nation, but only his opponents. Makes one wonder what he spends more time thinking about; the nation and the plethora of problems beseiging it, or his enemies?

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Mugabe, MDC, ZANU-PF