Zim government seizes former PM Smith's farm

The Zimbabwe government has seized the farm of late former white minority leader Ian Smith, listing it "for compulsory acquisition for resettlement."

Owen Jarman, manager at the cattle ranch Gwenoro in the central Zimbabwean district of Shurugwi said he was winding up affairs at the farm after being told by government officials in late September that it had been "listed for compulsory acquisition for resettlement."

Smith was prime minister of Rhodesia, as it was formerly known, from 1964 until 1978, defying international condemnation over his refusal to relinquish white rule.

A five-year guerilla war led by black nationalists ended in 1979 with a settlement which allowed Robert Mugabe to win elections. He has remained in power since.

In 2000, Mugabe launched a campaign to seize white-owned land and redistribute it to black farmers. While most white farmers lost almost everything they owned, the main section of Smith's farm had remained untouched.

"We understand that the farm was left alone out of (Mugabe's) respect for Mr Smith," said Jarman. "We have farmed here without interruption since 2000. But there seems to have been a change of heart and they have now decided to take it."

It was being handed to a local technical college, he said. No compensation is to be paid.

Smith bought the farm in 1948, lived on it throughout the pre-independence guerilla war but finally left in 2005 to go to South Africa as he became infirm with age. He died there in 2007 aged 88, the same age as Mugabe is now. His ashes were scattered at Gwenoro.

Jarman has been running the farm for Smith's step children since his death. "It'll take me perhaps the next couple of months to clear out," he said. "They are giving us time. They don't seem to be in a huge hurry to get us off."

The World Bank and other major international financial institutions have accused Mugabe of destroying what was once regarded as "the breadbasket of Africa" with the land seizures.

They say it led to the collapse of the rest of the economy in 2008. The World Food Programme says Zimbabwe is facing one of its worst "hunger periods" this year, with 1.7-million people facing starvation.

Source: Mail & Guardian

Africa: The Landgrabbers - the New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth

In his recent book, Fred Pearce examines the dynamics behind large-scale land acquisitions and their social, environmental and developmental effects.

"Buy land. They are not making it anymore."

This statement uttered more than one hundred years ago by Mark Twain still holds a sad and powerful truth and makes a telling start for Fred Pearce's account in The Landgrabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth about the struggle over the Earth's most precious resources: land and water.

In the book, the reader is taken on a whirlwind tour around the globe to witness, through Pearce's eyes, a new kind of colonialism driven not by countries, but by powerful private capitalists.

We encounter figures such as George Soros and Richard Branson; we learn about the effects of the conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia; we find out why President Robert Mugabe's land seizures in Zimbabwe were not so bad after all for small-scale farmers; and we see how the global financial crisis and the intricate mechanisms of stock market speculations in commodities exacerbate the problem.

Pearce's passion and outrage about the selling off of communal resources shines through the book.

Each chapter is dedicated to a certain country, where protagonists change, yet the storyline stays the same: governments around the globe grant large concessions to wily investors in the hope of advancing their economies but displace and disadvantage large parts of their own population in the process.

As Mike Ogg, an agriculture specialist from Swaziland, told Think Africa Press: "I fundamentally believe that agriculture can lead development in Africa. The quandary is: How do you create a win-win situation where investors and the community benefit?"

Pearce's dystopia

Pearce presents a bleak picture of increasingly prevalent 'land grabs' by corporations for agriculture or resource exploitation as well as by well-meaning environmentalists for so-called "green grabs".

This is, Pearce argues, encircling the last remaining habitats of indigenous peoples and the landless poor, destroying their past and forever altering their future.

Pearce mixes this narrative with historical references to imperialism and colonialism giving the impression of a continuous cycle of exploitation. But his greatest achievement in the book is to give those exploited a voice.

He recounts their stories in numerous interviews, as well as talking to those involved in the land acquisitions and a variety of experts.

Pearce concludes that the bulk of the blame rests with foreign buyers though it is crucial to recognise that most deals are also pursued by respective governments which may give out large land concessions, tax breaks and other incentives to draw foreign capital into their country in the first place. And politicians are not only accomplices, but often also carve out deals in return for money or land for themselves.

This is enabled by an environment in which laws are either non-existent or easily circumvented. As Graziano da Silva, director-general of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, notes: "It appears to be like the Wild West and we need a sheriff and law in place."

Proposing solutions

Although Pearce does not go so far as to propose possible solutions, there is a range of opinion and ideas as to how to begin to tackle the problem.

Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, has suggested that when national governments are unable or unwilling to devise regulations, the international community should step in to monitor whether the rights of land users are being respected. Oxfam's recent report 'Our Land, Our Lives' highlights the pivotal role of the World Bank as an advisor to governments in reforming their laws.

But this is easier said than done. As a representative from USAID in Dar es Salaam admitted to Think Africa Press, "Land tenure, we know, is at the heart of many problems as it is difficult for poor people to feed themselves with limited and insecure access to land, but we are not touching this subject, because it's too contentious and complicated".

Another way the negative impacts of large-scale land acquisitions could be mitigated is through emerging sustainability standards.

The World Bank and its private sector funding arm, the International Finance Corporation, have strict regulations regarding social and environmental sustainability. These include standards on development-induced displacement and there are growing calls for wider implementation of such regulations.

An example of a private sector-driven initiative is Bonsucro, a certification scheme which aims to ensure companies involved in the production of sugar and ethanol from sugarcane meet environmental, social and business standards.

With consumers believed to be increasingly concerned about the impacts of the goods they buy, the Bonsucro certification is meant to reassure buyers that companies are acting in sustainable ways and taking account of human rights and pollution control.

Moving forwards

Pearce acknowledges these developments in his last chapter where he analyses some of the attempts at solutions though he does not put forward his own. Nevertheless, Pearce's book is a worthwhile read. His writing style is highly engaging and reveals the duplicity of investors and interest groups.

He not only presents complicated and contentious issues such as the correlation of Wall Street speculations and rising food prices in an accessible manner, but also masterfully interweaves stories and issues across countries and continents achieving a well-researched, logical and informative account.

Although Pearce's focus lies on the problems at hand rather than solutions, the book certainly contributes to a growing awareness about the issues and will hopefully inspire others to find suitable ways to move forwards.

Katharina Neureiter holds an MSc in History of International Relations from the London School of Economics specialising in African colonial history and war cultures. She is currently working as a consultant in East Africa and blogs at hearabout.wordpress.com.

Source: All Africa

Zimbabwe Convicts 6 Who Viewed Revolt News

Six political activists in Zimbabwe who gathered last year to watch and discuss television news broadcasts of the Arab Spring protests were convicted on Monday of conspiring to commit violence in an effort to overthrow the government. The penalty could be 10 years in prison. They are to be sentenced on Tuesday.

About 45 activists, students and trade unionists were arrested last February while attending a meeting convened by Munyaradzi Gwisai, a lecturer at the law school at the University of Zimbabwe and a former member of Parliament for Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, to discuss the antiauthoritarian uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.

Prosecutors claimed that Mr. Gwisai and the others were planning to start a similar uprising in Zimbabwe aimed at toppling President Robert G. Mugabe, who has been in power for three decades. Most of the defendants were later released, but six, including Mr. Gwisai, were charged with serious crimes. Lawyers for the accused said the meeting was an academic discussion, not a planning session for a revolution.

The judge in the case, Kudakwashe Jarabini, said in court that while watching videos of the Arab uprisings was not a crime, the organizers had intended to incite hostility toward the government by playing them, according to people in the courtroom.

Mr. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party has been in a tenuous unity government with the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, since the 2008 election. Mr. Tsvangirai won the most votes but dropped out of the race because of violence against his supporters. International pressure led to the creation of a unity government. But Mr. Mugabe retained the most crucial government posts, particularly those that control the police and the army.

Mr. Mugabe’s party has been pushing hard for new elections, hoping to retake power while Mr. Mugabe, 88, whose health has grown more fragile, remains alive. But the Movement for Democratic Change and many activists and analysts have argued against holding elections before a new constitution is drawn up and crucial institutions, like the election commission, are reformed. An estimated 350 people died in violence during the 2008 election.

Shortly after the 45 activists were arrested last year, a lawyer working for them reported that a dozen had been tortured to try to force them to testify for the state and that six had been lashed. The accusations prompted a letter of concern from the United Nations torture investigator, Juan E. Méndez.

Dewa Mavhinga of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a collection of hundreds of civic groups, said it appeared that the window for change in Zimbabwe was closing. “It is an indicator that we are really going towards elections and that the democratic space that was previously somewhat open is quickly closing down,” Mr. Mavhinga said. “There is no crime that has been committed. It is a political issue that is being dealt with by a politicized and severely compromised judiciary.”

Source: New York Times

Mugabe's diamond mine 'war chest'

A Zimbabwean diamond field said to be the largest in the world is being mined by companies staffed by Robert Mugabe's police and military chiefs who may use the proceeds as a "war chest" to crack down on opponents, says an anti-corruption watchdog. A study by Global Witness marks the first comprehensive attempt to pin down ownership of two companies awarded the rights to mine at Marange since concessions were awarded by the mining ministry four years ago.

It reveals that one company has, among its directors, members of Mugabe's security services who have previously been implicated in vote-rigging and political violence in the run-up to elections. The other is part-owned by companies registered in tax havens such as Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands, making its beneficiaries virtually impossible to identify. Tendai Biti, the finance minister and a member of the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe's fractious coalition government, has repeatedly complained about the disappearance of diamond revenues, which it was hoped might help to revive the shattered economy.

Global Witness claims that instead, the security forces could be channelling the profits into a "war chest" that could be used to act against dissenting voices in elections expected this year or next. Marange diamond fields made international headlines in 2008 when they were seized by the Zimbabwean military. Last year, Global Witness claimed locals were being forced to work for soldiers, then smuggle the stones over the Mozambican border. After widespread outrage, the fields were divided up among favoured companies. Leading the pack were the Chinese, whose Exim bank provided the Zimbabweans with a $98-million loan to rebuild their defence college in return for a concession.

Anjin, a joint venture between a Chinese and a Zimbabwean company, intends to produce two million carats a month. According to Global Witness, Anjin has on its board a number of people close to Mugabe. Its company secretary is listed as being Charles Tarumbwa, a brigadier on the EU sanctions list for his role in terror campaigns.

The second company, Mbada, is run by Robert Mhlanga, a former air vice-marshal in the Zimbabwean air force. It is linked to a network of companies based in Mauritius, Dubai, the British Virgin Islands and Hong Kong. Biti said the results of the study did not surprise him. "I know the money [from the sale of Marange diamonds] is being stolen, but I don't have any proof of how it is being stolen," he said. Neither Anjin nor Mbada could be reached for comment.

Source: Times Live

South Africa Slips From the Moral High Ground

Whether under its erstwhile white rulers or since then, South Africa has never liked to see itself in any way as run-of-the-mill, preferring to cast itself as aloof from the corruption, strife and misrule so often associated with the continent to its north. And, after the country’s fully democratic election in 1994, the towering presence of Nelson Mandela shed a glow of moral superiority: not only had Mr. Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his beliefs, but, finally, the continent could now look forward to what Thabo Mbeki, his successor, called an African Renaissance.

In more recent times, South Africans have come to a different, almost heretical conclusion: under its newest coterie of the powerful around President Jacob Zuma, their land has lost its claim to the moral high ground. Rarely has that conclusion been expressed more forcefully than in recent days when Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, a Nobel Peace laureate once at the forefront of the fight against apartheid, issued his sharpest yet denunciation of the government, comparing it pejoratively with its apartheid predecessor.

“Mr. Zuma, you and your government don’t represent me,” he told a news conference, protesting the authorities’ failure to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan religious leader, whom the archbishop had invited to his 80th birthday party. “You represent your own interests. I am warning you out of love, one day we will start praying for the defeat of the A.N.C. government,” he said, referring by its initials to the governing African National Congress, which casts itself as the custodian of the nation’s moral aspirations as much as the core its political legitimacy.

The archbishop’s remarks provoked some sharp reactions. “In the scheme of things, who is Bishop Tutu? A prelate who was won honors because he raised his voice against apartheid? Who did not?” said Thula Bopela, a veteran of the A.N.C.’s military struggle against apartheid. But the exchange reflected a more insidious malaise. The authorities’ delay in issuing a visa for the Dalai Lama, which forced him to cancel the birthday visit, was broadly interpreted as a genuflection to the power of China, South Africa’s biggest trading partner, with whom it struck a $2.5 billion investment deal even as the Dalai Lama’s visa application was — in theory at least — under consideration.

South Africa, moreover, has joined the relatively new economic and political grouping Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and now South Africa), preferring to align itself with emergent powers rather what are seen as declining established powers in the West.

“Let me state categorically that our foreign policy is independent and decisions are informed by the national interest,” Mr. Zuma said Thursday in a foreign policy address. “We look at what is of benefit to the South African people, and what will advance our domestic priorities at that given time. We are not dictated to by other countries, individuals or lobby group interests within our own country.”

But, for a land that cast itself as moral beacon against tyranny, South Africa has adopted a particular prism for its foreign policy, blending its debts to those who supported it in the liberation struggle, a suspicion of Western influence and a hard-nosed pragmatism. “It must be noted that there is a way that the way in which the A.N.C. regime resembles the one it succeeded, by deciding to take sides with the oppressor, in this case China,” Dr. R. Simangaliso Kumalo, the head of the School of Religion and Theology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, listing a catalog of occasions when Pretoria seemed to side with dictators like President Robert G. Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya.

As Libyans rose up against Colonel Qaddafi, for instance, South Africa initially supported a U.N. resolution authorizing NATO intervention, but Mr. Zuma later promoted a parallel and unsuccessful African effort to create some kind of compromise, shielding the Libyan strongman in what, to some, looked like payback for generous financial support in the past from Tripoli.

On Thursday, Mr. Zuma complained that the initiative “was not given space to implement its road map and to ensure an African solution to the Libyan question.” South Africa’s foreign policy, he insisted, “is an extension of our domestic policy and our value system.” But others had already come to a different conclusion. “It is clear to me that we do not have a moral foreign policy,” the political analyst Eusebius McKaiser said in a lecture in August, discussing South Africa’s role in the Libya conflict. “There is little indication that our foreign policy is consistently and genuinely informed by a thorough commitment to project our domestic constitutional principles onto the international arena.”

Indeed, those principles — or the threats to them — lie at the center of the debate. Two years after their first free election in 1994, South Africans created a new constitution guaranteeing rights that much of Africa had shunned, ignored or undermined and seeming to lock the land onto the moral coordinates of its struggle for democracy. But the ground has shifted. Corruption and patronage have replaced principle and promised transparency. “Nothing anybody says or does can be taken at face value any longer, because we suspect this can only be explained if one understands what the doer or speaker wants to achieve in terms of his or her factional interest,” said Max du Preez, a journalist and author.

South Africa’s revolution, wrote the author Njabulo S. Ndebele, “may itself have become corrupted by the attractions of instant wealth,” reflecting “a potentially catastrophic collapse in the once cohesive understanding of the post-apartheid project as embodied in our constitution.” The A.N.C., he said, “functions as a state within the state, and it thinks it is the state” — hardly the stuff of an exception, let alone a renaissance.

Source: New York Times

Zimbabwe Report Focuses on Abuses

Zimbabwe faces a “crisis of impunity” that has festered for decades and allows killings, torture and beatings to go unpunished, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Tuesday.

The police refuse to act on complaints of abuse and even murder, and judges are co-opted, threatened or attacked, the report said.

Tiseke Kasambala, a senior researcher for the human rights group, which is based in New York, told reporters that the climate in the country should prevent the holding of elections, which President Robert Mugabe, who has been in office for 31 years, is seeking. “If reforms are not instituted, then we say that there must be no elections in Zimbabwe,” Ms. Kasambala said.


Human Rights Watch called for Zimbabwe’s unity government to set an independent commission to investigate serious human rights abuses.

Source: New York Times

Bulawayo Man Arrested Over Facebook Message

A Bulawayo man has become Zimbabwe's first "Facebook arrest" over an innocent comment he posted on the social networking site on the 13th February.

Vikas Mavhudzi of Old Magwegwe, is being charged with "subverting a constitutional government" after he posted a message on a Facebook page allegedly belonging to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. Mavhudzi's message simply read: "I am overwhelmed, I don't want to say Mr. or PM what happened in Egypt is sending shockwaves to dictators around the world. No weapon but unity of purpose worth emulating, hey."

The court was told that police arrested Mavhudzi on February 24th, after receiving an anonymous call that claimed he had sent a 'security threat' via his mobile phone. It was only after the arrest that police went through his phone and discovered the message in the sent folder.

Prosecutor Jeremiah Mutsindikwa accused Mavhudzi of "advocating or attempting to take-over government by unconstitutional means". And the state opposed bail when he appeared before a city magistrate on Thursday. Mavhudzi was remanded in custody till March 9th.

Protests against dictators in North Africa appear to have rattled Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF, as any discussion of the events there is now considered a crime in Zimbabwe. A group of activists who gathered to watch video footage of the protests were arrested on February 19 and are still in detention. Lawyers said suspected ringleaders have been brutally assaulted.

Meanwhile there are signs that the Mugabe regime intends to increase its ability to spy on innocent civilians. As we reported on SW Radio Africa this week, the government is allegedly moving at a 'very fast pace' with the construction of a secret electronic eavesdropping complex just outside Harare. A trusted source said that the Chinese, who are building the complex, have a system that enables most security agencies to 'spy at will' on emails, website visits, social networking sessions, and telephone calls made over the internet on a massive scale.

Source: AllAfrica

UN probes Zimbabwe arms sent to Côte d'Ivoire

The United Nations is investigating suspected arms transfers from Zimbabwe to Côte d'Ivoire's incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo in violation of UN sanctions, according to a report obtained by Reuters.

The report emerged after a week of gun battles between forces loyal to Gbagbo and his rival Alassane Ouattara, almost universally recognised as winner of a November 28 poll, that risk pushing the top cocoa grower back to full-blown civil war.

Diplomats on the UN Security Council said the possible transfer of weapons to Gbagbo was a serious matter. They said his forces could use them against UN peacekeepers -- UNOCI, who recognise Ouattara as Côte d'Ivoire's president -- or Ivorian civilians who support Ouattara.

UNOCI's confidential Embargo monitoring report January 2011, obtained by Reuters on Thursday, said the mission was gathering more information on "the arrival of light weapons cargoes from Zimbabwe". UN officials told Reuters arms from Zimbabwe would have been intended for Gbagbo and not Ouattara.

In January, Gbagbo sent a special envoy to Harare to meet with and enlist the support of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who like Gbagbo has been accused by his opponents of election fraud and is under US and European Union sanctions.

Côte d'Ivoire has been under an arms embargo since the last bout of serious violence in 2004, when pro-Gbagbo forces bombed French peacekeepers in the rebel-held north. Analysts say both sides have repeatedly violated the embargo.

The report also said UNOCI was monitoring a shipment of 10 large wooden boxes that "may contain trucks or tanks".

"This cargo has been at Abidjan airport for six months," the UNOCI report said. "Aerial pictures confirmed the presence of these boxes, which are under 24/7 hours military surveillance."

Aircraft
Philippe Bolopion of Human Rights Watch said countries aiding Gbagbo should be careful: "Given the documented pattern of unlawful attacks on civilians by pro-Gbagbo forces, countries violating the arms embargo to provide weapons to his forces might be complicit in grave human rights abuses."

The report spoke of a "suspected cargo delivery from Angola", involving two Soviet-manufactured Sukhoi-27 fighter jets and a Soviet-made MIG-25 interceptor and reconnaissance bomber, spotted at San Pedro airport in Cape Verde, and a Russian cargo plane seen at Abidjan in January.

The Russian aircraft "has a considerable cargo capacity to carry heavy military equipment or a company of soldiers", the report said.

The report did not explicitly say whether the fighter jets were linked to Gbagbo's government. But it said UNOCI had received information that the "same [Russian cargo] aircraft had supplied equipment to the Ivorian government in 2005".

An official at Zimbabwe's mission expressed surprise about the allegation and declined to comment. Diplomats at Angola's UN mission were not immediately available for a reaction.

Gbagbo has ordered UNOCI out of the country, a demand the mission has ignored. UN troops have been protecting Ouattara, who is holed up in an Abidjan hotel along with his advisers.

The UNOCI report is not the first of a possible transfer of military aircraft to Gbagbo. UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy apologised to Belarus for a UN statement on Monday alleging that an initial shipment of attack helicopters had arrived in Côte d'Ivoire from Belarus.

Diplomats said the statement on the helicopter sale issued by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's press office was based on credible US intelligence. Ouattara's UN envoy Youssoufou Bamba told reporters that the only incorrect part of the statement was that a first shipment had arrived.

"It's true that he [Gbagbo] wanted these three helicopters to be smuggled into Cote d'Ivoire and be assembled," he said. "This is something we have from credible sources of intelligence." - Reuters

 
Source: Mail & Guardian Online

Art Exhibit Stirs Up the Ghosts of Zimbabwe’s Past

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe — The exhibit at the National Gallery is now a crime scene, the artwork banned and the artist charged with insulting President Robert Mugabe. The picture windows that showcased graphic depictions of atrocities committed in the early years of Mr. Mugabe’s 30-year-long rule are now papered over with the yellowing pages of a state-controlled newspaper.

But the government’s efforts to bury history have instead provoked slumbering memories of the Gukurahundi, Zimbabwe’s name for the slaying and torture of thousands of civilians here in the Matabeleland region a quarter century ago. “You can suppress art exhibits, plays and books, but you cannot remove the Gukurahundi from people’s hearts,” said Pathisa Nyathi, a historian here. “It is indelible.”

