Zimbabwe Vigil Diary – 7th January 2006

Our first Vigil of the New Year was the coldest of the winter so far.  But it was bright and, most importantly, dry.  We had a reasonable turnout for this torpid time of year – about the same number who attended on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.  It was certainly easier than New Year’s Eve when supporters had to brave a tube strike, including 3 English girls who had spent five months of their gap year as volunteers helping Pastor Ray Motsi of the Bulawayo Baptist Church. 

Some of our members agreed to speak about Zimbabwe at an Anglican church in Speldhurst, Kent. We are always keen to raise awareness in the churches and particularly welcome the opportunity to tell Anglicans about the Bishop of Harare, the Mugabe clone and part-time farmer. 

As usual, supporters came from far and wide – Rugby, Leicester, Southampton, Canterbury . . .  It is inspiring to know of the great efforts people make to join us outside the Embassy.  For some it takes many hours and no little expense.  Though the weather may be cold, the atmosphere at the Vigil is very warm and a bit of singing and dancing works wonders. 

As usual, Wiz’s newsboards attract a lot of attention, briefing people on the latest dismal news from Zimbabwe.  There is certainly a lot of interest and sympathy.  We see our job as building on this.

FOR THE RECORD: 22 supporters came today.

FOR YOUR DIARY: Monday, 9th January 2005, 7.30 pm, first Zimbabwe Forum of the new year.  Upstairs at the Theodore Bullfrog pub, 28 John Adam Street, London WC2 (cross the Strand from the Zimbabwe Embassy, go down a passageway to John Adam Street, turn right and you will see the pub – nearest stations: Charing Cross and Embankment).  Zimbabwean activist Grace Kwinjeh, the European Representative of the MDC, based in Brussels will talk on "The MDC Congress and the Future of the Party”. Grace is coming to UK attending the MDC district meeting in Birmingham on Sunday and has kindly responded to our request to give a talk to the Forum.


Vigil co-ordinator

The Vigil, outside the Zimbabwe Embassy, 429 Strand, London, takes place every Saturday from 14.00 to 18.00 to protest against gross violations of human rights by the current regime in Zimbabwe. The Vigil which started in October 2002 will continue until internationally-monitored, free and fair elections are held in Zimbabwe. http://www.zimvigil.co.uk

MDC faction announces date for Congress

Nicholas van Hoogstraten - Mugabe's friend and supporter & now Zim's biggest landowner?

The Sunday TimesJanuary 08, 2006

Jane Kelly meets Nicholas van Hoogstraten
Has prison made me go soft? Not likely

‘I’m not immoral, never have been. I am amoral, that’s different,” snaps
Nicholas van Hoogstraten, a stickler for accuracy (at least his own version
of it). “The things the papers write about me. I’ve never threatened anyone
or killed anyone — where are the bodies?” When Hoogstraten asks a direct
question, accompanied by a beady stare, you often feel yourself fumbling for
an answer.
Britain’s most notorious landlord, and one of its wealthiest men, “the
richest man ever to stand in the dock at the Old Bailey”, he says proudly,
is taking stock after getting off a 10-year prison sentence for manslaughter
on appeal, only to be declared a murderer in the civil courts — where the
standard of proof required is lower — just before Christmas.


We meet in a dingy hotel he owns along with seven others around Hove and
Brighton. Or rather, his beefy son Rhett, 21, owns it. Hoogstraten keeps
nothing in his own name. “Of course I wouldn’t think twice about having
people killed, if they threatened me,” he says, “but if I was to do it, it
would be done properly by professionals not obviously connected with me, it
would be a professional contract killing.”
Talking to Hoogstraten, who gave himself the “van” early in his career for a
spot of class, is like entering a mirror world, where all the codes of a
good society are reversed, perhaps a bit like talking to a top Nazi when the
war was going well for Germany.
Surrounded by a pile of legal papers, he is preoccupied by what happened to
him at the Old Bailey. “I am determined to clear myself,” he says, pouring
out a cup of tea without offering me one. “I am not being associated with a
poxy, bungled business like that.”
The “business” was the murder of Mohammed Sabir Raja, 63, a business rival
who had accused him of forgery. Hoogstraten called him “a maggot”, someone
he would “break”, and on July 2, 1999, assassins Robert Knapp — a long-time
associate of Hoogstraten — and David Croke turned up at Raja’s house in
south London, shot him in the face and chest at close range and stabbed him
five times, in front of his grandsons.
In July 2002 Hoogstraten was given a 10-year sentence at the Old Bailey for
the manslaughter of Raja while Knapp and Croke got life sentences. Arrested
from his extraordinary home, Hamilton Palace, a £30m copper-domed baroque
mansion, the biggest private house built in the 20th century, Hoogstraten
went from millionaire to lag but he says he had no problems in Belmarsh
prison.
He sees himself as too much of an aristocrat of crime to be greatly
affected: “I hated not seeing my girlfriends and children but I was put in
with the crème de la crème,” he says, “the really dangerous people, no
riff-raff.”
After an unhappy childhood in Shoreham, East Sussex, with a mother he felt
despised him, Hoogstraten left school at 16 and made money from selling
stamps. He is still an important philatelist. With this money he bought
cheap property in the Bahamas, then freeholds with sitting tenants in
Notting Hill, west London. By having no mortgages, forcing tenants out and
refurbishing the properties he quickly made a fortune and became Britain’s
youngest millionaire. He was a financial phenomenon, and also peculiarly
deranged.
He first came to police notice in 1968, aged 23, when he was jailed for
ordering thugs to throw a hand grenade into the home of the Rev Braunstein,
a Jewish leader whose eldest son owed him £2,000. “He wasn’t a rabbi, he was
only a cantor,” snaps Hoogstraten, irritated again. It was in jail, in
Gloucestershire, that he first met Knapp, whom he calls “Uncle Bob”.
He was jailed again for eight counts of handling stolen goods and then
rearrested on his release in 1972 and given a further 15 months for bribing
prison officers to take him luxuries. “I ran Wormwood Scrubs when I was in
there,” he says proudly. “The Home Office was very pleased with my regime
too.” Perhaps so: in any case he was quickly freed on appeal. The same year,
he was fined for forcible entry and conspiracy to cause damage.
In the 1980s, he entered the Guinness Book of Records for owing £5m in
income tax, more than anyone else in British history, and was in court for
harassing tenants, whom he referred to as “scum”. He came to public notice
again when he started a vicious battle to keep ramblers off his land. In
1999 he was fined for telling a barrister representing the hikers: “You
dirty bastard, in due course, you are going to have it.”
But, of course, his recent sentence was not the end of the line, and he knew
it. “When I stood there in the dock at the Old Bailey, I was smiling,” he
says. “I knew it was a fit-up and the case would never stand.” Sure enough,
he walked free a year later when the Court of Appeal decided there had been
a lack of evidence at his trial.
When he came out Raja’s family began a £6m civil action against him. He
retaliated by counter- suing and infuriated one judge by refusing to divulge
his assets. “I’ve got no assets at all now in the UK,” he says. “My five
children got trust funds starting in 1986. They’ve got hundreds of
 millions.”
On Wednesday his representatives will go back to court to press the Raja
family for his costs, running into millions. When I suggest he might give it
a rest as he obviously doesn’t need any more money, he is astonished. “I
couldn’t give a s*** myself, but there are companies and shareholders
involved,” he says. “I do whatever I have to do.”
pager 2

At 60 he is shabbier and a little greyer than the last time we met, some 10
years ago, and it seems at first that nothing has penetrated his malevolent
shell. He is still hugely rich and still extraordinarily mean. Although we
are in his hotel, I have to buy all my drinks, and as we talk he is served a
lavish lunch by a pretty young Zimbabwean girl, but does not offer me a
nibble. He remembers vividly that after our last interview he lent me £10.
He is not quite sure that I ever paid it back (I did).
After the murder of Raja, police found teabags drying on his draining board
when they searched his premises. He spends lavishly on his five children,
all from different, mostly black, mothers. Rhett attended Haileybury, the
top boarding school which produced Clement Attlee, the Labour prime
minister, but Hoogstraten says two of his four sons, who are at Lancing
college, alma mater of Sir Tim Rice and the novelist Evelyn Waugh, had to
buy him a car recently because they were embarrassed at him turning up in an
old BMW.


