No Light yet at the End of the Political Tunnel

Much water under the bridge since I last wrote on my blogsite. I have been in England and South Africa and now back home in Zimbabwe for the past three weeks. Believe it or not it is good to be back in Zimbabwe although there are still times when frustration with the politicians and what purports to be ‘government’ sends me into a state of stressful agitation. And the economy is very, very messy without a banking system that works and everyone, everywhere, short of the much needed US dollar. It is becoming very clear that without investment and without a banking system that enables the economy to resuscitate, there will be no worthwhile change. And neither investment nor a working banking system will come without political change.

The politicians – all of them – seemingly have little real interest in anything other than their own power and prestige. The new Mayor of Harare, former businessman Much Masunda saw fit to have himself inaugurated in August at a lavish function that must have cost the Harare residents several hundred thousand dollars (I remind you, real dollars) while the roads remain potholed, there is very little water to speak of, the sewerage systems are clogged and the street lights don’t work. Yet the Harare City Council is frisking residents of hundreds of thousands of dollars through rates and other taxes and still we receive no services in return. My Harare City water bill of $10 a month (minimum monthly charge) continues to arrive in my post box with amazing regularity, while water has not been delivered for over three years. If only they could deliver the water with the same enthusiasm as they deliver the bill.

On the national front, South African President Jacob Zuma has recently been in Harare and waxes lyrical about ‘progress being made by the national unity government’ and ‘the west must lift sanctions’ while Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings maintain a stranglehold on the air waves and there is no sign of an independent broadcaster or publisher in the offing. No ZANU PF offender has been brought to justice for crimes committed in the past 29 years, let alone the past year, while MDC political bigwigs are arrested weekly.

Sadly there is no sign of a light at the end of the tunnel. Until Zimbabweans themselves get tough, and light a fire at the other end, we won’t see one.

But I have learned on my travels that Zimbabwe’s politicians are little different from the rest of the world – all of them greedy and corrupt to a greater or lesser degree. I have also learned that the history of England (and probably Europe) is little different from the history of Africa. Only the dates are different. England went through a period of authoritarian rule that lasted from the dawn of humankind until the Industrial Revolution when the ordinary people changed the power game. Zimbabwe’s politicians are no different from the corrupt Kings and Queens of the English dark and Middle Ages. It is only that the world has changed since Henry VIII sat on the English throne and Africa has not. And Africa’s politicians – and people – have not yet realised that.

Zimbabwe (and Africa) will eventually move to democratic rule by their own choice, rather than having democracy thrust upon them. And it will probably happen a lot quicker than it took the English people.

Beatings – More of them

I am intrigued by stories of new ‘beatings’ popping up in the local and international press this week. The first which appeared on the 18th June is about police training and reported in The (ZANU PF) Herald: “Police trainers have been warned against recording videos of the force’s rigorous training sessions using their cellphones and selling the clips on the Internet. This habit is tantamount to selling out of one’s country and thereby derailing the efforts of the organisation to maintain its good image. Those who engage in such corrupt activities would be removed from the force”. So said that notorious policeman, Wayne Bvudzijena.

A day later the plot thickens. “Police are investigating the authenticity of a video clip circulating among members of the public depicting trainers beating up recruits as "part of training". The video clip shows more than 5 police trainers beating up recruits, mostly men, while saying that this was part of the training. In the video, the recruits are being beaten on the back one-at-a-time with sticks, while the others stand in a queue waiting for their turn. After assaulting one of the recruits, one of the trainers is heard saying, "This is now Syllabus E."

So I went to YouTube and had a look. Looked very authentic to me! No wonder the Commissioner and his cohorts are upset.

In Bulawayo on Wednesday the 17th June WOZA (Women of Zimbabwe Arise) held a demonstration. It was not long before the marchers were attacked by the police and several of them beaten and arrested. Then on Thursday another demonstration in Harare received the same treatment. Not only were some of the marchers beaten, so were at least three journalists who were also arrested.

What is about this country and the norms that seem to have developed in policing? Are these societal norms a throwback to the days before colonialism and perhaps during that period? Did the Shona people beat their own who ‘transgressed’? Were ‘suspects’ and political rivals kidnapped and held incommunicado for weeks on end, beaten on the soles of their feet and buttocks? Were judicial orders ignored?

