Reuters
Sun 11 Dec 2005 5:42 AM ET
By Stella
Mapenzauswa
ESIGODINI, Zimbabwe, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President
Robert Mugabe's
ruling party has consolidated its gains this year, but a
renewed crackdown
on critics shows panic within its ranks in the face of a
deepening economic
crisis, analysts say.
Mugabe's ZANU-PF party
recommended on Saturday that the government act
against hostile rights
groups and asked security forces to draw up a list of
people whose passports
should be seized under new laws seen aimed at
muzzling critics.
The
call at the end of a two day party conference came shortly after
security
agents seized the passports of the opposition party's spokesman and
a
leading Zimbabwe publisher whose papers have carried stories critical of
the
government.
Analysts said the crackdown was a sign the ruling party and
government were
devoid of ideas on how to tackle chronic shortages of food,
fuel and foreign
currency, as well as triple-digit inflation.
"If
anything this is an indication of frustration and panic on the part of
the
government. The crackdown might worsen but I do not think it will stop
people from making constructive criticism," Heneri Dzinotyiwei, a political
analyst from the University of Zimbabwe, told Reuters.
"This is just
some hot air from the ruling party in order to keep themselves
agreeing on
something because even among their own followers there are deep
concerns
about the worsening hardships facing the country," he added.
Threats of
further reprisals against rights groups and individuals critical
of the
government are unlikely to silence voices that have spoken out even
in the
face of repressive security and media laws enacted three years ago,
analysts
said.
CRITICISM FROM WITHIN
In an unusually tough
editorial at the weekend, the state-owned Chronicle
newspaper urged the
government to come up with concrete programmes to pull
millions of
Zimbabweans out of poverty, saying the welfare of ZANU-PF hinged
on
this.
"The failure of the government is the failure of the party. It is
as simple
as that," the paper said bluntly. "The long-suffering nation is
now
impatient for solutions to the country's economic challenges. Time for
action has come."
Despite the euphoria at ZANU-PF's annual conference
after November's
sweeping Senate poll win, it still faced the daunting tasks
of pulling the
economy out of crisis and resolving internal squabbles over
Mugabe's
successor, analysts said.
Analysts say tensions still simmer
within the party after Mugabe cowed
members to endorse Joyce Mujuru as
second vice-president both in ZANU-PF and
government last year.
In
the process he purged some senior officials who had lobbied for a rival
candidate for the post, seen as a stepping stone to the top job.
The
dispute nearly split the party in two a few months before crucial
parliamentary elections in November 2004, which ZANU-PF went on to win amid
charges of vote-rigging by the opposition.
CALL FOR
UNITY
In his closing address to the ZANU-PF meeting in the southwestern
district
of Esigodini, Mugabe -- who is 81 and expected to retire in 2008 at
the end
of his current term of office -- called for unity among his party
faithful.
"Only a strong party yields a strong government and we need to
be strong to
defeat the machinations of imperialists," he said.
In
power since independence from Britain in 1980, Mugabe routinely accuses
the
former colonial ruler of spearheading a Western campaign to sabotage
Zimbabwe's economy and unseat him over the government's seizure of
white-owned farms for blacks.
The weekend convention adopted a
recommendation to take stern action against
non-governmental organisations
and rights groups it said were sponsored by
Britain, the United Sates and
the European Union.
"To me statements like that show that this is a party
that knows it is still
in trouble because you do not talk about enemies
unless you are in deep
trouble," said lawyer and political commentator
Lovemore Madhuku, chairman
of pressure group National Constitutional
Assembly.
"It's all stemming from a clear sense of realisation within the
party that
things are definitely not well but they do not succeed by trying
to silence
critics," said Madhuku, whose NCA was listed among organisations
to be acted
against.
News24
11/12/2005 17:12 -
(SA)
Esigodini - Zimbabwe's ruling party ended its annual conference
on Saturday
urging the government not to entertain any more "clandestine"
envoys sent to
Harare under the auspices of the United Nations.
"The
conference resolved to encourage government to re-think its position on
entertaining any future UN envoys sent into the country as clandestine and
insidious agents of the British and other Western countries in pursuance of
their hidden agenda of regime change in Zimbabwe," said a conference
statement.
The resolution by the ruling Zanu-PF was adopted a day
after President
Robert Mugabe accused the UN envoy on humanitarian affairs
and relief aid
co-ordinator Jan Egeland, who visited the country earlier in
the week, of
being a "damn hypocrite and a liar".
The longtime leader
hinted on Friday that he might ban any more emissaries
sent from the UN
because he believed they were shoring up Britain's
anti-Zimbabwe
campaign.
Mugabe said Egeland had misrepresented the facts of a meeting
between the
two men by claiming that they had discussed a critical report
compiled by
another UN envoy, Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, who spent two weeks
in Zimbabwe
in July assessing the impact of the government urban demolition
campaign.
The head of state said no reference was made to the Tibaijuka
report during
their two-hour meeting in the capital.
The conference
said it was convinced that the Tibaijuka report was "a direct
product of
some anti-government non-governmental organisations operating in
Zimbabwe".
Harare has rejected the report, saying it exaggerated the
facts and ignored
the fact that victims of the clean up campaign had a
safety net on which
they could rely.
"Most of those affected by the
clean up programme have rural homes or farms
they can return to," said
Zanu-PF, adding Zimbabwe had one of Africa's
lowest rates of urban
squalor.
Zanu-PF said it was disappointed that Egeland had failed to
stick to the
truth about his Harare trip and had decided to tell the media
of its outcome
before UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who had sent him to
Zimbabwe.
It said contrary to the UN's assertions that food shortages
were a result of
controversial land reforms, the country had experienced
three successive
years of drought, but the government had ensured nobody had
died of hunger.
Zimbabwe embarked in May on an urban clean up exercise
which saw tens of
thousands of people lose their shelter and livelihood.
Zim Online
Mon 12 December 2005
HARARE - There is simply no respite
for Harare's long suffering
residents.
While the cost of living
was already beyond the reach of many in the
capital - thanks to six years of
unprecedented economic recession - the cost
of dying is set to surge beyond
the reach of many families, according to the
city's financial plan for
2006.
The state-appointed commission running the crumbling capital
after the
popularly elected opposition council was controversially dismissed
by the
government, last week announced a shock Z$32.56 trillion budget for
2006 in
which the price of the cheapest grave is set to rise several times
more than
the average salary of a factory worker.
Rates and
tariffs for other municipal services and facilities are
similarly expected
to rise by between 500 and 2 000 percent. But it is not
the fact that
charges are rising while council services and facilities are
deteriorating
by the day that has attracted the most ire from residents.
It is
the new burial charges that many in Harare's teeming low-income
suburbs say
are not only unaffordable but also show the city commission's
insensitivity
to the plight of bereaved families.
Or to use the words of Oscar
Mubaya, a resident of the capital's
Kuwadzana suburb: "These new charges
mean that dying is now a luxury only
the rich can afford. How do the city
fathers think we will cope with these
new charges? Surely, it is anti-people
to come up with such a budget whose
effect extends even to the
dead."
Harare, with about two million people, has three main
cemeteries at
Warren Park, Granville and Greendale as well as several
smaller ones
scattered across the city.
Charges at all the
burial grounds will, beginning January 2006, soar
more than 20-fold from
$750 000 to $8.5 million for the grave of an adult. A
further hike is
planned mid-year to leave the cost of a grave at $17
million.
The average take home pay of a worker in Zimbabwe is about $3 million
per
month meaning many will find it extremely hard to pay for a relative's
or
their own grave.
It is many times cheaper for one to cremate a
deceased loved one. But
cremation is an alternative acceptable only to
Zimbabwe's minority Asian and
white communities and not among the black
segment of the population.
"We, black Zimbabweans do not believe in
cremating our departed ones.
Burning the bodies of dead relatives is simply
not an option," said Sekai
Mapusa of Highfiled suburb, a mother of four who
vowed she would never
forgive her children if they were to cremate her dead
body.
Combined Harare Residents Association chairman Mike Davies
said the
association was still consulting over not only the proposed new
burial
charges but the entire budget as well.
Davis however was
quick to add that the proposed new grave charges
would be unaffordable to
the average Harare resident and accused the city
commission of wanting to
cash in on the people's misery.
He said: "Very few people can
afford that kind of money to buy burial
space for their departed ones. Right
now the country has no fuel and it is
very expensive to ferry the deceased
to the rural areas where burial ground
is free and many residents were
resorting to these urban cemeteries. With
the latest hikes, I am not sure
how residents are going to cope."
Harare Commission chairwoman
Sekesai Makwavarara was not available for
comment on the matter. But the
commission has defended the rates and tariff
hikes saying this was in line
with galloping inflation which hit 502.4
percent last month.
Whatever the justification for hiking burial charges, the move is
certain to
pay off handsomely for Makwavarara and her commissioners given
the high
number of deaths in the capital due to a burgeoning HIV/AIDS crisis
that
alone is killing at least 2 000 Zimbabweans every week.
But total
deaths in Harare due to HIV/AIDS-related illness and a host
of other causes
are even higher with municipal figures showing that an
average 5 000 people
are buried in the city's cemeteries every week, with
several more
transported to their rural homes for burial there.
But Shyleen
Mupukuta from Mabvuku suburb in the east of the capital
said if the city
budget was approved by the government without changes to
the proposed costs
of burial ground, then Harare - already overflowing with
uncollected
garbage - might soon find its hospitals clogged by corpses as
relatives
struggle to raise enough cash to pay for graves.
She said: "It's
not just about the cost of the burial ground, you also
have to consider the
prices of coffins that are also rising daily, the cost
of transport from the
hospital mortuary to the cemetery and then the cost of
food for people
gathered for the funeral wake.
"To be honest, the way I see it is
that dead bodies will pile up in
hospital mortuaries for months and months
while poor relatives scrounge
around for enough money to pay for all what is
required to conduct a
burial." - ZimOnline
Zim Online
Mon 12 December 2005
MUTARE - As darkness slowly envelops
the eastern border town of
Mutare, Edmore Mukwena (not his real name), a
senior Zimbabwean police
officer, rather hurriedly puts on his faded grey
uniform as he gets ready
for the evening's "assignment"
Soon,
Mukwena's battered Renault 18, packed with five other
"colleagues" who
literally live by the sword in Mutare's crime-infested
Sakubva suburb, roars
into life as he drives towards a dingy spot along
Forbes Border Post on the
Zimbabwe-Mozambique border.
It is at this spot that Mukwena, a
veteran and "loyal servant of the
people" over the past 15 years, now ekes a
living as the boss of a criminal
gang.
"I have resorted to
crime because that is the only way I can survive.
The criminals make money,
so why shouldn't I work with them if that is how
my family will
survive?"
"Tell me, what is better, to arrest a criminal and get a
salary that
is not enough to buy a pair of trousers or partner the criminals
and make
millions of dollars?
"I use my police identification
card and uniform to scare away border
jumpers. After they run away, my gang
loots their wares, which we later
resell," says Mukwena, who opened up to
ZimOnline only after much coaxing
and reassurance that his true identity
would not be revealed.
Mukwena also uses his services gun to scare
away the more hardened
border jumpers who sometimes try to put up some
resistance.
The Mutare police officer is not alone. Hundreds of the
Zimbabwe
Republic Police's once highly regarded officers have been forced to
forsake
the oath to keep the law and instead turned to crime as the
country's
six-year economic crisis deepens.
"I take 50 percent
of the spoils while my gang shares the other half.
I am the boss and after
all, I am the one with the uniform and the police
identity card. Other
members of my gang simply pose as civilian police,"
Mukwena told ZimOnline
from a smoky bar in downtown Mutare.
With an average paltry salary
of Z$3 million, Mukwena like most police
officers, says he can hardly make
ends meet.
The police are among the lowest paid workers in Zimbabwe
which is
grappling hyperinflation and severe food shortages. Zimbabwe's
inflation
shot up to 502.4 percent in November, highlighting worsening
economic
conditions in the once prosperous country.
Food,
medicine, fuel and virtually every other basic commodity is in
short supply
because the country does not have foreign currency to import
the commodities
after the International Monetary Fund withdrew
balance-of-payments support
to Harare following disagreements with
President Robert Mugabe over fiscal
policy and other governance issues.
The forex shortages were
worsened after Mugabe began his farm seizure
programme five years ago. The
farm seizures destabilised agriculture, the
country's biggest hard cash
earner, while food production dropped by about
60 percent to leave Zimbabwe
dependent on handouts from food relief
agencies.
The
state-funded Consumer Council of Zimbabwe says an average family
of a
father, mother and four children requires $11.9 million for basic goods
and
services per month which is several times more than the take-home pay of
most workers, including policemen and soldiers, who hav