The Zimbabwe Situation - Page 12

Oneword · #**111** 16th June 2008, 12:22 PM

Comrade_007,

I agree with your sentiments - in general - but would rather ask: "Is this what certain factions IN SWAPO support!"

I have one really major problem with the stories emating from Zimbabwe at the moment. They are all tainted. Either they come from USA/UK/Australia or similar countries (who we know will be biased), or they come from people who are without a shadow of doubt violently (bad choice of words - let's rather say "rabidly") anti Mugabe.

I have not yet heard one definitive opinion from someone who is, for all accounts and purposes, unbiased and tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. No embroidery of fact; no selective photos, etc.

This is not to say that I am of the opinion that the photos shown are fakes! No, they are real enough. It is just just one would love to see someone with a lot of credibility (and I do not mean Mbeki!) in Africa actually confirm these atrocities.

That fact alone makes it very difficult for people in the region to actually form an independent opinion.

Unless that is forthcoming from someone Africa trusts and believes in, all criticism will always be made off as pure and simple "witch-hunting"

Oneword · #**112** 16th June 2008, 03:41 PM

Senator Obama joins the zim fray with this statement:

Quote:

"I remain deeply concerned about the crisis in Zimbabwe, where the government of Robert Mugabe last week banned the operations of humanitarian agencies working across the country. The regime's latest attempt to hold on to power at any cost has already accelerated the suffering of millions of Zimbabwe's citizens. Food and other assistance from international agencies including UNICEF, CARE, and Oxfam are critical to the survival of millions of Zimbabweans who cannot afford basic foodstuffs due to skyrocketing inflation and the government's disastrous economic mismanagement.

The United Nations estimates that two million people now face starvation in a country that was once a breadbasket serving all of southern Africa. In this man-made humanitarian crisis, the most vulnerable citizens-children and AIDS patients-have been hit the hardest.

Robert Mugabe's government has frequently used food as a political weapon and required citizens to prove their membership in his ZANU-PF party in order to receive aid. The government is at it once again, denying food donated to Zimbabwe's citizens by the international community, including the United States, to punish the Zimbabwean people for voting peacefully for change.

This egregious abuse is part of a broader campaign of intimidation and repression designed to manipulate the results of the June 27 presidential run-off elections. Members of the opposition, civil society activists, independent journalists and foreign diplomats have all been targets of harassment and brutality in recent weeks.

This week's arrest and detention of senior MDC leaders is the most recent example of the government's determination to hang on to power at any cost.
Governing means acting in the best interests of a nation and its people. Robert Mugabe has abandoned this fundamental responsibility, and continues to jeopardize the future of Zimbabwe's children while undermining the economic progress that has been achieved in southern Africa.

I am pleased that African leaders, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, former heads of states, business leaders and some of the continent's best and brightest artists and activists have called for an end to the violence and the ban on humanitarian aid operations. Urgent action is required to prevent a further deterioration of this tragic situation.

The United Nations, the African Union and the Southern African Development Community cannot afford to be spectators to this tragedy. Along with the United States and Africa's other partners, they must speak out against repression in Zimbabwe. They should also swiftly deploy observers for the June 27th run-off and demand that the Government of Zimbabwe immediately lift the ban on NGO operations before millions more suffer as victims of this crisis.

Source: Senator Barack Obama

Oneword · #**113** 16th June 2008, 07:44 PM

Mugabe's achilles heel is his wallet - We must cut off Zimbabwe's access to foreign currency to force a free and fair election

In less than two weeks the fate of the people of Zimbabwe will be determined by the result of a run-off presidential election. If Robert Mugabe is allowed to steal that election the tragedy will be complete. The scale of the catastrophe that Mugabe has precipitated in his country is almost unimaginable. In just ten years, life expectancy has plummeted from 61 years to less than 36 - the lowest in the world. The economy has disintegrated - inflation by the official measure stood at 164,900 per cent in April, unemployment is more than 80 per cent; the shops are empty, the health service has collapsed, the school system no longer functions and millions of Zimbabweans have fled.

Amid the chaos and misery for ordinary Zimbabweans there exists a grotesque contrast. It is to be found in the ostentatious houses, newly built in the suburbs of Harare by Mugabe's party cronies and the military top brass; in the expensive cars that chauffeur the Zanu (PF) elite around the capital and the luxury foods available to those with access to foreign currency. But this grotesque contrast is most sinisterly apparent in the foreign currency miraculously found to arm and equip the forces that brutalise Mugabe's opponents, while public services and infrastructure crumble.

In view of the extreme circumstances facing Zimbabwe, I urged Gordon Brown two weeks ago to warn Mugabe that unless his Government met the basic minimum standards for a free and fair election on June 27 we would work with our allies in the region and the wider world to do the thing that his regime fears: cut off access to the foreign currency that keeps them in power. This step could be taken straight away by Britain using the powers of the Exchange Control Act 1947.

Since everything hinges on what happens in the coming days, a sharp and aggressive strategy with immediate consequences is justified and this is the only tool with sufficient force to secure the guarantees that we need now to ensure there is a fair election. We propose that its application should be reviewed weekly and be lifted immediately should the regime meet basic requirements for fair elections.

Blocking Zimbabwe's access to foreign currency would be a serious step and I do not propose it lightly. I know that many ordinary Zimbabweans rely on remittances from friends and relatives abroad. But access to foreign currency is what sustains Mugabe's brutal rule; blocking it is the only step that will have an impact on his regime because it would threaten its ability to function.

Since I raised this matter with the Prime Minister, the political situation in Zimbabwe has deteriorated even farther. Aid agencies have been banned from distributing desperately needed food, Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, has been detained five times and prohibited from holding rallies; more than 60 opposition supporters have been killed, and thousands have been beaten, intimidated and driven from their homes. Mugabe at the weekend said that he was willing “to go to war” if he lost. The Joint Operations Command, made up of the heads of the military and state security organisations, is already directing a violent campaign to “decompose” the Movement for Democratic Change.

Mr Brown said that he was willing to consider any measure that might secure a free and fair election, but I fear that in the end we will settle for nothing more than the usual hand-wringing and ritual condemnation.

The British Government has faced a difficult dilemma in tackling the Zimbabwe crisis. The Foreign Office has been understandably fearful that robust action against Mugabe's regime would play into his hands by discomforting our allies in southern Africa and by allowing him to characterise the MDC Opposition as stooges of Zimbabwe's “colonial oppressors”.

The Government's reticence may have been understandable while hope remained that Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa, would act decisively, but that hope faded long ago. In any event, anyone who has recently read the pages of the Zimbabwe Herald recently, or heard the broadcasts of the state radio or television channels, will know that the virulence of Mugabe's anti-British/anti-MDC rhetoric is already so extreme that he could not increase the level of vitriol even if he wished to.

Critics of the measures I have proposed argue that blocking foreign currency from entering the country would precipitate greater suffering. I do not underestimate the severe consequences.

The alternative, however, is to do nothing. That may spare us our moral qualms but it would not spare us the responsibility for the far greater disaster that will engulf Zimbabwe if Robert Mugabe is allowed to steal the election. The consequences for Zimbabwe's people of that outcome would be catastrophic beyond any imagining.

Nick Clegg is leader of the (UK) Liberal Democrats

Oneword · #**114** 16th June 2008, 07:48 PM

Zimbabwe's pro-Mugabe war vets draw hard line. In a rare interview, militia leader threatens to take over more white-owned farms and businesses.

Quote:

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa; and BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE - – The man behind Zimbabwe's most feared militia, the War Veterans, has all the credentials of a dedicated fighter except one: He's never fought in combat.

Graduating from boot camp in Angola just after Zimbabwe's "war of liberation" against white-minority rule ended in 1980, Jabulani Sibanda soldiered on as an organizer for President Robert Mugabe's ruling party, the ZANU-PF.

It was Mr. Sibanda who led so-called war veterans to take white-owned farms by force, starting in 2000. Today, Sibanda – one of the hardest hard-liners in the ruling ZANU-PF – is blamed for orchestrating attacks on opposition supporters in the lead-up to a runoff election on June 27.

"We are definitely winning," says a confident Sibanda, in an exclusive interview in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Despite South African-sponsored talks held last week, Sibanda says there is no possibility of a power-sharing deal between Mr. Mugabe's party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

"There is no room for compromise," he says. "Where do people get this term 'government of national unity?' As far as I see it, people who are opposing each other will never work together."

Echoing comments by Mugabe Sunday, he adds that, if Zimbabwe's president hands over power, it will be to another member of the ZANU-PF. "If President Mugabe decides to retire, we, as war veterans, we will respect who the party chooses because we are an organized party, unlike MDC. We are democratic. People will choose a person with dignity."

While there are questions about Sibanda's legitimacy as a "war veteran," few question that he and his militia are one of the main obstacles to a peaceful election, or a Kenyan-style power-sharing agreement.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the March 29 elections, but by an insufficient margin to avoid a runoff. Hard-liners like Sibanda and Zimbabwe's military chiefs admit that Mr. Tsvangirai garnered more votes, but say they will never allow a transfer of power to Tsvangirai.

Given their past violence, it's hard to see these as empty threats. But some analysts say that the hard-liners will lose their resolve if Mugabe leaves.

"I don't think there is very much behind these people, they are doing what they are expected to do by the regime, which is making the regime feared," says Marian Tupy, an Africa expert at the Cato Institute in Washington. "When you do happen to see a change in regime, these people will disappear into the bush," because Mugabe won't be able to protect them anymore.

"These people know the enormity of their crimes, both in terms of violence and in the corruption over the past decades," says Mr. Tupy. Even if Tsvangirai prefers a more conciliatory approach toward former ZANU-PF criminals, he expects that other countries will launch the sort of judicial process that brought former Liberian President Charles Taylor to face charges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The international community has been quiet thus far. At the United Nations Security Council last week, South Africa and Russia blocked discussion of the political crisis in Zimbabwe, and the Southern African Development Community has thus far refused to sanction Zimbabwe over its continued harassment and arrest of top opposition leaders. But in an open letter to President Mugabe, 40 African leaders, including former UN chief Kofi Annan, and former rulers such as Nigeria's Abdulsalami Alhaji Abubakar, urged Zimbabwe to end the violence and to create the conditions for a free and fair election.

The response in Zimbabwe? In the past week, Tsvangirai has been arrested five times, and MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti was arrested last week and charged with treason, a crime that carries the death penalty.

Opposition party leaders say that government agents and pro-Mugabe militias have killed some 60 of their supporters since the March 29 elections, and injured hundreds more. In a recent report, Human Rights Watch in London documented some of the estimated 2,000 cases of beatings, including a horrific case in the town of Chiweshe, in which ZANU-PF officials and war veterans beat six men to death, and tortured 70 men and women, because of their apparent support for MDC in the March elections.

Prosper Mutema, an MDC activist from Mtoko in Mashonaland East Province says that he was captured by the so-called war veterans at midnight on June 3 and taken to Rukowo base in Mushamba village.

"They beat me all night with sticks and sjamboks (rhino-hide whips) until I passed out. When I regained consciousness the following day, I was made to sign a document denouncing MDC and I was also forced to hand over party regalia," he said; "all this was done in front of the whole village."

Over the weekend, President Mugabe announced charges of treason against top MDC leaders, including Tsvangirai, and hinted that he would watch for "sellouts" within his own ranks.

"We are the custodians of Zimbabwe's legacy," Mugabe was quoted by the state-owned Sunday Mail newspaper. "We will pass this on to those we know are fully aware of the party's ideology, those who value the country's legacy."

Sibanda, for his part, shrugs off charges of human rights violations, saying, "MDC started the violence, not us. Our people only act in self-defense." And he defends the use of force, both in taking away land from the 300 white farmers remaining in Zimbabwe, and also in taking away companies owned by whites. "We now want to assume control of companies," he says. "We want to empower our blacks. We have a lot of smart, educated people, who can be captains of industry. That's the first step to recovery – black economic empowerment." The current economic crisis, with an estimated 400,000 percent inflation rate, he says, "is just a passing phase."

To some former ZANU-PF members, Sibanda's words are mere bluster. Dumiso Dabengwa, a former intelligence chief under Mugabe, says that the "so-called war veterans," can be easily controlled. "There is no genuine war veteran that is going to totally support Mugabe," he says. The true war veterans have families and have suffered the same economic distress that most Zimbabweans have suffered, he says. "They are not the type to run around and harass people in the name of politics."

• The Christian Science Monitor. Two reporters, in Bulawayo and Harare, contributed to this report. Their names are being withheld for security reasons.

Oneword · #**115** 16th June 2008, 08:37 PM

Just a repost!

Well that makes perfect sense, why didn't we think of that?
Mugabe is only protecting his countries legacy and his own ideology. That is why he is holding onto power until he can find someone just like himself.

Hitler and Stalin and a host of other dictators shared that same cold ideology with an iron fist. So perhaps the rest of the world should share with him our Ideology and show Mugabe the error of his ways permanently!

by Barry Artiste

Pietro · #**116** 16th June 2008, 08:59 PM

Well, sirree!! If'n he wants to play cards, why not Poker and preferably with 2 Aces and Eights!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BTW. It's called the "dead man's hand" from the legend of it having been the five-card-draw hand held by Wild Bill Hickok at the time of his murder.

Oneword · #**117** 17th June 2008, 12:22 PM

Poli, wherever you at the moment....

It's a beautiful article and a good analysis.

PS. You stole nobody's thunder. A good article is a good article irrespective of who writes/posts it

Comrade_007 · #**118** 20th June 2008, 12:37 AM

It's starting to happen, my brothers and sisters: Some African politicans are speaking out about the horrendous violence unfolding in Zimbabwe...the tide is finally, slowly turning against Mugabe and ZANU-PF. Words which were unspeakable only until recently are now being spoken. Is it enough? No. Will it change Mugabe's and ZANU-PF's behaviour? We'll see. But it is a change for the better, in the end....

Quote:

"There is every sign that these elections will never be free nor fair," said the Tanzanian foreign minister, Bernard Membe. He was speaking on behalf of his country plus Swaziland and Angola, who are leading a 380-strong SADC election observer mission.

Membe said some of the 211 observers already in the country had seen two people shot dead in front of them.

"We have told the government of Zimbabwe to stop the violence," he said. "We have told our observers not to be threatened, that they do their work without fear. People of Zimbabwe are hurting and it pains us."

Zimbabwe neighbours turn against Mugabe | World news | guardian.co.uk

Oneword · #**119** 20th June 2008, 07:01 AM

Comrade_007,

Thanks for the comments and, as usual, I support you ... to some extent. Trawling all the news ... as I am wont to do... I find a lot of hot air and very little else. And, no, I am not advocating an insurrection or a coup d'état.

Neither am I advocating the wholesale importation of "blue helmets"(although in Namibia they proved to be beneficial if not spectacularly efficient). Mere words will not make Mugabe and his henchmen go away or become more reconcilable with their eventual fate. These words may be powerful and fill up many web and other pages, but they are not imprecations and not terrible efficacious.

All of the Zanu-PF elite has much too much to lose to give up now. Their dark minions will continue to rampage and go beserker until they have achieved the final Mugabe goal: vanquishing any upstart with democratic ideas - and continuing bleeding the country dry. The equivalent of a political Dracula!

Anybody who labours under the misapprehension and pipe-dream of a GNU, should, maybe, be reminded what usually happens in Africa when one puts a lion (albeit old and tattered) and a lamb (politically-speaking) together.

Somehow it reminds me of the countless post-Apocalypse films where there are poisonous and lethal no-go zones. We might as well fence off the country and start putting up signs to say: "Ingozi, Danger, Gevaar"

History may vindicate us when it records "This used to a land of plenty. See what happens when you get a megalomaniac allowed to go totally nuts by the international community".

Goodbye, Zimbabwe! It's been nice knowing you!

Comrade_007 · #**120** 20th June 2008, 10:47 AM

Is it now possible to say that South Africa's Government is complicit in the wave of state-sponsored violence and terror that is sweeping Zimbabwe? I mean we have Mbeki protecting the regime by not publicly calling the regime to order and speaking out about the situation? We have the country's foreign minister Zuma snubbing the international community by avoiding discussions about the country in the Security Council?

We have the MDC saying they have no trust and confidence in Mbeki as mediator because he is not acting in a neutral fashion. Is this part of a well-established pattern of protecting the regime and subverting the will of the Zimbabwean people?

I am disappointed and saddened by the policies of South Africa towards Zimbabwe. The undisputable fact is that South Africa could have and should have exerted pressure much earlier and force the regime to get its house in order and let the will of the people of Zimbabwe prevail. They had and have the political and economic means to do so, but chose not to. It had and still has the means to do so, but it does not. That is a policy choice, and a regrettable one. South Africa has failed our continent and the people of Zimbabwe.

View Poll Results: Do you believe the second round of the March harmonised elections in Zimbabwe were free and fair?
Yes, they were	31	14.22%
No, they were not	123	56.42%
I'm not sure	64	29.36%
Voters: 218. You may not vote on this poll

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