Why is nothing being done by the GNU to reverse this kind of treatment? Geoff Hill’s book “What Happens After Mugabe?” written some two years ago suggests that there is a groundswell of opinion from those Zimbabweans exiled in South Africa to seek ‘revenge’ when ‘the day of reckoning’ finally comes. There have been suggestions that Zimbabwe needs a period of ‘National Healing’ but no-one seems to want to do anything about it, and instead the beatings, the arrests, the threats go on.

Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan has been on a short visit and has made yet another damning report of the lack of civil liberties in Zimbabwe. In response Vice President Joice Mujuru told her that Zimbabweans had their own ways of resolving their differences, with government having already started a national healing programme.
What ‘National Healing Programme’ is she talking about? Probably the same one that has been talked about before but nothing, as usual, been done.

Let us remember what happened only last year, how over 100 members of the MDC were MURDERED in cold blood. What has been done about the perpetrators, most of who are known by name?

Nothing is being done. It is not nearly as high on the agenda as ‘seeking removal of illegal economic sanctions’ which is really ZANU PF’s desire to find more loot to loot. Both ZANU PF and MDC are culpable here.

The real tragedy of Zimbabwe is the cultural norms that developed during the Rhodesian Bush War – or as some call it, the Second Chimurenga. ZANLA and ZIPRA, the military wings of what is today ZANU PF, went off to China and Moscow and learned their new trade from Mao Tse Tung and Joseph Stalin. The majority of today’s leadership were only teenagers then, abducted from schools, taken away to Tanzania and ‘conscientised’ by the leadership in much the same form as the police recruits I saw being beaten on YouTube. They returned to Rhodesia with an AK 47 slung across their shoulders and dealt out mayhem and death in horrific circumstances to those they labelled ‘sell-outs’. I know. I saw the beaten and mutilated bodies in the 1970’s with my own eyes. No cellphone camera’s in those days to back me up, but believe me, my mind at the gruesome sights is as clear as any cellphone camera image can portray today.

ZANU PF brought this culture to Zimbabwe and imposed it first on the Matabele people in the early 1980’s. Later, when their power was threatened by the MDC and the white farmers who backed the MDC financially, they re-visited this culture on the MDC, the white farmers and ordinary Zimbabweans who got in the way.

And they still do it today – with the usual impunity, while screaming and shouting at Obama, Brown and the rest of the west to ‘lift illegal economic sanctions’.

When will they learn?

Delusional Charlatans?

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirayi is on walk-about in the West. He has recently met Barack Obama and what is clear about that meeting is Obama welcomed Tsvangirayi but he wasn’t about to welcome anyone else from the ‘wrong side of Zimbabwean history’. It is not absolutely clear why Tsvangirayi is on walk about. The Herald suggests he is doing it as a Mugabe emissary to ‘get the green light to lift illegal western economic sanctions’. MT himself says he is telling world leaders how far we have come – which is interpreted by most as not very far at all. And that’s a fact – not only from where the West is viewing things but from where we Zimbabweans are viewing them too. We still have little to show for ‘law and order’, farms are still being invaded, crops stolen while police claim that the thefts are ‘political’ and therefore beyond their attention, the media is far from free, The Herald and the broadcasting media are still consumed with ZANU PF’s versions of events and ‘free and fair elections’ seem to get further away from us with every passing moment.

What is abundantly clear is that ZANU PF is intent on using Tsvangirayi and the MDC as a means of remaining in power. And so far they are doing very well at it.

A more recent exciting news event reported everywhere else in the world but NOT in The Herald for some reason is the story of Tsvangirayi’s so called ‘niece’ attempting to claim a farm of her own. Dr Arikana Chihombori – a United States citizen has been telling the world her own version of how she has been attempting to secure a farm for herself from the Cremer’s in Chegutu. When the Cremer’s desisted from the latest invasion to their property they are now alleged to have called Dr Chihombori’s sister the K word and then set their dogs on her and an un-named ‘Lands Officer’. The Cremer’s deny the allegations and clearly there is no supporting evidence to these outrageous claims. No mauled sister, no ‘Lands Officer’, no independent witnesses and a report has never been made to the police. Should we be surprised? Dr Chihombori then made the mistake of getting herself interviewed by Zimbabwe Online during the course of which she presented herself as a delusional charlatan, claiming her original farm in the Wiltshire area was ‘burned to the ground by whites’ for no apparent reason. Wiltshire was originally a Purchase Area for black farmers way back in the 1960’s and remained that way until Independence in 1980. Today it should be a model farming area. I cannot comment whether it is or not. Dr Chihombori also claims relationships between herself and Jacob Zuma, Tsvangirayi, