Zimbabwe Weekly update – week ending Tuesday 8 June 2010

Posted by ZDN on June 8, 2010

Politics

Discussions on the critical South African negotiators’ report aimed at moving Zimbabwe out of the current political deadlock were again put on the backburner pending Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara’s return from Ghana.

Mediation by the South African facilitation team under President Jacob Zuma’s leadership is dependent on the principals discussing their negotiators’ report, compiled in April.

Police arrived at the home of Iain Kay, Marondera Central MP with a search warrant for items including cocaine, smuggled goods and unlicenced firearms, as well as unregistered and expired drugs. The medicines in his possession were confiscated and he was detained at Harare Central Police station, although the church which donated the medicines has all the necessary clearance and documentation. Kay, who has previously been held on trumped up charges, was granted bail of US$500 Tuesday and had to surrender his passport.

Zimbabwe’s political climate has not changed significantly for the international community to remove targeted sanctions against President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF party top brass, the Zimbabwe Europe Network (ZEN) has said.

Governance

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) is being investigated by the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) for allegedly importing 75 vehicles without paying duty. Some of the unmarked vehicles, imported through Imperial Motors, were allegedly used in Zanu PF’s terror campaign during the 2008 elections.

Imperial Motors is a supplier of vehicles to government departments including State House, the President’s Office, the army, police and the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.

Media

NewsDay, the first independent daily newspaper to hit the streets since authorities forced the Daily News to close in 2003, was officially launched Monday by Alpha Media. This milestone was marred Friday when police detained staff, vendors and a truck laden with promotional copies. They were released three hours later.

Workers at the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) are said to be threatening strike action after accusing management of looting licence fees and splashing out on luxury cars, while failing to pay salaries on time.

Economy

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is considering introducing a staff-monitored programme (MTP) for Zimbabwe as it warns of “debt distress”. Zimbabwe is burdened with arrears of more than US$4.5 billion.

The MDC expressed concern regarding the continued power cuts that have virtually brought business to a standstill across the country. It said the disruptions by ZESA were a threat to industry and that the load-shedding schedules were shambolic.

Business

Indigenisation and property rights issues have become the centre of Zimbabwe and Botswana’s Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA) negotiations that are supposed to result in a deal by year-end. Negotiations between the two countries stalled seven years ago following concern over Zimbabwe’s land reform programme. The Botswana government and investors are seeking clarity on the controversial indigenisation regulations.

Attorney-General Johannes Tomana said last week that Zimbabwe’s top business moguls, Mutumwa Mawere, James Makamba and John Moxon, could still faced arrest upon returning home even after they were despecified by authorities. He said the despecification did not absolve them of charges that could still arise from allegations of externalisation of foreign currency and defrauding government.

Kingdom Bank founder Nigel Chanakira has failed to pay US$22,5 million to Meikles Ltd in order to finalise the demerger of Kingdom Meikles Africa Ltd, prolonging one of the most bitterly fought corporate fights, a top Meikles Ltd official last week. As a result, KFHL would remain a “subsidiary” of Meikles Ltd.

Zambezi Airlines have introduced an airline in Zimbabwe to fly the Harare- Johannesburg route, the airline said Friday.

Mining/Diamonds

Kimberley Process (KP) Civil Society Coalition and the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) on Friday demanded the release of diamond activist, Farai Magawu, director of the Centre for Research and Development (CRD), who was forced into hiding and then arrested by police Thursday.

The groups also demanded that KP monitor for Zimbabwe Abbey Chikane suspend all monitoring activities in the country until the government can re-assure diamond activists that their work will be carried out without any hindrance.

Chikane told journalists in Harare after meeting Parliamentarians on 27 May: “Zimbabwe is on track to meet the KP requirements. I am yet to produce my report to the KP in which I will make the recommendations for it (Zimbabwe) to start trading in rough diamonds.”

The police raid on CRD’s office followed Farai Maguwu’s meeting with Chikane, and CRD’s announcement that 2 000 carats per day were being smuggled from the Marange fields.

A leaked document compiled by the police for Joint Operations Command (JOC) is also said to be behind the crackdown on the CRD, the most important civil society organisation monitoring human rights abuses at the diamond fields.

On Monday, a Mutare Magistrate freed Maguwu’s younger brother, Lisben, on US$20 bail. Lisben had been charged with obstructing the course of justice after he allegedly tried to prevent the police from arresting his brother. Lisben was remanded out of custody to June 14.

Rio Tinto’s diamond unit in Zimbabwe says it has begun work on a US$300m expansion programme to raise output six-fold. Neils Kristensen, head of Murowa, the 300,000-carat-per-year diamond mine in southern Zimbabwe, said at a weekend mining conference the firm had begun preparatory work for the planned expansion.

President Robert Mugabe told the conference Friday his government would not expropriate mines and said he realised the need to promote the industry’s growth when applying the law.

Murowa is also talking to government about the state’s decision last week to ban diamond sales, including from Murowa, until diamonds from the controversial Marange fields are certified by global industry regulators.

Aim-listed resources investment company Sable Mining said Tuesday it would acquire an 80 percent interest in Monaf Investments, which holds the Lubu coal concession in the Bulawayo mining district.

Parliamentary mines committee member Moses Mare said workers at Shabanie Mashaba Mines have not been paid in more than a year although managers receive hefty salaries while the mining operation – seized several years ago from businessman Mutumwa Mawere – grinds to a halt.

Reports indicate some of the mine shafts have been flooded with water, submerging machinery worth billions. Zimbabwe’s formal mining sector employs some 45,000, contributes around 50 percent of exports, and comprises nearly 20 percent of GDP.

Land/Agribusiness

Charles Taffs, the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) Vice President said last week that the eviction of white farmers and their workers had intensified over the past 10 days, further threatening Zimbabwe’s fragile food security.

He warned that Zimbabwe will produce less than 10,000 tonnes of wheat –a third of national requirements — because of lack of security of tenure caused by evictions and electricity blackouts.

Aid agency officials report that Zimbabwe is appealing for about a million tons of food aid this year.

Last week in Matabeleland North, police went to Felton farm, broke into the house where Inyathi farmer Mike Huckle’s staff live and told them they had one hour to vacate the farm. Huckle, a South African resident, is theoretically protected by the recently ratified bilateral investment promotion and protection agreement (BIPPA).

Also last week, police and four impatient beneficiaries switched off the electricity on Highfields Farm in the Nyamandhlovu district, cutting off water for thousands of chickens, hundreds of head of cattle and sheep in pens, the vast majority of them belonging to settlers. Additionally 35 settler homesteads were also rendered waterless. The SPCA was called in to assist.

Evicted Shamva farmers Gary and Jane Sharp won a court case Wednesday allowing them to return to their farm to collect their belongings. However, as Mrs Sharp walked out of the court she was forced into a police van and held at Shamva police station overnight.

Last week a group of between 30 and 50 Zanu PF youths spent the day trashing and looting the homestead of Mrs Helen Newmarch, a widow who owns a small farm close to Marondera.

The SADC Tribunal in Windhoek sat again on Tuesday 1 June to consider an application to hold the Government of Zimbabwe in contempt of the SADC Tribunal and to obtain an order to refer the “matter” urgently to the SADC Summit. The Zimbabwean government boycotted the hearing and judgement was reserved.

The power-sharing government has delayed an audit of the country’s controversial land reforms due to funding problems, Lands Minister Herbert Murerwa said Thursday.

Zimbabwe’s sugar output fell 13 percent to 259,000 tonnes during the season ended March 2010 due to low cane yields caused by the limited and delayed application of fertilisers and herbicides. Sugar production has remained below 300,000 tonnes for the past decade following the disruption of commercial agriculture.

New Constitution

Reports have been received country-wide that Zanu PF has stepped up its intimidation tactics ahead of the constitution making process scheduled for next month.

Last week a high-level undercover delegation was sent into Epworth, a Harare shantytown, by the Union for Sustainable Democracy. The delegation was shocked by repeated accounts of how Zanu PF thugs are threatening to mete out violence on anyone who defies their formula for the constitution-making process.

Elections

President Mugabe has lost the confidence of women, according to a recent poll that projects he will win only 9 per cent of their votes in a future election.

The poll, conducted by the International Centre for Transitional Justice, IDASA, the Research and Advocacy Unit and the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe, predicts that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai would win 51 percent and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara just 3 percent.

Speaking in the Ghanaian capital Accra where he was attending a Ghana-Zimbabwe business summit, Mutambara said his country would not rush into holding fresh elections, contradicting indications by his coalition partners that the next ballot would be held in 2011.

Interviewed last week, Tsvangirai said elections would be held after the constitutional reform process. “You cannot talk about a date for the elections when the constitutional reform process has not been carried out,” he stressed.

The MDC-T MP for Mabvuku/Tafara, Shepherd Madamombe, has died, bringing to 15 the number of vacant Senate and House of Assembly seats. The constitution requires that a by-election be held within 90 days of a parliamentary seat falling vacant, but shortages of money and a gentlemen’s agreement by coalition government parties have resulted in a moratorium on by-elections.

Political Violence

UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston last week said countries with a track record of election violence should draw up plans for dealing with future violence, including creating non-partisan taskforces to probe murders and other poll-related crimes. Zimbabwe was one of eight countries named.

Human rights violations rose five percent in April, the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) reports: 959 cases were recorded compared to the 908 for March. The abuses included assault, intimidation, unlawful detention, harassment, torture and murder.

Female Zanu PF youths who were trained to terrorise suspected MDC supporters in the run up to 2008 presidential elections are once again threatening MDC supporters and activists who survived their brutal beatings.

Restoration of Human Rights (ROHR) Zimbabwe reports that outbreaks of violence targeted against vulnerable victims of political violence across the country has reached intolerable levels. ROHR has expressed outrage at attempts by the Ministry of Home Affairs to ban peaceful protests calling for an end to Zanu PF led violence.

The MDC has published additional names of perpetrators of violence on their ‘roll of shame’ list, including a colonel in the army who is accused of leading Zanu PF youths in murdering and raping MDC activists in the Buhera district.

Legal

One of Africa’s largest banks, Standard Bank, was right to close the accounts of John Bredenkamp, one of Zimbabwe’s richest businessmen, because of his links to President Mugabe, South Africa’s Supreme Court has ruled.

Freelance journalist Stanley Gama last week appeared in court, together with four other journalists from The Standard newspaper, as state witnesses in the criminal defamation case against the Harare Mayor and eight councillors. The Mayor and councillors are alleged to have defamed businessman Philip Chiyangwa when a 54-page report compiled by the council accused Chiyangwa of corruption.

Former legislator Abednico Bhebhe has dragged the country’s co-Home Affairs Ministers to court after police in Nkayi district barred him from holding a campaign rally in his former constituency Wednesday.

Health

By the end of Day 7 of the World Health Organisation’s Measles Immunisation and Child Health Days Campaign for 2010, a total of 3,580,441 children had received measles vaccination and 1,219,419 had been given vitamin supplements.

Health and Child Welfare Minister Dr Henry Madzorera has dismissed reports that health institutions are dispensing expired malaria drugs and rapid diagnostic kits.

Education

Tensions between students and college authorities countrywide are running high over exorbitant tuition and exam fees, which students say they cannot afford to pay. With those too poor blocked from writing exams, clashes are being reported at different colleges and universities.

Wildlife

As Lake Kariba rises after record seasonal rains in central Africa, animals are being stranded on an island that has shrunk to about one-third of its original size.

At least 200 animals are in immediate danger of starvation and funds are being raised by conservationists, including the SAVE Foundation of Australia, to take hay bales and food blocks to those which remain on the island.

Sport

More than 50,000 jubilant fans packed the National Sports stadium in Harare Wednesday to watch five times world champions Brazil take on the Warriors. Brazil beat Zimbabwe 3-0 in this warm-up match ahead of the World Cup which begins in South Africa on June 11.

Cara Black was knocked out in the third round of the women’s doubles at the French Tennis Open, the first time the Zimbabwean has failed to make into the quarter finals of the grand slam event since 2005.

The Good News

Operation Hope, a solution to combat one of the major causes of climate change, has been named the winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. At its core the organisation’s winning strategy transforms parched and degraded Zimbabwe grasslands and savannahs into lush pastures with ponds and flowing streams, even during periods of drought. Operation Hope was awarded US$100,000 to further develop its work at a ceremony last week in Washington DC.