Robert Mugabe – Page 4

Land of the dead voters

Even before this week’s vote in Zimbabwe, it seems clear that President Robert Mugabe will remain in power. Voter lists have been manipulated, critics are being intimidated and the opposition is divided.

Even after a week’s search, there are no 100-year-olds to be found in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital. There isn’t even anyone who knows a centenarian. Still, there ought to be plenty of very old people in Zimbabwe, because exactly 116,195 of its 13 million citizens have supposedly reached this biblical age. If that were the case, Zimbabwe would be home to nine times as many centenarians as Germany.

“It’s easy to explain,” McDonald Lewanika says wryly: “These people don’t exist. They are phantom voters.” Lewanika is the director of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, an alliance of regime critics. “The voter list is bogus. I’m afraid the result is already clear: The old man will win again.”

The “old man” is Robert Mugabe, 89, president of Zimbabwe for the last 33 years, since Lewanika was born. During this time, his regime has practically ruined the country, and yet he has been repeatedly re-elected, with completely implausible election outcomes. Through a series of manipulations, Mugabe’s power machine has also made sure that this week’s presidential and parliamentary elections are decided in advance.

Voter List Irregularities

The large number of 100-year-olds is just one of many oddities. According to the voter lists, 63 districts have more voters than residents. And in the rural strongholds of Mugabe’s party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), there was a miraculous increase in eligible voters, while their numbers were corrected downward in urban areas where, coincidentally, many supporters of the main opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) live. More than a million people on the voter lists are either dead or have moved away. And 1.9 million citizens under 30 were not even included on the rolls, according to experts with the Research and Advocacy Unit, which analyzed the voter lists. Only those whose names appear on the lists are allowed to vote.

The remaining possible supporters of the opposition are intimidated to ensure that they vote for Zanu-PF. The regime has reportedly distributed 50,000 members of party militias across the country. Dissidents are systematically persecuted, locked up and tortured. In June, a former Zanu-PF cabinet minister who had exposed senior politicians’ involvement in diamond deals was killed in a mysterious traffic accident.

Glen View on the outskirts of Harare is a densely populated, dilapidated neighborhood, with potholed dirt roads, mountains of garbage and wrecked cars by the roadside. The majority of Glen View’s impoverished residents sympathize with the opposition.

A woman waits by the side of the road. She wears a broad-rimmed straw hat to avoid being recognized. It’s dangerous to be seen with white foreigners. She calls herself an activist fighting for democracy, but for security reasons she wants to remain anonymous. “In the 2008 election campaign, Mugabe’s gangs of thugs set houses on fire and beat up people wearing red clothing, the color of the MDC,” the woman says. “We haven’t forgotten that.” Today the Big Man, as he is called here, doesn’t need to resort to brute violence. It’s enough, she says, for his people to go from door to door and hold up matches. “Glen View is practically paralyzed. People are afraid.”

The live broadcast of a campaign event is on the TV screen in a beer pub in Glen View. Mugabe talks and talks, speaking for an entire two hours. He clings to the podium, mumbles, becomes muddled and gets the African Union confused with the European Union. He faces a sea of yellowish-green caps and T-shirts, either real supporters or people who were bussed in to cheer the president, the “God-chosen leader for Zimbabwe,” as Mugabe’s wife Grace calls him.

The geriatric dictator seems exhausted and fragile. He has advanced-stage prostate cancer and has reportedly had two or three mild strokes recently. But his will to stay in power keeps him going. He wants to bring in the harvest of fear and show the world, once again, that he can win.

‘The Kiss of Death’

Mugabe is at his best when he announces his rescue plan for the ailing country. He wants to “indigenize” — that is, expropriate — 1,138 foreign companies and turn them over to the majority control of local businesspeople, cleaning up the government’s budget in the process. “That would be the next pilferage after the catastrophic land reform,” says a market expert who prefers to remain anonymous. “It would be the kiss of death for Zimbabwe.”

The country’s rapid decline began with the land grab 13 years ago, when 4,000 white farmers were expropriated and driven out. Since then Zimbabwe, once a breadbasket, has had to import corn. In addition, some 1.5 million Zimbabweans would starve without the food provided by international aid organizations. Three million have emigrated to South Africa, in the search for bread and work.

After the so-called agrarian revolution, the economy has declined by as much as 40 percent a year, with unemployment topping 90 percent. In 2009, the currency collapsed and was replaced with the US dollar, after inflation had reached the unimaginable figure of 60 billion percent.

Mugabe liberated his country in its struggle against British colonial rule — and then he turned it into a poorhouse. But in his eyes, others are always to blame for Zimbabwe’s troubles: the British, neo-imperialists, whites, the West with its sanctions.

Ironically, the man charged with “indigenizing” the economy is named Saviour Kasukuwere, a giant of a man, as heavy as a prize fighter. His supporters call him “Tyson.” Kasukuwere, 42, the youngest minister in Zanu-PF, has his office on the 20th floor of a high-rise building in downtown Harare. It’s a large office with flashy leather sofas and a view of the city.

Is it possible that party leaders are trying to line their pockets with the help of expropriations? That’s complete nonsense, Kasukuwere grumbles. “It’s about fighting poverty. We are liberating ourselves from economic apartheid.” He sounds like Mugabe, which is probably one reason he is mentioned as a possible successor. There are rumors that the president told a politician friend from Zambia that he intends to step down shortly after winning the next election.

Western Hopes for Peaceful Election

“The preparation for these elections was much too short, and the requirements under the new constitution were not met,” says a Western diplomat. “We just hope that the election is peaceful. And that the military doesn’t stage a coup if the wrong outcome is achieved.” Representatives of the United States and the European Union have already announced their intention to lift the remaining sanctions against the regime if the election remains peaceful.

But that is by no means certain. The majority of the people no longer believe Mugabe’s bluster. In the last presidential election, in 2008, he lost the first round against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, 61. To secure a Mugabe victory in the runoff election, the police, military and party militias terrorized the population, and more than 200 people were killed.

Neutral election observers are not allowed. Only the envoys of friendly nations are permitted to monitor the vote. “Once again, the elections are neither free nor fair. And, once again, Mugabe will steal victory,” predicts Blessing Vava, 30, one of the many bloggers who, for lack of an independent press, are gaining more and more supporters.

The best known of them is “Baba Jukwa,” who discovers new machinations on the part of Zanu-PF every day and has 286,000 supporters on Facebook. Baba Jukwa is a pseudonym, and no one knows who is behind the site. But the whistleblower’s revelations are often correct. So correct, in fact, that Mugabe has promised a reward of $300,000 (€226,000) for his exposure.

“Many young people mistrust the political class and won’t vote for the MDC, either,” says Vava. “They are disappointed in Tsvangirai. Some even accuse him of being in bed with Mugabe.”

Since 2009, MDC leader Tsvangirai has been prime minister in a government brokered by South Africa. But Mugabe still controls the police, military, intelligence services, judiciary and the media. Tsvangirai, the pro-forma premier and opposition leader in one, tends to make headlines because of his womanizing activities. Some of his fellow party members have become just as corrupt as the Zanu-PF fat cats, driving flashy official cars and living in attractive villas. The opposition is deeply divided and has failed to come up with a shared candidate.

In the Book Café in Harare, where artists, intellectuals and students meet, no one takes the politicians seriously anymore. Most of the patrons are under 30, part of a new, skeptical generation that gets its information from the Internet and sees no future in its country.

Three performers are doing a parody of the news broadcast by ZBC, the propagandist government broadcaster, on the stage at the café. One actor is playing a journalist, who is reporting from a village and holds up a sealed ballot box, already stuffed with 50,000 ballots before the election day. “Respect our ancestors!” says the host, and the people in the audience laugh. They know all about the many dead people on the voter lists. – spiegel.de

Counting underway in knife-edge Zimbabwe election

Vote counting was underway in Zimbabwe’s tightly fought election Wednesday, amid high turnout and accusations of rigging by President Robert Mugabe’s allies who wish to extend his 33-year rule.

The 89-year-old Mugabe is Africa’s oldest leader and is running for office for the seventh and perhaps final time.

His rival Morgan Tsvangirai hopes the election will usher in a new era for the troubled southern African nation.

Organisers reported high turnout across the country for the first election since the violent polls of 2008, that led to an uneasy power-sharing government between the two men.

There were no reports of widespread violence this time round, despite the fierce rhetoric of the campaign.

Police said officers in Harare fired warning shots in the air and arrested 10 soldiers who tried to jump the queue to vote.

At many stations voters started queueing before sunrise in the winter cold hours before polls opened. The lines continued well into the evening, with many marking their ballots by candle light.

Mugabe voted before lunchtime in a Harare suburb, where he insisted the poll would reflect the will of the people.

“I am sure people will vote freely and fairly, there is no pressure being exerted on anyone,” he said.

The one-time teacher came to prominence as a hero of Africa’s liberation movement, guiding Zimbabwe to independence from Britain and white minority rule.

But his military-backed rule has been marked by a series of violent crackdowns, economic crises and suspect elections that have brought international sanctions and made him a pariah in the West.

On Tuesday Mugabe vowed to step down if Tsvangirai was the victor. “If you lose you must surrender,” he said.

Tsvangirai, the current prime minister, said that promise should be taken “with a pinch of salt”.

Tsvangirai won the first round of voting in 2008, but was forced out of the race after 200 of his supporters were killed and thousands more injured in suspected state-backed attacks.

But the 61-year-old former union boss has repeatedly voiced concerns that the election is being rigged.

Tsvangirai’s party on Wednesday listed a battery of alleged irregularities.

Finance Minister Tendai Biti, a senior member of Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, said the names of thousands of voters were missing from the electoral roll.

Biti, speaking after a meeting with the electoral commission, added: “They are admitting that there’s still two million people who are dead on the voters’ roll, but they said ‘because they’re dead, they can’t vote’.”

The MDC has handed its evidence to observers from the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

Since no Western groups were allowed to cover the presidential and parliamentary poll, the SADC’s account will be closely watched.

The African Union, which has been accused of whitewashing problems in the run up to the vote, said initial reports indicated it was “peaceful, orderly, free and fair”.

In Washington, US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf also said that early signs indicated a “peaceful environment” — but that it was too soon to say if the election had been fair.

“We’ve made clear to the government of Zimbabwe and the region that further reductions in our sanctions will only occur if these next elections are credible, transparent and reflect the will of the Zimbabwean people,” she told reporters.

Tsvangirai cut a confident figure as he cast his own ballot, predicting his MDC would win “quite resoundingly”.

“This is a very historic moment for all of us,” he said. It is the time to “complete the change”.

Turnout appeared to be particularly brisk in the urban areas where Tsvangirai has enjoyed his strongest support, and which he must retain to stand any chance of victory.

But some analysts cautioned against interpreting the high urban turnout as a sign Tsvangirai would sweep the election.

“This election is going to be decided in the rural areas,” where two thirds of Zimbabweans live and where Mugabe enjoys strong support, said Michael Bratton, founder of polling organisation Afrobarometer.

Police warned on Wednesday that anyone trying to release unofficial results ahead of the official figures risked being arrested.

Already Sunday, Mugabe had threatened to arrest Tsvangirai if he tried to declare an early victory.

Some 6.4 million people, around half of the population, are eligible to vote. A candidate needs 50 percent of the vote to avoid a run-off.

The sharp-tongued Mugabe has focused his campaign on attacking homosexuals and on promises to widen the redistribution of wealth to poor black Zimbabweans.

As the economy recovers from a crisis that saw mass unemployment and galloping inflation, Mugabe loyalists insist their hero is “tried and tested”.

Tsvangirai hopes his plans to lure back foreign investors, create a million jobs in five years and improve public services will deliver a long-awaited victory.

The final results are expected within five days. – AFP

Malema, EFF backs Zanu-PF

Newly formed South African political party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) yesterday called on Zimbabweans to vote overwhelmingly for Zanu-PF in the July 31 harmonised elections to protect the gains of the war of liberation.The EFF party is led by former ANC youth league leader Julius Malema.

“The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) calls upon the revolutionary people of Zimbabwe to defend the Zimbabwean revolution by voting for Zanu-PF and retaining comrade Robert Mugabe as the President of that liberated nation,” the party said in a statement.

“The gains of the Zimbabwean revolution must be defended.

“These gains find concrete expression in the historic and unparalleled land redistribution programme that took land from 4 000 white settler farmers who owed 80 percent of Zimbabwean land, and redistributed it to more than 274 000 Zimbabweans! It is your victory. Defend it by any means necessary!”

The EFF said Zimbabweans stood to benefit economically by retaining a Zanu-PF government which has over the years implemented pro-poor policies aimed at uplifting the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans.

The party saluted Zimbabweans for enduring and surviving a brutal and illegal economic sanctions embargo imposed by the West as punishment for returning the stolen land to its rightful owners.

“The people of Zimbabwe have been punished as a strategy to separate the people from the revolutionary leadership of Zanu-PF and leadership of President Mugabe. We say do not allow the schemes of the enemies of Africa to succeed. Vote for liberation! Vote Zanu-PF!

“We implore the people Zimbabwe to realise that the Zimbabwean revolution is still under massive attacks and new plots are being hatched and new schemes cooked to reverse the gains you have made.

“The demonisation of Zanu-PF and comrade Mugabe is part of the plot to divide the nation for re-colonisation,” it said.

The EFF also called on Zanu-PF to continue implementing the indigenisation programme in order to complete the economic emancipation of the black majority. – The Herald

Zimbabwe’s power-sharing government comes to an end

by Susan Njanji

Whatever the result of Zimbabwe’s election Wednesday one thing is for sure: four years of uneasy power-sharing between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai will end.

As Zimbabweans streamed to the polls, the unity government partners sighed with relief at the close of their “painful”, “disappointing” union.

The forced marriage was arranged by the international community to avoid further violence in the wake of suspect and blood-soaked 2008 elections.

Tsvangirai won the first round, but was forced to drop out of the second round amid the killing of 200 of his supporters.

He then became prime minister as a reluctant partner in the unity government alongside Mugabe, the former guerrilla who has ruled since independence from Britain.

While the power-sharing deal which took effect in 2009 prevented full-scale conflict, critics today deplore its failure to achieve much-needed democratic reforms and kickstart the economy.

“It has been a major disappointment,” Rugare Gumbo, spokesman for Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, told AFP.

But communications minister Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for Tzvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said the government had achieved some victories.

“It has been difficult, difficult, painful but useful for the people of Zimbabwe. People’s lives have improved,” he said. “We are excited that we are coming out of the blast furnace.”

The arrangement was aimed at creating a “genuine, viable, permanent, sustainable” solution to the crisis.

But in its early days, Mugabe could not hide his discomfort.

“I feel awkward in a thing like that, absolutely awkward,” he told mediator President Jacob Zuma of South Africa at the time.

Ex-finance minister Simba Makoni, who was not part of the unity deal, branded the Mugabe-Tsvangirai government “pathetic” and “dismal”.

And analysts said the deal had failed to set a democratic framework for fresh elections.

Days before Wednesday vote, the country was “still grappling with issues of reforms, the timing of elections, issues of sporadic violence and intimidation,” said Trevor Maisiri, a researcher with the International Crisis Group.

“It has not fully served its primary purpose because the idea was to create a transitional mechanism that would lead to a credible election,” he said.

Initially the unity government was to last just two years but it had to be extended as delays plagued the formulation of a new constitution that would lay the basis for credible polls this time around.

The MDC “regrets, definitely that quite a number of reforms did not move as we had wanted,” said Chamisa, highlighting a lack of revisions of the media and security sector.

Civic rights coalition Sokwanele, which kept an eye on the government’s performance, traced 22,482 violations of the agreement — 90 percent by ZANU-PF.

The rivals still strongly disagree on the economy, and bitterly blame each other for Zimbabwe’s slow recovery.

Unemployment still hovers on the wrong side of 50 percent while millions of people are still economic refugees in neighbouring countries.

Once a net food exporter known as Africa’s breadbasket, Zimbabwe’s reformed agricultural sector is yet to produce enough to feed the country.

“There were many programmes that we were going to carry out, but our colleagues acted like they were an opposition party instead of carrying themselves as part of the government,” the ZANU-PF’s Gumbo claimed.

The MDC said it opposed “ill-conceived” black economic empowerment schemes that forced foreign companies to cede a majority of their shares, saying it drove away investors.

But some say the power-sharing agreement was not all bad.

The government rescued the moribund economy by abandoning the Zimbabwean dollar, ending rampant inflation that peaked at 231 million percent.

Politicians who previously had not seen eye-to-eye suddenly were forced to run the country together, which may explain the peaceful run-up to Wednesday’s polls.

Just being able to talk to each other in parliament or in cabinet “has really been helpful,” said Gumbo.

The coalition “brought about some sanity, peace and stability. We are not fighting as we used to. Even campaigning is being done in a peaceful, orderly manner,” he said.

Chamisa also said the unity government was a healthy exercise.

“The past four years showed that another Zimbabwe is possible. A Zimbabwe where we can realise, appreciate and celebrate the cross-pollination of ideas,” he said.

Mugabe’s ban on Western poll observers

President Robert Mugabe on Thursday reiterated the Zimbabwe government’s position to bar Western observers from general elections set for Wednesday, insisting that only officials from friendly nations would be allowed to monitor the polls.

The veteran Zimbabwean leader said the United States, United Kingdom and other Western countries would never be invited to observe elections in Zimbabwe until they remove economic sanctions against top Harare officials.

“Our position is very clear. We will never allow the Americans and the British to come and observe our elections as long as their sanctions continue to burden our people,” he told supporters during a campaign rally in Chinhoyi farming town, about 100km northwest of Harare.

Zimbabwe has since 2002 refused to allow Western observers to witness the country’s general elections, accusing them of bias in favour of the opposition.

The Zimbabwe government however, said it has no problems welcoming election observers from the United Nations, Asia, the Southern African Development Community, the African Union and the BRICS group of countries comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Mugabe also said Thursday that the US and UK had no moral ground to lecture Zimbabwe on democracy when their own histories are tainted with cases of human rights abuses.

The US said earlier this week that it was concerned about the conditions prevailing in Zimbabwe ahead of general elections set for July 31.

A State Department spokesperson said Washington was wary about lack of transparency in electoral preparations and continued partisan behaviour by security organs, particularly the army and police. – APA

‘Zimbabweans are running SA economy’

Taking on the Superpower — Fighting the election in pink

President Robert Mugabe is on the campaign trail, with emigration and gay-bashing speeches.

He said on Tuesday Zimbabweans were “literally running” the South African economy, adding however that he was not to blame for the high number of citizens who had fled the country, a Business Day report said.

“You have your country; you fought for it, why are you running away?”

Mugabe lambasted South Africa’s education system and its support for gay rights addressing a rally in Mutare ahead of the elections.

Mugabe said he was ashamed of the high number of Zimbabweans in SA, who took most of the jobs in hotels and other business.

“We feel ashamed of the influx of Zimbabweans in South Africa. If you go to their hotels, there are Zimbabweans all over. The same applies to other businesses. Zimbabweans are literally running the South African economy. South Africans end up attacking Zimbabweans because there are just too many in that country,” Mugabe said.

“…The blame of their migration is heaped on Mugabe. People say they are running away from Mugabe and I am now their passport to enter foreign lands like Britain and South Africa.

“Even Mrs [Janet] Banana [wife of the first president of Zimbabwe], when she went to the UK she said she was running away from Mugabe’s oppression, yet she wanted to settle with her children there. How evil am I to oppress an old lady like Mrs Banana?”

Mugabe also condemned SA for upholding gay rights. “We are unlike South Africa, which upholds gay rights. We will deal with them here. Gay rights are not human rights. I am despised in some parts of the world because I said gays and lesbians are worse than pigs and dogs because these animals know their mates. We cannot allow our children to be worse than wild animals,” he said.

Mugabe, according to Herald Online attacked US President Barack Obama for advocating homosexuality.

“Then we have this American president, Obama, born of an African father, who is saying we will not give you aid if you don’t embrace homosexuality,” Mugabe said.

“We ask, was he born out of homosexuality? We need continuity in our race, and that comes from the woman, and no to homosexuality. John and John, no; Maria and Maria, no.”

Mugabe praised his country’s education system.

“We have built schools, our children are educated. We are being admired that we have the best literacy rate in Africa at 91%.”

Zimbabwe election is ‘a dog’s breakfast’: finance minister

Scenes from Zimbabwe's previous election — Scenes from Zimbabwe’s previous election

Zimbabwe’s finance ministry said it needs to resolve a shortfall of about $85 million needed for crucial national elections just three weeks away, as a month-long chaotic voter registration effort drew to a close Tuesday.

Tendai Biti, the outspoken finance minister, described preparations for the July 31 polls as “a nightmare.”

“We don’t have money for these elections, and everyone knows it. It’s a horror movie except that you are not watching the movie, you are part of it,” Biti said late Monday.

The elections are the first to be held since the violent 2008 polls forced President Robert Mugabe to join into a coalition government with longtime opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, a bitter political nemesis. Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980.

On Tuesday, Mugabe’s office said it was cancelling cabinet meetings until the vote so that ministers can campaign for the election.

Tsvangirai, 61, began intense campaigning in the remote northeast Tuesday. Mugabe, 89, has not announced his own campaign schedule but his Vice President Joice Mujuru, 58, has begun a series of rallies for their ZANU-PF party.

Mugabe’s opponents maintained he had acted alone without consulting coalition leaders in a ploy to favor his party. Mugabe said he was following the instructions of a Constitutional Court ruling earlier this month.

Tsvangirai had argued that the July 31 date did not allow enough time for the needed democratic reforms to take place, and that the rushed election did not provide the conditions necessary for a free and fair vote. He later said he was accepting the date with sadness and reluctance but was confident of a victory over Mugabe.

National elections in Zimbabwe are routinely held over two days with ballots cast at up to 9,000 polling stations across the country, slightly larger than Germany. The commission says tens of thousands of voters who have since died have been removed from the lists.

The U.S.-based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights said in its latest report on Zimbabwe the close approach of the vote has ramped up political tensions in the country. It said opponents of Mugabe are facing “an atmosphere of intimidation,” curbs on free expression and political activities and the suppression of easily accessible voter registration and voter education.

“This behavior is unacceptable and represents clear breaches of domestic and international law,” said Santiago Canton, head of the center’s rights group.

Leaders of the 15-nation regional bloc known as the Southern African Development Community, or SADC, had also called on Mugabe and the judiciary he controls to delay the crucial elections.

Mugabe, launching his party’s manifesto on Friday, had also threatened to withdraw from SADC, the regional bloc he helped found, saying its chief mediator on Zimbabwe, South African President Jacob Zuma, and his colleagues had pushed for delaying the polls.

Biti, the finance minister, said he has had to “freeze” payments to government departments and only meet public service salaries to try to find the money for this month’s vote.

“The whole thing is an absolute, undiluted dog’s breakfast,” Biti said. – AP

Mandela too soft on whites, says Mugabe in documentary

by Johannes Myburgh

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe criticises Nelson Mandela for being too soft on whites, in a documentary giving a rare and intimate look into the family life of one of Africa’s longest serving and most vilified leaders.