As Zimbabwe heads anxiously toward another election season, a recent survey by Afrobarometer has found that 70 percent of Zimbabweans are afraid they will be victims of political violence or intimidation, as thousands were in the 2008 elections. But an equal proportion want the voting to go forward this year nonetheless, evidence of their deep desire for democracy and the willingness of many to vote against Mr. Mugabe at great personal risk, analysts say. In few places do such sentiments about violence in public life run as deep as here, and in recent months the government — whether through missteps or deliberate provocation — has rubbed them ever more raw.

Before the World Cup in South Africa in June, a minister in Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, invited the North Korean soccer team, on behalf of Zimbabwe’s tourism authority, to base itself in Bulawayo before the games began, a gesture that roused a ferocious outcry. After all, it was North Korea that trained and equipped the infamous Fifth Brigade, which historians estimate killed at least 10,000 civilians in the Ndebele minority between 1983 and 1987. “To us it opened very old wounds,” Thabitha Khumalo, a member of Parliament, said of the attempt to bring the North Korean team to the Ndebele heartland. “We’re being reminded of the most horrible pain. How dare they? Our loved ones are still buried in pit latrines, mine shafts and shallow graves.”

Ms. Khumalo, interviewed while the invitation was still pending last year, wept as she summoned memories of the day that destroyed her family — Feb. 12, 1983. She was 12 years old. She said soldiers from the Fifth Brigade, wearing jaunty red berets, came to her village and lined up her family. One soldier slit open her pregnant aunt’s belly with a bayonet and yanked out the baby. She said her grandmother was forced to pound the fetus to a pulp in a mortar and pestle. Her father was made to rape his mother. Her uncles were shot point blank.  Such searing memories stoked protests, and in the end the North Korean team did not come to Zimbabwe.

But feelings were further inflamed months later when the government erected a larger-than-life bronze statue of Joshua Nkomo — a liberation hero, an Ndebele and a rival to Mr. Mugabe — that, incredibly, was made in North Korea. Last September, bowing to public outcry over the statue’s origin (and protests from Mr. Nkomo’s family that its plinth was too small), the statue was removed from a major intersection in Bulawayo. It now stands neglected in a weedy lot behind the Natural History Museum here. Inside the museum hangs a portrait of a vigorous and dapper Mr. Mugabe in oversize glasses. He turns 87 next month. A massive stuffed crocodile, his family’s clan totem, dominates one gallery, its teeth long and sharp, its mouth agape. The signboard notes the crocodile’s lifespan exceeds 80 years.

Mr. Mugabe signed a pact with North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, to train the infamous army brigade just months after Zimbabwe gained independence from white minority rule in 1980. Mr. Mugabe declared the brigade would be named “Gukurahundi” (pronounced guh-kura-HUN-di), which means “the rain that washes away the chaff before the spring rains.” He said it was needed to quell violent internal dissent, but historians say he used it to attack Mr. Nkomo’s political base and to impose one-party rule.

Mr. Mugabe’s press secretary, George Charamba, said the president had called the Gukurahundi “a moment of madness,” but asked whether Mr. Mugabe had apologized for the campaign, Mr. Charamba bristled. “You can’t call it a moment of madness without critiquing your own past,” he said. “I hope people are not looking to humiliate the president. I hope they’re just looking at allowing him to get by healing this nation. For us, that is uppermost. Our sense of embitterment, our sense of recompense may not be exactly what you saw at Nuremburg.”

Downtown Bulawayo has the sleepy rhythms of a farm town, but the psychic wounds of the Gukurahundi fester beneath its placid surface. At the National Gallery here, the stately staircase leading to the shuttered Gukurahundi exhibit is now blocked by a sign that says “No Entry.” But the paintings, on walls saturated with blood-red paint, can still be glimpsed from the gallery above, through the bars of balconies. The paintings themselves seem to be jailed.

Voti Thebe, who heads the National Gallery, said the artist, Owen Maseko, created the Gukurahundi exhibit to contribute to reconciliation. There was no money, so Mr. Maseko, 35, did it on his own time. He was just a boy at the time of the Gukurahundi, but he recalls the sounds of hovering helicopters and sirens. “The memories are still there,” he said. “The victims are still alive. It’s not something we can just forget.” In a large painting, a row of faces are shown with mouths open in wordless screams. In another, women and children weep what seem to be tears of blood. Three papier-mâché corpses, one hanging upside down, fill a picture window. Throughout the galleries are recurrent, menacing images of a man in oversize glasses — Mr. Mugabe.

The day after the exhibit opened last year, it was closed down. Mr. Maseko was detained, then transferred to prison in leg irons before being released on bail. Mr. Maseko’s case awaits the Supreme Court’s attention. He is charged with insulting the president and communicating falsehoods prejudicial to the state, a charge punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

David Coltart, a politician from Bulawayo who is arts minister in the power-sharing government of ZANU-PF and its political rivals, said he warned cabinet ministers that prosecuting Mr. Maseko could turn the case into a cause célèbre and inflame divisions. Mr. Coltart, who has long fought the Mugabe government, said he also appealed directly to Defense Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was security minister during the Gukurahundi. “It is only when nations grapple with their past, in its reality, not as a biased fiction, that they can start to deal with that past,” Mr. Coltart said in a lecture delivered above Mr. Maseko’s show. He called the Gukurahundi “a politicide, if not a genocide.”

The Bulawayo playwright Cont Mhlanga knows the costs of free expression. His play “The Good President” was shut down on opening night here in 2007 when baton-wielding riot police officers stormed the theater. The lead character is a grandmother who lies to her two grandsons about the death of their father. He had been buried alive in the Gukurahundi. But the boys, ignorant of the truth, become beneficiaries of the Mugabe government, one of them an abusive policeman, the other a recipient of seized farmland. The play’s title refers, Mr. Mhlanga said, to African leaders who call Mr. Mugabe a good president, “this man who has blood on his hands.”

Mr. Mhlanga says he feels “like someone has put huge pieces of tape over my mouth,” but insists that artists must express what people are terrified of saying. “We live in a society where we’re so afraid, even of our own shadows,” he said. “To create democratic space in a society like ours, we have to deal with fear.”

Source: New York Times

Zimbabwe Attorney General slapped with US sanctions

The United States (US) on Tuesday imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe's Attorney General -- a top Robert Mugabe ally -- for his alleged role in undermining the crisis-ridden African nation's democracy. The Treasury Department said Johannes Tomana's "targeting of selected political opponents threatens the rule of law", and a fragile power-sharing deal between the country's rival powers.

The sanctions mean American citizens are prohibited from doing business with him and his US assets are frozen. But they also point to further tensions between long-time President Robert Mugabe and his political foe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. In 2008, the two leaders entered into an uneasy power-sharing deal, following months of political turmoil over the outcome of a violence-marred presidential run-off. The often testy relationship between the pair has been strained recently by tussles over government appointments, with Mugabe accused of routinely bypassing Tsvangirai when tapping officials for high office.

Last week, Mugabe stirred fresh conflict when he appointed ambassadors to the United Nations, the European Union and South Africa without consulting Tsvangirai, who heads the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Tsvangirai has asked the United Nations and the European Union not to recognise the ambassadors named solely by Mugabe. The United States stepped into the fray on Tuesday, questioning Tomana's appointment, in a clear shot at Mugabe. "Tomana's appointment was made without consultation with MDC leaders and against the spirit of Zimbabwe's Global Political Agreement signed on September 15, 2008," the Treasury Department said.

Tomana has been in the post since December 2008, shortly after the power-sharing deal was reached, but before the unity government was sworn in. The US government, along with European allies, have often criticised Mugabe for rights violations. According to leaked US diplomatic cables, the United Nations had even offered Mugabe a retirement package and safe haven overseas in 2000 if he agreed to stand down.

But 10 years on, Mugabe's exit looks as unlikely as ever. This month the 86-year-old was selected as his party's candidate for presidential elections expected next year, pitting him once more against long-time foe Tsvangirai. Mugabe, Africa's oldest leader, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980, was officially endorsed by Zanu-PF followers as their presidential candidate at the ruling party's annual conference this week. That could see Mugabe stay in office until well into his nineties if he wins a new ballot that for months he has insisted must take place next year because the deal with Tsvangirai -- current prime minister -- is not working.

But both men on Monday appeared to urge their supporters to shun violence ahead of the elections. "What we would want to get to our people is our voice and our command that there should be no violence, but that does not mean that everybody will listen to us," Mugabe said at a joint end-of-year news conference with Tsvangirai. "Yes, there are incidences of violence and we have witnessed it and we are committed as leaders to ensure that the next election is certainly not characterised by a culture of violence," said Tsvangirai. "That demon must be ostracised, it is a demon that no-one wants," he added.

Source: Mail & Guardian

M&G wins bid for 'secret' Zim report

The Mail & Guardian has again won in its bid to obtain a confidential report on the 2002 Zimbabwe presidential election at the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Bloemfontein on Tuesday. President Jacob Zuma's office appealed against the June 2010 judgement in the North Gauteng High Court which ordered the government to release the report to the M&G.

In what was widely hailed as a victory in the struggle for state transparency in South Africa, Acting Judge S Sapire then ordered the government to hand over the report within 10 days. As the deadline was due to expire, the Presidency announced that it would seek leave to appeal. However it is likely that the Presidency will again try to appeal the ruling at the Constitutional Court. The information being fought for is a 2002 report compiled by judges Dikgang Moseneke and Sisi Khampepe -- acting as special envoys to Zimbabwe -- for then-president Thabo Mbeki.

The M&G contends that the report is of public interest, given the widespread view that the 2002 Zimbabwe election, culminating in a victory for President Robert Mugabe, was marred by vote-rigging, intimidation, violence and fraud. When the Presidency rebuffed the M&G's initial attempts to gain access to the report, the newspaper lodged an application under the Promotion of Access to Information Act.

M&G editor Nic Dawes said on Tuesday: "In the most limited sense the judgement is important because it will provide us all with a much better understanding of what was going on in Zimbabwe ahead of the enormously controversial 2002 elections and what our president Mbeki was told about those circumstances by two senior judges. "Perhaps more importantly, the judgement sets out crucial constitutional principals of freedom of information and limits to the power of the state. What it makes crystal clear is that it's simply not good enough for government officials to assert they believe that information should be kept secret. They need to justify such decisions on the basis of genuine evidence and a proper understanding of the constitutional and legal framework. In that sense this is a victory for all South Africans."

Access to the report was also critical as it speaks to the separation of powers between the judiciary and executive, Dawes said. "If these judges went there to conduct an independent inquiry into those constitutional and legal questions than clearly that ought to be public information," said Dawes. "If they went there as representatives of [then] president Mbeki that would raise very serious questions of the separation of powers."

Mbeki sent the judges to the neighbouring state to obtain information on the constitutional and legal problems emerging in Zimbabwe at the time of the 2002 elections. Mbeki's office and the Zimbabwean government facilitated the mission. One of the purposes which Mbeki intended to put the report to was that of formulating policy and taking decisions pertaining to the situation in Zimbabwe. The M&G argued that although some years have passed since the report was compiled and submitted, it remained a matter of great public interest and importance for several reasons.

It was submitted that the report may provide important information relevant to the question whether the 2002 Zimbabwean Presidential elections were "stolen". Whether or not that was so was a matter of importance to an accurate contemporary historical record of the region. It was also submitted that it was central to the legitimacy of the continuation in the presidential office in Zimbabwe of the present incumbent Mugabe.

In court papers, the newspaper argued that with new elections coming up in Zimbabwe it was important to see whether Mugabe continued to hold office by virtue of alleged illegalities and irregularities stretching back to at least 2002.

Source: Mail & Guardian
Commentary by Pierre de Vos on his blog Constitutionally Speaking can be found here.

Standoff Set Up With 2 Ivory Coast Presidents

Defying international observers and the country’s own electoral commission, officials tied to President Laurent Gbagbo on Friday declared him the winner of a landmark election in this troubled West African nation, potentially setting the stage for the kind of violence and division that the long-awaited voting was supposed to prevent.

The announcement, made by the Constitutional Council, came only a day after the country’s top election official said Mr. Gbagbo’s challenger had won the election by a solid margin, 54.1 to 45.9 percent — a result the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, also endorsed on Friday. The United Nations has a role in certifying the elections, and both Mr. Ban and his longtime special representative here made it clear there was only one winner of last Sunday’s vote: the opposition candidate, Alassane Ouattara.

The conflicting declarations left the country in a strange limbo, with two men declared president, and on Friday Mr. Gbagbo’s government found itself under increasing isolation, some of it self-imposed. It has ordered the country’s borders sealed, blocked all foreign television and radio broadcasts — much of the population gets its news from French broadcasters — and imposed a strict dusk-to-dawn curfew.

President Obama issued a statement congratulating Mr. Ouattara. He urged “all parties, including incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo, to acknowledge and respect this result, and to allow Côte d’Ivoire to move forward toward a peaceful, democratic future, leaving long years of conflict and missed opportunities in the past.”

The streets of this economic capital were largely deserted except for troops, police officers and occasional bands of chanting youth, some of them Gbagbo supporters. Shops were shut tight, anticipating the street violence — often mobilized by Mr. Gbagbo’s camp, political scientists say — that sometimes accompanies political tension here. Calls from Washington and other foreign capitals to respect last Sunday’s vote, which was characterized as largely fair by the European Union and the United Nations, have multiplied. But Mr. Gbagbo showed no signs of backing down. State television announced that he would be sworn in Saturday as president. For years, he ignored calls from abroad to hold elections, staying in office five years after his legal term expired by postponing the vote. On Friday, Mr. Gbagbo, a former professor and historian, appeared set to continue in that vein, with legal justifications for his continued tenure fully mobilized.

Paul Yao N’Dre, the head of the Constitutional Council and a close ally of the president, announced Friday afternoon on national television that he was throwing out vote totals from the nine departments in the country’s northern tier — the stronghold of Mr. Ouattara — because of what Mr. N’Dre called “flagrant irregularities.” At the end of it, Mr. N’Dre said, “Laurent Gbagbo is declared president of the republic.” Earlier, Mr. Ouattara’s camp had drawn its own line in the sand. “Maybe Laurent Gbagbo thinks he can stage a new putsch in 2010,” a spokesman for Mr. Ouattara, Amadou Gon Coulibaly, told a roomful of reporters here at the fading luxury hotel that is their headquarters. “But this doesn’t change anything. The people of Côte d’Ivoire have spoken. Laurent Gbagbo is beaten.”

Later, Mr. Ouattara declared himself the “elected president.” Years of political confrontation here, with its coups and countercoups, civil war, street violence and postponed elections, seemed poised to repeat itself. The country has been divided between north and south since a 2002 civil war, and it had been hoped that the election would unify it.

A front-page headline in a newspaper close to Mr. Gbagbo translated as “France’s Coup d’État Has Once Again Failed,” singling out the former colonial power that has been the target of the president’s crowd-stirring orations in the past. Late Friday, the few pedestrians out as curfew approached spoke anxiously, and sometimes angrily, about the standoff that was repeating itself in a country that was once a magnet for the region’s immigrants but that now has steadily rising rates of poverty and unemployment.

The announcement that Mr. Gbagbo was the winner “is going to bring on lots of bad things in this country,” said Charles Adou, 36 and unemployed. “Mr. Gbagbo doesn’t want us to go forward. Referring to Mr. N’Dre, who declared Mr. Gbagbo’s victory, Michel Koffi, 28 and unemployed, said, “You put your friend at the head of an institution, you know what the result is going to be.” Analysts foresaw no quick resolution to the standoff. One unknown factor is which way the army, currently under Mr. Gbagbo’s control, will turn. “He’s playing his all,” said Richard Banegas, a political scientist at the Sorbonne in Paris. “He is extremely pugnacious, and he controls a lot of the street forces. He’s gone into a Plan B, a strategy of tension, a kind of Mugabe plan.”

Source: New York Times

Mugabe and allies own 40% of seized land

Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, and his allies have seized nearly half the country's commercial farms in a land grab widely blamed for economic collapse, an investigation claims today. Mugabe has bought the loyalty of Cabinet ministers, senior army and government officials and judges with nearly five million hectares of agricultural land, including wildlife conservancies and plantations, according to the national news agency ZimOnline.

The 86-year-old president and his wife, Grace, are said to own 14 farms spanning at least 16 000 hectares.

ZimOnline's investigation undermined the central claim behind Mugabe's land reforms: that they are give the majority of black Zimbabweans their rightful inheritance. "Even though Mugabe has consistently maintained that his land reform programme is meant to benefit the poor black masses, it is him and his cronies who have got the most out of it," it argued.

A "new, well-connected black elite" of about 2 200 people controls nearly 40% of the 14-million hectares seized from white farmers, ZimOnline found. These range in size from 250 to 4 000 hectares in "the most fertile farming regions in the country". The past decade of land invasions -- which reduced 4 000 white farmers to 400 by murders, beatings and forced evictions -- is held responsible by many for the demise of the "breadbasket of Africa". ZimOnline said government documents and audit reports showed the biggest beneficiaries of land reform were "Zanu-PF members and supporters, security service chiefs and officers and traditional chiefs who have openly sided with Mugabe and senior government officials and judges." It said all ministers and deputy ministers in Mugabe's Zanu-PF party were multiple farm owners. These include his deputy, Joice Mujuru, and her husband, the former army general Solomon Mujuru, and their relatives, who own at least 25 farms totalling 105 000 hectares. All Zanu-PF's 56 politburo members, 98 members of parliament and 35 elected and unelected senators were allegedly allocated farms, and all 10 provincial governors have seized them, with four being multiple owners. Sixteen supreme court and high court judges also own farms. The report said: "Of the nearly 200 officers from the rank of major to the lieutenant general in the Zimbabwe national army, 90% have farms in the most fertile parts of the country. This is replicated in the Zimbabwe republic police, Zimbabwe prisons service, air force of Zimbabwe and CIO [Central Intelligence Organisation].

"Constantine Chiwenga, the Zimbabwe defence forces commander, who is among a cabal of defence chiefs who have publicly declared that they will only serve Mugabe, has two farms near Harare, including the 1 200-hectare Chakoma Estates, which his wife seized at gunpoint, telling a terrified white farmer that she lusted for white blood and sought the slightest excuse to kill him."

Mugabe has billed the land reforms as a black empowerment corrective to the injustices of colonialism, which left Zimbabwe's land in the hands of a tiny white minority. A recent study challenged the prevailing view that the programme had been "all bad" for ordinary citizens. But ZimOnline said that while at least 150 000 people may have had access to farms, the majority owned between 10 and 50 hectares and were Zanu-PF members. "Critics who have consistently dismissed Zimbabwe's emotional land reforms as a political patronage programme by the octogenarian Mugabe to reward supporters who have kept him in power are right after all," it said.

ZimOnline noted that Zimbabwe's agricultural production had fallen by 60% since 2000 when the land invasions began. Exports from the sector fell from $1,4-billion in 2000 to nearly $700-million last year, after dipping below $500-million in 2007. ZimOnline said many farms were "lying fallow either because the new owners are not that keen on farming or they simply abandoned the properties for new farms".

Zanu-PF rejected the charge. Herbert Murerwa, the lands and rural resettlement minister, was quoted as saying: "The fact that a handful of people may have more than one farm does not detract from the overwhelming success of the land reform where the government has created 300 000 farmers over the last 10 years."

The Commercial Farmers' Union of Zimbabwe said today it was not surprised by the findings. Dean Theron, its president, said: "We are the ones it's been happening to. We know the colonial history and are not opposed to land reform, but we feel very sad at the way it has taken place. The beneficiaries are not the intended ones. The farms have been dished out to people with connections."

Eddie Cross, policy coordinator general for the Movement for Democratic Change and an agricultural economist, said: "It explains why Mugabe is so keen to avoid a land audit, and it certainly confirms everybody's feeling that there's a relatively small number of people in the land invasions and they're Zanu-PF acolytes. The only surprise is that it has taken so long to come out."

Source: Mail & Guardian

UK denies asylum for Mugabe 'thug'

A woman who admitted taking part in savage evictions of white farmers from their homes in Zimbabwe has lost her bid for asylum in the UK, a report said. According to the Daily Mail, High Court judge Mr Justice Ouseley threw out the widowed mother-of-two's appeal to remain in the UK after she confessed to beating up 10 people during two land invasions.

The story quotes the judge as saying that the state-sponsored mob violence, which saw white farmers' land seized and shared out among President Robert Mugabe's cronies, was akin to genocide. "We are satisfied that the two farm invasions were crimes against humanity," the judge said, likening the 39-year-old woman's role to a concentration camp guard who followed Nazi orders during the Holocaust.

According to the report, the woman, who cannot be named, came to Britain illegally in 2002 and did not claim asylum until six years later. Her bid for refugee status was rejected on the grounds that her own violent actions in Zimbabwe disqualified her from humanitarian protection in the UK. She reportedly admitted to being part of a gang of thugs from Mugabe's Zanu-PF party who invaded two white-owned farms intent on causing maximum terror and driving away black workers and said that on one occasion, she beat a woman so badly she thought she would die.

However, the report says she insisted she had taken part in the raids under duress to prove her loyalty to Mugabe's regime and she had never intended to kill anyone. The Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber accepted that the woman was a "lesser participant" in the bloodshed and others were even more brutal. However, she took "a voluntary, even if reluctant" part. Even though not a ringleader, the same could be said of concentration camp guards who "make a substantial contribution to genocide" despite their peripheral role, said the judge.

Source: IoL

Afriforum drops court case over ANCYL military training

AfriForum has withdrawn an urgent court application against Defence and Military Veterans Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, after she decided not to give the ANC Youth League and Young Communists’ League military training. It had applied for an the urgent interdict to review Sisulu’s decision to send the youth organisations’ leaders on a two week special programme at Saldanha Navy Base, in the Western Cape. This was to enable the youth to experience the curriculum and activities of national service. “Serious concerns were raised at the time as a result of parallels drawn with [Zimbabwe President] Robert Mugabe’s militia training for Zanu-PF youths in Zimbabwe,” AfriForum’s legal representative Willie Spies said in a statement on Sunday.

He said it was a pity that AfriForum had to make a court application to get answers from the minister. “This would not have been necessary if the minister showed the basic courtesy of responding to letters addressed to her.” Spies said Sisulu had made her latest declaration under oath. “If it appears at any stage that the minister wants to continue with her initial plans, AfriForum will re-enroll the urgent application immediately.”

AfriForum would apply this week for a new court date to argue the issue of costs, he said. On Friday, Sisulu’s spokesman Ndivhuwo Mbaya said a national service two week special programme designed for the leadership of all youth organisations would continue as soon as all logistics and consultation processes had been concluded.

Source: Times Live

Zimbabwe seeks R3bn loan from SA

Zimbabwe is seeking R3,2 billion in an overdraft and credit facility from South Africa as the country battles to reverse the effects of a decade-long political and economic crisis, Finance Minister Tendai Biti said yesterday.

A power-sharing government set up last year by bitter rivals President Robert Mugabe, pictured, and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has stabilised an economy ravaged by hyperinflation, which peaked at 500 billion percent in December 2008. But the government says it needs at least R72 billion for reconstruction. Biti told business executives in Harare that the government was looking to negotiate with South Africa's government for financial assistance after agreeing terms for a R509 million credit line with Botswana.

Zimbabwe has so far failed to attract significant funds from Western donors, who are demanding more reforms before providing aid to the unity government.

Source: Sowetan

Chicken to change? Robert Mugabe mocked in pop video

A video by World Cup group Freshlyground challenges Zimbabwe dictator to 'become the hero he used to be' – and step down. Freshlyground claim the song is not an attack on Mugabe, but 'a tongue-in-cheek challenge for him to reflect on things'

Robert Mugabe has never been known for his sense of humour. So you wouldn't want to be the apparatchik at Zimbabwe's State House explaining to the president how a music video that lampoons him as a chicken is threatening to go viral.

A latex puppet of Mugabe, redolent of 80s TV satire Spitting Image, is the star of a slick video by multinational African group Freshlyground, best known for their collaboration with Shakira on the official World Cup song Waka Waka (This Time for Africa).

The song, Chicken to Change, has a bouncy and upbeat feel that belies its serious political message. The video depicts an aloof Mugabe riding in the back of a chauffeur-driven presidential car and reading a newspaper, "Bob's Times", with the front page headline: "Glorious victory for Zanu-PF". It cuts to Freshlyground singing in a shebeen, dancing like chickens and challenging Africa's oldest leader to relinquish his 30-year grip on power.

At first lead singer Zolani Mahola pays tribute to the 86-year-old veteran's part in the struggle for Zimbabwe's independence, describing him as a "supernova". Her lyrics continue: "An iridescent example of honour for the coming generation/ You promised always to open the doors for us/ Indeed it is you and only you who sleeps with the key/ You are chicken to change!"

Mugabe's car comes to a sudden halt and some chicken feathers flutter in front of the windscreen. He looks out at an impoverished couple clutching chickens, but chooses to ignore them and drive on. Chickens have become used as barter trade, including as bus fares, in rural areas of Zimbabwe where cash is scarce. At the end of the video, the Mugabe puppet transforms into a chicken with suit and spectacles intact.

The video also features puppets of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu playing dominoes, polygamous president Jacob Zuma flirting with women, former president Thabo Mbeki and other leading South African figures. The puppets are designed by Jonathan Shapiro, alias Zapiro, a political cartoonist, whose provocative oeuvre includes an image of Zuma poised to rape Lady Justice.

Zapiro told the Times in South Africa: "I've been doing cartoons of Mugabe for years. Working with Freshlyground gave us the opportunity to finally add him to our cast of latex characters. "Although I positively love this puppet, I truly hope we can retire him sooner rather than later." The video was directed by Thierry Cassuto, executive producer of satirical internet show ZA News. It was filmed in Cape Town with the band dressed in Zimbabwean-style 80s fashion.

Freshlyground's seven members are a racial mix hailing from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Sarah Barnett, a spokeswoman for the group, said they "believe in freedom of speech and that people should be able to talk about topics that affect many civilians". She added: "The video is not an attack on Mugabe at all. It is a tongue-in-cheek challenge for him to reflect on things and become the hero he used to be, to consider his actions and surprise us. We are not afraid of his reaction. Why should we be in a democratic world?"

Source: The Guardian

SADC summit mulls Zim land-reform case

Zimbabwe's refusal to obey rulings by a regional court, which rejected President Robert Mugabe's land reforms in favour of a group of white farmers, looks set to win a pass as a summit wraps up Tuesday.

The tribunal of the Southern African Development Community, whose leaders are meeting in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, ruled in 2008 that a group of 78 white farmers could keep their land, saying they had been unfairly targeted because of their race.

Zimbabwe has refused to respect the ruling, even though Harare has signed the treaty creating the court, which has no power to enforce its decisions except through decisions of a summit. "There is no possibility of punitive measures like sanctions," said Dirk Kotze, a political analyst from the University of South Africa. "Expressing their disappointment is the furthest they can go," he said. "Anything further would be punitive and it has to be weighed against other political considerations such as maintaining unity in the government."

Mugabe, who at 86 is Africa's oldest leader with three decades in power, formed a unity government last year with former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, now the prime minister. About 4000 white farmers have been forced off their land in a violent and politically charged campaign launched by Mugabe in 2000. About 400 white farmers remain in Zimbabwe, and the chaotic resettlement process slashed food production, making the nation chronically dependent on foreign handouts.

Zimbabwe insists that the SADC tribunal treaty was never ratified. Critics contend that the signature on the protocol was enough. The leaders are expected to simply punt the issue to their next summit in 2011. "To find a solution, SADC asked its justice ministers to make a report, but it wasn't completed. Any decision will simply be postponed indefinitely," said one official at the summit, speaking on condition of anonymity. "They may just ask the justice ministers to finish their report," another official said as the leaders began meeting.

The report was meant to be presented at the summit, but regional leaders fear the contentious issue could split the bloc, which has struggled to act with a united voice on Zimbabwe, even at the height of electoral violence in 2008. "The rule of law in the SADC countries depends on this," said Kallie Kriel of the South African rights group AfriForum, a mainly white organisation. "If the rulings of SADC institutions are not adhered to, the credibility of SADC itself is at risk."

South Africa's courts have registered the judgement, leading to the seizure of Zimbabwe government properties for auction to help cover the farmers' legal costs. In the summit's final declaration, expected late on Tuesday, the leaders will likely congratulate the progress made by the unity government in stabilising its economy while pushing Harare to end its bickering over key appointments. The political feud has delayed progress on electoral reforms. The power-sharing pact had called for a referendum on a new constitution for last month, but the process has barely gotten off the ground.

SADC has been much tougher on Madagascar, which was suspended from the bloc over the army-backed ouster of president Marc Ravalomanana by the former mayor of the capital, Andry Rajoelina, in March 2009. The leaders were also expected to be briefed on a new agreement signed last week.

Source: Mail & Guardian

White House Party for Africa Leaves Out Leaders

Many of Africa’s leaders have spent part of their summer shuttling between capitals, congratulating one another on 50 years of independence. One capital they will not be visiting together is Washington.

President Obama convened a forum this week to celebrate the 50th anniversaries of 17 African nations, but he did not invite a single African leader to help him do so. Was this, as the African news media and independent commentators see it, an expression of distaste for abusive rulers? Was it an extension of Mr. Obama’s own conviction — already enunciated — that bad government is at the heart of the continent’s woes and that “Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions”?

The State Department denies such an intent behind the forum, noting that American officials meet with African leaders in other settings. Nonetheless, commentators on the continent and in the West note a sharp contrast between this week’s event in Washington and the summer’s other major 50th anniversary observance in a Western capital: Paris.

At a celebration on July 14, Bastille Day in France, President Nicolas Sarkozy was flanked by the leaders of Cameroon and Burkina Faso, Paul Biya and Blaise Compaore, who have been sharply criticized on human rights and governance, while 11 other African heads of state, some with equally dubious records, joined him on the reviewing stand.

There, they surveyed a parade of uniformed troops from African armies, some of which had taken part in large-scale abuses over the previous decade. The Senegalese press, for one, was roundly critical of the event. Not only did it dress down the African leaders for heeding the call of the ex-colonial ruler (the irony of celebrating African independence in the seat of a former colonial power was lost on few observers), but it also criticized Mr. Sarkozy for hosting presidents who mistreat their citizens.

Unlike the French president, Mr. Obama stands no risk of being photographed in the company of rulers accused of flouting democracy and human rights. By contrast, he summoned 115 under-35s from civil society, journalism and business to a “President’s Forum With Young African Leaders” this week to help him in “looking forward,” as a State Department official put it. “We’ve got to look for the next generation of leaders,” said Bruce Wharton, deputy assistant secretary for public diplomacy.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama bluntly addressed issues of corruption and press freedom in speaking to the group at the White House, saying that “sometimes the older leaders get into old habits, and those old habits are hard to break.” When asked about President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Mr. Obama told the young people at the forum, “I’ll be honest with you — I’m heartbroken when I see what’s happened in Zimbabwe. I think Mugabe is an example of a leader who came in as a liberation fighter and — I’m just going to be very blunt — I do not see him serving his people well. And the abuses, the human rights abuses, the violence that’s been perpetrated against opposition leaders I think is terrible.”

African news organizations read the president’s forum as having more to do with the current generation of leaders than with those he invited, seeing it as a rebuke to the older generation. “50th Anniversary of African Independences: Barack Obama snubs the African dictators,” read a headline in the Cameroonian newspaper Le Messager. Mr. Obama is giving a “kick in the nose to African leaders, whom he seems to be royally snubbing,” said the Fasozine of Burkina Faso.

Here in Senegal, the newspaper Walfadjri ran a headline saying, “Obama snubs Wade and company and unrolls the red carpet for civil society,” referring to President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal. So desirable is the association with Mr. Obama that Mr. Wade’s government once put a notice on the front page of a local newspaper saying merely that the Senegalese president had spoken with the American president on the telephone, without divulging the conversation’s contents. “The American president is extremely sensitive on the subject of democracy,” said another Senegalese paper, Kotch. “Proof: he’s going to celebrate the 50th anniversaries of African nations without inviting a single head of state.”

Mr. Obama has made an overt pitch for the more widespread diffusion of democracy on the continent before, a gesture often recalled in the African media. In a speech to the Ghanaian Parliament in July 2009, the president said it was a “fundamental truth” that “development depends on good governance. That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long.” Mr. Obama added that it was up to Africans themselves to add this “ingredient.”

Mr. Obama’s choice has been met with frosty silence, mostly, in African presidential palaces. But it clearly has the potential to sting. Governments lacking internal legitimacy on the continent often derive their credibility from international recognition, from going to conferences, and being met and greeted by other heads of state, as scholars are increasingly pointing out. “International recognition endows African state actors with a domestic power of command,” wrote Pierre Englebert, a professor of politics at Pomona College, in his recent book “Africa: Unity, Sovereignty & Sorrow.”

The absence of presidents and their retinues at the Washington gathering is thus seen as no accident. “By refusing to invite them, and welcoming them in Washington, Obama is clearly telling them, ‘If you want to engage with us, you have to behave,’ ” said Mamadou Diouf, director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University. “It’s a way of questioning the choice made by Sarkozy.” Other analysts agreed. “You take one look at Sarkozy and his buddies, that’s not the picture Obama wants to convey,” said J. Stephen Morrison, an Africa expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

A French Foreign Ministry official rejected the widespread criticism of Mr. Sarkozy, calling it “a sterile polemic.” “The two initiatives are complementary,” the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said of the two approaches taken by Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Obama. “A country can’t be reduced just to its leaders and civil society. For a democracy to function, you need both.”

As for the general populace, though, Mr. Obama’s choice has been “saluted by African public opinion,” said a Senegalese opposition leader, Abdoulaye Bathily, “because the emerging forces are not to be found in the leadership, but in the civil society movement.” Mr. Bathily added: “The leaders have failed the African people.”

Source: New York Times

'Don't be too hard on Selebi'

People shouldn’t be too hard on Jackie Selebi. He is actually just a metaphor of what has become of the ANC.

Just as tragic as it is that a man with such a proud history in the struggle for freedom and democracy became a cheap braggart, a charlatan and a crook, so is it heart-breaking that the movement of Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela has become a party dominated by greed, a lust for personal power, corruption and petty factionalism. Cynics, Afro-pessimists and right wingers say this was to be expected: most of the other liberation movements on our continent went the same way, Zanu-PF and the MPLA of Angola being prime examples.

I did not expect it. I am shocked every day at new manifestations of the rot in our ruling party. Yes, there were always elements in the ANC during the exile years whom one wouldn’t exactly call democrats and human rights activists. They fought for power, not democracy. But the decent men and women, people who really cared about human dignity and freedom, always dominated the ANC. Most of the best sons and daughters of our country during the last half century were products of the ANC.

This was why I thought our liberation movement would be different. I was wrong. Those decent people, those progressive leaders with whom I associated myself politically for many years, have disappeared into the quicksands of power and greed. The party is now dominated by cheap, lying populists who enrich themselves at the expense of the poor; by opportunists pushing their own interests; by Stalinists and reactionaries. The harder these types try to drive our country towards a bankrupt dictatorship, the more credibility some of the conspiracy theories are getting. Such as: the reason why the ANC is manipulating the judiciary and the National Prosecuting Authority and why it is now pushing two draconian measures to severely limit press freedom, is to make it possible for them to steal more from the people and to hide their own scandals.

Even the theory that the ANC is deliberately sabotaging land reform and redistribution is gaining credibility: they want to pull a Robert Mugabe when it’s popularity among the masses is waning; blame the whites as the common enemy and use land as an emotive issue to unite blacks behind them. I have no doubt in my mind that those ANC leaders who are pushing the proposals for a statutory media tribunal do not believe for one moment that it would improve our newspapers one iota. They know, as we should all know, that it’s only result will be an end to the free flow of information to the voters.

I have been waiting in vain for my comrades of yesteryear to stand up and stop this assault on our democracy. Evil happens when good men remain silent. The vast majority of South Africans have proved that they deserve better than the present leadership of the ANC. But when will this majority start realising that it is their democratic right to show this dangerous clique the red card?

Source: News 24: Max du Preez