He is still attracted to power expressed through brutality. He calls Robert
Mugabe “a true English gentleman,” and shows me the memorandum for a loan of
$10m made to the African dictator in November, with securities reaching into
trillions.
The money was officially loaned by Messina Investments, which belongs to his
children. “In six months’ time, when the interest is due, it would be
cheaper for them to just kill me,” he says. I agree. “I think I am more use
to the government in Zimbabwe alive,” he says, chuckling for the first time.
From the arrangement he gains further wealth, access to black girls and
power. He now owns large amounts of land and property in Zimbabwe. “The
people would probably prefer me to be their president,” he says without
irony.
He says he is involved in a lot of “charity work”, supporting rural
education in Zimbabwe. This doesn’t sound convincing yet there are
discernible changes in him. “I am different since I went to prison,” he
says. “I am worse.”
This is Hoogstraten-speak for “better”. Being imprisoned has apparently
given the man who once set the dogs on his tenants a brand-new social
conscience.
He won’t admit he was traumatised but his sense of grievance has obviously
wiped out other preoccupations. He is no longer even interested in Hamilton
Palace, once a grandiose monument to his wealth and where he planned to be
walled up with his treasures after death, like a pharaoh.
It is as if reality has cut away at some of his more narcissistic fantasies.
“I don’t think like that now,” he says. “You do change your ideas with time.
My children get more important to me as I get older.” Of course they are of
increasing use to him as they are repositories of his wealth — walking
banks — but he appears fixated on the idea of injustice to others.
So now he knows how it feels to be powerless before an indifferent
judiciary. “If you are guilty you can fight to get your sentence reduced but
if you are innocent, it is much harder to get anything done. I did wonder
how I was ever going to prove my case.”
What he saw in Belmarsh obviously affected him deeply. Always proud to boast
that he was noted by a prison psychiatrist as a possible psychopath, for
once, it seems, he felt empathy with other people’s problems. He says he met
many men inside who were innocent. “What can you think about forgiveness
after that?” I hadn’t mentioned forgiveness, and again, it sounded odd
coming from his mouth.
Taught by Jesuits, he says he is still “a believing Catholic”, and while he
was in prison he took up counselling. “They sent me on a course,” he says,
“they called it being ‘a Samaritan’. I was a Samaritan and I’ve got a
certificate to prove it. I gave advice to prison officers worried about
their emotional problems and child access. I helped other prisoners who were
unjustly accused. People often come to me for advice.”
This remarkable image of him, as an agony aunt, is rather spoilt when he
adds: “I am really a godfather.” He likes this idea of himself in late
middle age, dispensing advice to less experienced folk, a way of feeling
good about power. “People still like coming to me for advice. I am going to
go on being a Samaritan,” he says. “I’ve never intimidated anyone — well,
have I?”

Backwards

Dear Family and Friends,
Hello and Happy New Year! There is good news and bad news from Zimbabwe.
The good news is that we are having the most wonderful rainy season. It
was a wet Christmas and a wet New Year and in Marondera we have now had
over 18 inches of rain. The bad news is that there is very little food in
the ground being watered by these abundant rains and by all accounts
Zimbabwe is heading for exceptionally hard times this year.

Wishing people a Happy New Year has seemed a particularly inappropriate
and hollow sentiment in Zimbabwe at the beginning of 2006. There are no
signs of growth or prosperity on our horizon. For most people there is
little to be happy about and nothing but hardship to look forward to as
the country hurtles backwards in time at a terrifying pace.  I think the
best way to describe this reversal in growth would be to give you a taste
of life in Marondera in January 2006 - it's not very pleasant.