In a cosy lunch setting with his wife and children, the 89-year old speaks on a wide range of issues from his controversial hold on power, to his relationships with former British premiers Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher.

The two-and-a-half hour interview, described in detail by British and South African media ahead of its airing, shows the usually bellicose and sharp-tongued Mugabe as a loving family man.

Dali Tambo, the son of South African anti-apartheid hero Oliver Tambo, produced the documentary, which will be broadcast on South African public television next Sunday.

In the programme Tambo dines with Mugabe’s family at his wife Grace’s dairy farm.

The interview comes just months before crucial general elections in the country which in recent decades has gone from being the breadbasket of southern Africa to its biggest problem child.

One of Africa’s most popular liberation leaders, Mugabe has clashed with the West over controversial policies which saw white-owned farms violently seized over a decade ago.

In neighbouring South Africa, where white land ownership is still a flashpoint, Mugabe says former president Nelson Mandela was not hard enough.

He said former colonial masters Britain — with whom he has had a fraught relationship over the land grabs — “will praise you only if you are doing things that please them”.

“Mandela has gone a bit too far in doing good to the non-black communities, really in some cases at the expense of (blacks),” Mugabe said of his former South African counterpart.

“That’s being too saintly, too good, too much of a saint,” he is quoted from the documentary in South Africa’s Sunday Independent.

Despite Mugabe’s disagreements with former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who died in April, he says he preferred the Iron Lady to her later successor Tony Blair.

“Mrs Thatcher, you could trust her. But of course what happened later was a different story with the Labour Party and Blair, who you could never trust,” said Mugabe.

“Who can ever believe what Mr Blair says? Here we call him Bliar.”

But despite having governed for 32 years, Africa’s oldest ruler also insists on staying in power.

According to The Guardian in Britain, the topic of the upcoming vote unleashes Mugabe’s fiery rhetoric as he bangs his fist on an armrest and insists: “There is a fight to fight.”

“My people still need me,” he told Tambo.

“And when people still need you to lead them, it’s not time, sir, it doesn’t matter how old you are, to say goodbye.”

Mugabe is currently sharing power with his rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai after violent disputed polls in 2008. No date has yet been set for this year’s elections although Mugabe is pressing for them to go ahead as soon as possible.

Tambo, 54, brushed off criticism that the programme — which will air as part of his “People of the South” television series that profiles celebrities and public figures — polishes Mugabe’s image ahead of the vote.

He told the Sunday Independent that he had also interviewed Rhodesian leader Ian Smith for a previous series.

Mugabe was “warm, charismatic and very humorous”, Tambo said.

According to The Guardian, Mugabe pours out his heart during the meal on his love for his wife and their “oneness”.

In unusual candour Mugabe also explains his affair with Grace while still married to his sickly first wife Sally — he wanted to give his mother grandchilden.

“As Sally was still going through her last few days, although it might have appeared to some as cruel, I said to myself ‘well, it’s not just myself needing children, my mother has all the time said, ah, am I going to die without seeing grandchildren’.”

He married Grace, his secretary over 40 years his junior, after Sally Mugabe died in 1992.

The couple have three children. – Sapa

Max du Preez’s fantasies on Zimbabwe

blackpowerfarm — 'Fast-track land reform' of the Zimbabwean style, as sought by Max du Preez

by TAU Bulletin

Anti-apartheid journalist and apologist for South Africa’s democratic dispensation Max du Preez has been caught short with his latest efforts to justify the unjustifiable. In a Natal Mercury piece (30.4.13), Du Preez tells us we can “learn from Zimbabwe’s flourishing farms”, and goes on to laud a new book by three London (where else?) left wingers: London School of Economics’ Joseph Hanlon, an anti-apartheid and commonwealth sanctions activist in the 1980’s; Jeanette Manjengwa, Deputy Director, Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Zimbabwe; and Teresa Smart, visiting fellow at the University of London.

Du Preez says the book “Zimbabwe Takes Back its Land” shows that Zimbabwe’s radical land grab “has worked” and that “agricultural production is on levels comparable to the time before the process started.” What is meaningful, says Du Preez, is that these production levels were achieved by 245,000 black farmers on land previously worked by some 6 000 white farmers. He clearly does not see the irony in this – does it take 245 000 Africans to produce the same as 6 000 white farmers?

(It is interesting that euphemisms such as “the process”, “land redistribution” and “fast track land reform” are used in the book and by Mr. Du Preez to describe one of Africa’s most haunting and terrifying attacks on any country’s productive agricultural sector. Who can forget the horrifying television footage of mobs of so-called war veterans storming white farms, destroying farm animals, beating to death family dogs trying to defend their owners’ properties, while farm families who couldn’t flee fast enough met sometimes gruesome fates at the hands of these thugs, all in the name of land reform. Ironically, these destructive mobs received few farms at all – the choicer properties were taken by Mugabe’s cronies for, in some cases, weekend parties.)

From the book, Du Preez says lessons South Africans can learn is that new black farmers can actually farm successfully and commercially if given enough time and help, and that an “ambitious land redistribution programme (in South Africa) can play a role in alleviating poverty and providing employment and dignity to large numbers or marginalized people”. (It is reported that the London team spent one month in Zimbabwe before writing the book, and that they used a simplistic method based on a very small section of agriculture – they used three farms that were “taken back” while more than five thousand farms were stolen by the Mugabe government.)

It is further common cause that many “flourishing” farms are owned by the Chinese, and that the few still owned by white farmers operate at the grace and favor of President Mugabe.(He, his courtiers and his army have to be fed after all!). We are also told that when certain farms are targeted by the ubiquitous war veterans, all the owner has to do is phone the Chinese Embassy and nothing more is heard from the mob. Sizeable tobacco contracts have been signed with the Chinese government.

What is to be gleaned from this puff piece by someone who clearly feels the need to continue defending South Africa’s current dispensation?

Millennia

Black South Africans have existed in Africa for millennia. They never developed anything better than subsistence farming – maybe food for today but little for tomorrow. They had no written language, and it was left to early Christian missionaries to formalize and put into script African languages which had been solely an oral tradition. Thus there was no recorded title to land – it is a non-African concept – so to entitle a book “Zimbabwe Takes its Land Back” is disingenuous. One commentator declared: Zimbabwe takes back its land from whom? It was taken back from Zimbabweans, seventy percent of whom had bought their farms after President Mugabe came to power and whose agricultural skills were the bedrock of a country that had been a savannah until they came.

Yes, in another way, land in Zimbabwe was “taken back” – it was plundered and stolen from white productive farmers whose accomplishments showed up the incompetence and inability of others to produce a surplus, let alone enough to eat for themselves. This highway robbery was based on racial resentment, fuelled by a tyrant afraid of losing an election and who used white achievement as a scapegoat to foster black pique.

The United Nations

Before Mr. Du Preez decided to wax unctuous about Zimbabwe’s “flourishing farms”, he could have visited the websites of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in Rome, the World Bank and a few other organizations trying to keep Zimbabwe afloat. According to WFP director Felix Bamezon (14.3.13), Zimbabwe’s current food insecurity levels are “the worst in four years.” The WFP is presently providing food aid to 1,58 million people in 37 districts of the country. In March this year, the WFP said approximately 19% of the population of Zimbabwe was estimated to be in need of food assistance.

If a government cannot even feed its people, let alone have surplus production, this can hardly be termed “flourishing”. The Japanese government recently provided nearly $6 million for flood, drought and food relief to Zimbabwe. This contribution allowed the WFP to purchase maize for 215,000 people and pulses for 835 000 people for two months. During the last decade, Japanhas provided more than $29 million to the WFP’s operations in Zimbabwe.

In January of this year, the Zimbabwean finance minister admitted to journalists the country only had $217 in its bank account! David Smith of the London Guardian wrote on 30 January of this year that “from 2000 the seizure of white-owned farms led to chaos in the agriculture sector and the economy shrank by half. In 2008 hyperinflation of 231,000,000% broke the national currency and left millions of people hungry.” (Emphasis ours)

Where did the money go? The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says that income from diamond sales is being stolen by President Mugabe’s Zanu/PF party to finance the forthcoming election. The watchdog “Partnership Africa Canada” said last November that at least $2 billion of diamonds form the Marange fields has been stolen by Mugabe’s ruling elite.

What flourishing really means!

In the October 2009 edition of THE ROSARIAN, a publication distributed by the Flame Lily Foundation (created to secure the interests of former residents of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe), Dr. Mick Gammon writes a lengthy piece on the destruction of Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe, with particular emphasis on agriculture. (Dr. D.M. Gammon was a former specialist in the Department of Conservation and Extension in the Rhodesian Ministry of Agriculture.)

“The first white traders and missionaries who came to the region in the 19^th century found a land devoid of infrastructure. The wheel was not yet in use. Travelers went for days without seeing any human habitation. With a population of around 250 00 at the time, most of the land was not occupied. Commercial farming started in the 1890s on what was for the most part, virgin land. There were no roads or railways, no electricity or telephones, no fences, boreholes, pumps, windmills, dams, irrigation schemes; no cattle dips, barns or any other farm buildings.

“These first farmers had to discover how to contend with predators that killed their livestock and other animals that consumed their crops; how to control diseases, pests and parasites of livestock and crops that were foreign to them. Knowledge and experience built up over generations in the developed world had limited application, since the local climate, oil and vegetation was vastly different.

“From this starting point, agriculture developed faster than it had anywhere else in the world. Soon the country became self-sufficient in most agricultural products. In many cases yields per hectare and quality equalled and bettered those in the developed world.

“The United Nations Food and Agriculture Year Book 1975 ranked the then Rhodesia second in the world in terms of yields of maize, wheat, soya beans and ground nuts, and third for cotton. In the combined ranking for all these crops, Rhodesia ranked first in the world.

Rhodesia’s Virginia tobacco was rated the best in the world in yield and quality, while maize entries in world championships were consistently placed in the first three places.

“The world’s largest single citrus producer was developed early in the country’s history. The indigenous cattle were developed through breeding and selection to highly productive breeds. Wild life was incorporated into farming systems to develop a highly successful eco-tourism industry, and endangered species found their most secure havens on farm conservancies.

“Zimbabwe was the world’s second largest exporter of flue-cured tobacco. This together with exports of maize, soya beans, cotton, sugar, coffee, tea, fruit, vegetables, flowers and beef, made agriculture the major source of foreign currency. It was the largest employer of labor, providing employment for about a third of the country’s work force.

“The country’s state departments of veterinary services, tobacco research, plant and seed research, livestock and crop management were world class. Each farm was, to a large extent, an outpost of civilization and many farms established schools for the children of their workers. Every farm was a clinic and dispensary and ambulance service for the surrounding areas.”

What happened to these farmers has been splashed around the world. It is a tragic history. From prosperity to a government balance sheet of just $217; to perennial food aid, to a tyrannical dictatorship, corruption and government theft; to poverty and large-scale emigration. From a bread basket to a basket case. The only thing flourishing in this scenario is the scary imagination of Mr. Du Preez.

Pan-African Youth Union praises Zim land reform

lungisa2 — Lungisa, second from left, next to fallen hero Malema

The president of the Pan-African Youth Union, Andile Lungisa, believes President Robert Mugabe’s land reform policy in Zimbabwe should serve as a blueprint for South Africa.

Lungisa was among those who attended Mugabe’s $600000 birthday bash in the small mining town of Bindura.

Lungisa wasthe former deputy president of the ANC Youth League.

Taking to the podium to address the 50000-strong crowd, Lungisa said: “We are saying in South Africa and the whole of Africa, we should emulate Zimbabwe.”

Lungisa was invited by Zanu-PF’s youth wing alongside other youth leaders from regional liberation front movements.

Under Mugabe’s land reform policy, roughly 4000 white farmers had their land seized without compensation . At present, there are less than 300 white commercial farmers still operating, but their land remains targeted.

Farmers who resist eviction face at least two years’ imprisonment.

It is widely believed that Mugabe’s land reform policy resulted in his nation’s economic ruin, and severe lack of food security. “We are saying in South Africa and the whole of Africa, we should emulate Zimbabwe,” Lungisa added.

Pedzisai Ruhanya, the former news editor of the banned Zimbabwean independent newspaper Daily News, said Lungisa’s comments amounted to mere politicking in a bid to impress Mugabe.

“The ANC exists in a very active community not as passive as Zimbabwe. So to take the same position as Zanu-PF is impossible in South Africa.”

A few days before the birthday bash, the 12-year-old son of a member of one of the two MDC factions was killed in an arson attack.

Some have alleged that one of Mugabe’s close allies was responsible for the attack.

“Even when [someone] gets killed by a cow; they blame it on Zanu-PF,” Mugabe said. – timeslive.co.za

Opposition rejects Mugabe’s election timetable

Zimbabwe’s main opposition the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on Thursday said President Robert Mugabe’s planned timetable for a constitutional referendum and elections was not realistic.

In a High Court filing seen on Thursday, Mugabe proposed a referendum for the first week of November and presidential and legislative polls for March next year.

“The dates being proposed are clearly not feasible,” MDC spokesman Douglas Mwonzora told AFP.

“The date for the election, especially, is unilateral, unrealistic and has no scientific or legal basis.”

Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party has objected to many aspects of the long-delayed draft constitution that was only finished in July and would rein in presidential powers.

Mwonzora added his party was more concerned about conditions under which the vote takes place rather than the date. “For us to meet those dates, ZANU-PF has to change drastically.”

“We want elections to be held in conditions which allow the secrecy of the vote and the security of both the vote and the voter,” said Mwonzora.

Opposition MDC party members were on the receiving end of the violence that characterised the 2008 elections. – AFP

Zimbabwean Anglican bishop calls for ‘war against the white man’

The Church of England Newspaper reports that the former Bishop of Harare, Dr. Nolbert Kunonga, has urged Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe to expel the few remaining white farmers from their lands, telling a gathering of ZANU (PF) supporters that “Whites like other aliens should not be allowed to own land and other properties in the country as they are strangers.”

In an account of his sermon printed in The Zimbabwean, Dr. Kunonga said that he too had been engaged in a campaign of expropriating white-owned properties. “I took 3800 church properties in the region since their title deeds were in my name. There was no way the properties could remain under charge of the church controlled by whites and their black puppets. Bishops such as Julius Makoni, Chad Gandiwa and others are MDC-T and furthered western interests,” he said.

The controversial bishop, who was excommunicated by the Church of the Province of Central Africa after he quit the church to form his own Anglican Church of Zimbabwe, has waged a violent campaign of repression with the support of the security services against Anglicans who are loyal to the Bishop of Harare.

In 2011 the Archbishops of Canterbury, Central Africa, Southern Africa and Tanzania, along with local Anglican bishops, met with President Mugabe asking him to reassert the rule of law in Zimbabwe, and protect persecuted Anglicans from the depredations of Dr. Kunonga. The former bishop has been banned from travel to the U.S., the E.U. and the U.K. due to his complicity with the crimes of the Mugabe regime.

A long time supporter of the Zimbabwean president, Dr. Kunonga has campaigned against the opposition MDC party and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai. He told the gathering at the Dimbe Primary School near Marondera in Mashonaland East that MDC-T and “its western puppet, Morgan Tsvangirai, are agents of doom fighting to reverse the land reform programme and hand back land to the former colonial white masters.”

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“Tsvangirai is a white man masked in black skin. He is like the Biblical Pharaoh who enjoyed the suffering and economic deprivation of his own people. On the other hand, Mugabe is the Biblical Daniel sent to suffer for the cause of his people,” said Dr. Kunonga.

The former bishop added that those who drive out white farmers, MDC supporters and foreigners from their lands “will enter the kingdom of God.”

“As Christians; we must gear ourselves for a bloody war against white interests,” he said.

Robert Mugabe opens Chinese military college in Zimbabwe

President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party has strengthened the militarisation of Zimbabwe ahead of next year’s general election with the opening of a National Military College.

Observers pointed out that Mugabe’s latest move sends a strong signal that the military complex will dictate the outcome at the ballot box. The long-serving Zimbabwean president is expected to triumph for the third time over rival Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change, after beating him in 2002 and 2008.

Last weekend Mugabe officially opened the college, built by China at a cost of $98 million. It is being described as a “think tank” on security issues. He said it will aslo be used as a bulwark against Western countries, preventing their “regime change” agenda.

The college will exclusively train personnel with a rank of colonel or captain or above, as well as equivalent high ranks in state security, the police and prisons.

In terms of the loan agreement, the loan by China will be paid off over 13 years by means of diamonds to be extracted by Chinese companies from the Marange diamond fields.

Anjin, the Chinese diamond company in Marange, was involved in an argument earlier this year with the Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti, because the Chinese had failed to pay “a single cent” in taxes.

The construction of the college indicates the sustained militarisation of Zimbabwean society, but also the domination of Chinese interests in the country.

If Africa is more like Singapore, why are we getting so many refugees?

by Dan Roodt

Living in South Africa, one gets used to being called a moron by every visiting foreigner, especially ones of the liberal to left-wing persuasion. After all, they seem to reason, we do not know anything about our own history. We do not understand our own country or our own continent. Nor do we have any grasp of Africa or African culture, despite many of our people speaking African languages and compiling dictionaries in those languages.

The same goes for what is called the mass media. The bigger and more influential they are, the more you will find the view that the average Afrikaner or white commentator in this country is a barely literate buffoon. Many a time I have come across the phrase about this country: “Apartheid destroyed South Africa.”

If you had flown in an aeroplane over South Africa in 1994, shortly after Nelson Mandela became president, you would have seen just how “destroyed” South Africa was. We had more roads and railways than Great Britain. Having a far bigger surface area also helps, I suppose. At one time we were one of the few countries exporting more food than we imported, notwithstanding being a semi-arid country.

The criteria for measuring progress in Africa seem to differ from other places. Economic growth, income per capita, life expectancy, quality of life, infant mortality, the level of education, all those ordinary measures of a country’s success or progress are suspended in favour of focussing on, well, some racial element.

The racial element could be the mystique of Africa, its smiling, simple people happily singing to some merry tune like the coffee plantation workers on Karen Blixen’s farm in the Hollywood movie “Out of Africa”. Or it could be the successful eradication of Western influence, the confiscation of land owned by white farmers, the imposition of racial job quotas to prevent whites from working in South Africa, and so on.

Organising a successful pogrom against whites in Africa is always cause for celebration. Whichever dictator or strongman is involved in such an operation, may be assured of vast amounts of Scandinavian aid money before, during and after the operation.

A few weeks ago, the correspondent for the New York Times in Johannesburg, Lydia Polgreen, wrote a more or less glowing account of the Zimbabwean tobacco industry. Since nationalising the farms of white farmers and replacing them with “small-scale” black farmers, the country has taken a great leap forward, it appears.

Enthused Polgreen: “The success of these small-scale farmers has led some experts to reassess the legacy of Zimbabwe’s forced land redistribution, even as they condemn its violence and destruction.” Read the whole article: In Zimbabwe Land Takeover, a Golden Lining.

One week after the publication of this article, the UN’s World Food Programme announced that Zimbabwe was in dire need of food aid for 1,6 million people. This is the result of Zimbabwean “land reform” and “restoring the dignity of the African who no longer toils for a white boss”. Of course, up to half the Zimbabwean population has already fled to South Africa in search of food and jobs where they continue to toil for white bosses in restaurants, on farms and as cleaners and gardeners in suburban houses.

Zimbabweans have voted for Robert Mugabe for years. He has rewarded them with the kind of policies that they preferred: crypto-Marxism, confiscation of white assets, robber capitalism, cronyism, a small elite lording it over an impoverished majority enduring increasing hardship, environmental degradation, collapse of infrastructure, hyperinflation and economic crisis.

However, in South Africa these Zimbabwean voters who have democratically chosen to saunter down the road to national disaster, are considered “refugees”. Not only that, but according to a recent article on The Daily Maverick website, South Africa is the country in the world receiving the most refugees. Last year we took in a whopping 219 368 of them. By contrast, the USA only got 40 000 refugees. In many West-European countries, refugees are considered a major problem when about 20 000 announce themselves at the border posts in any given year. Yet we are supposed to endure the flow of hundreds of thousands of refugees across our borders, together with many more illegal aliens, as part of our fate.

But the biggest paradox of all is the following: Why would any African want to leave his democratic, prosperous, economically booming home country for the not so bright lights of Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban or Cape Town? After all, according to the world’s mass media, we are “the destroyed country”, the least successful on the African continent.

Perhaps the New York Times correspondent in Johannesburg, Lydia Polgreen, could solve that conundrum. This is all the more remarkable in the light of recent pronouncements by American academics that the image of poor sub-Saharan Africans holding out a begging bowl for help or Bono to organise an aid concert is very passé. Malthus was wrong. Unbridled population growth is the road to riches and Africa’s “youth bulge” represents a “demographic dividend”.

This may sound like satire or sarcasm, but it is not. On the CNN website, I came across a piece asking the rhetorical question: Is Africa the new Asia? Written by Professor Richard Aidoo from the Department of Politics and Geography, Coastal Carolina University, the article asserts that Ghana has had a 13,5% growth rate recently, portending an “African miracle”. On the demographic issue, Professor Aidoo writes:

“Africa has another potential advantage – a youthful population with a hunger for change. Many of the uprisings in support of democracy across the continent have been championed by disaffected young people bitten by the technology bug and anxious for opportunities. For these young and driven Africans, change isn’t a distant hope, but something achievable. The memories of colonial exploitation are receding further into the rearview mirror as young Africans look forward.”

Aidoo cites the British Economist in support of his views. Howard W. French, a New York-based African expert who teaches at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a former senior writer and foreign correspondent for the New York Times, concurs that the continent is already way up the economic scale. He writes in The Atlantic:

“Africa, with a population expected to roughly double by mid-century, has become recognized as the world’s fastest growing continent. But the less-told story is of Africa’s economic rise. In the last decade Africa’s overall growth rates have quietly approached those of Asia, and according to projections by the IMF, on average Africa will have the world’s fastest growing economy of any continent over the next five years.

Seven of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies are African. The continent is famously resource rich, which has surely helped, but some recent studies suggest that the biggest drivers are far less customary for Africa, and far more encouraging for its future: wholesale and retail commerce, transportation, telecommunications, and manufacturing.”

After 18 years of ANC rule, South Africa’s formerly first-world infrastructure is crumbling. Raw sewage is flowing into our rivers. The roads are full of holes. Our previously superb health care system is in a shambles with patients left to die in state hospitals. Despite record spending, the education department cannot deliver school books to some of its schools. South Africa has two million mostly white and corporate taxpayers who supply a welfare state for 50 million people. We are definitely not an Asian tiger economy, but by traditional measures SA is still the biggest economy on the continent.

But those are traditional measures. Clearly, people in the know and pundits associated with The New York Times, have decided otherwise.

If someone could just explain to me why so many Africans are still flocking to this country which suffered so much damage in the past and has still “not quite recovered from apartheid”, I would be really glad. After all, why would you leave one of the fastest growing economies in the world seething with bright young technology entrepreneurs, to settle in our country still blighted by white, Western influence?