After 18 inches of rain in 8 weeks we have had no road repairs or
maintenance in my suburb of Marondera. The potholes are big, filled with
muddy water and unavoidable. Vegetation growing on suburban road sides has
not been cut at all for the past two months, weeds and grass are creeping
unchecked into and under the tar. Storm drains, contours and road culverts
have not been cleared and sand and silt run off our roads and lie in thick
carpets at the bottom of slopes and on road sides. At all hours big rusty
trucks without number plates come and harvest this sand to sell to the
building industry. Some suburban roads have now deteriorated to such an
extent as to require 4 wheel drive vehicles. We have not had any garbage
collection in suburban Marondera for 5 weeks. Desperate residents have
taken to dumping household trash on roadsides, under trees and anywhere
away from their own homes. Around urban cemeteries, in delicate wetlands
and on immediate stream and river banks people are destroying every last
shred of the environment as they cut trees and dig up the bush to plant
little squares of food.  These are just some of the horrors that are there
for all to see. What lies behind closed doors and locked gates is far
worse as people desperately struggle to cope with the economic nightmare
of life in Zimbabwe.

As we have stumbled into 2006 we have been hit with astronomical increases
in school fees. Last January a small rural government school in Marondera
charged a hundred a fifty thousand dollars a term. This January the same
school wants 1.2 million dollars per child. This is one of the cheaper
prices and just the beginning as the child must also come dressed in a
full uniform with school shoes and provide all his own writing books.
Undoubtedly many thousands of children will not be going back to school
this new year. It is hard to believe that this is the same country, being
ruled by the same man who twenty five years ago promised: "Education for
All by 2000."

Even more frightening than crumbling roads, uncollected trash and
unaffordable schools is the crisis in our health systems. In the first
week of 2006 it was announced that doctors consultation fees have
increased by 100 %. It will now costs 2.9 mill to see a doctor and for
people, like teachers, who earn less than 5 million dollars a month, this
is as good as a death sentence. Fourteen people died of cholera in
Zimbabwe over Christmas. To stem the spread of cholera the state media are
urging people not to travel (as if we had fuel - oh please!) and advising
people to boil drinking water and use disinfectants. It's an easy
statement to make but when the smallest possible bottle of disinfectant
costs the same as five loaves of bread, I know what most people will be
forced to choose. It is impossible to believe that this is the same
country, being ruled by the same man who twenty five years ago promised:
"Health for all by the year 2000."

Things are not looking good in Zimbabwe this January 2006. Those of us who
can are helping the man, woman or child next to us in whatever way we can.
It is not much but is the best New Years Resolution I can think of for our
desperate country in these dreadful times. Until next week, thanks for
reading, love cathy. Copyright cathy buckle 7th January 2006.
http://africantears.netfirms.com
My books "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears" are available  from:
orders@africabookcentre.com

ZIMBABWE : MDC Predicts Another Drought

Zimbabwe tests AU's promise

Zimbabwe opposition launches resistance campaign

Cholera spreads in Zimbabwe; "Death toll at 14"

WTOP - Washington

Jan 7th - 10:20am
 
Harare (dpa) - Fourteen people have died of cholera in Zimbabwe in the last two weeks including a Harare family who bought contaminated fish from a police auction, the state-run Herald newspaper reported Saturday.

 AIM Cholera first broke out in the central Chikomba and Chivhu districts, where seven people died. There has been a separate outbreak in the eastern Buhera district.
There have been 181 cases of cholera reported in Zimbabwe so far, according to the Herald. The disease is linked to poor hygiene and sanitation and spreads quickly during the rainy season.
In the latest cases, three members of a family from the low-income suburb of Glen View died this week, allegedly after eating fish sold by police a few days before Christmas. The fish is said to have been confiscated from illegal vendors, the paper reported.
"We bought fish for 20,000 Zimbabwe dollars (0.23 US dollars) each at an auction at the police camp, but they were bad," a spokesman for the family said.
Three more members of the family were quarantined at the Beatrice Road Infectious Diseases Hospital.
A police spokesman said the police were not supposed to sell perishables like fish to the public and promised to investigate reports of the auction.
Health teams have been put on high alert across the country to deal with cholera outbreaks, Health Minister David Parirenyatwa told the Herald.
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH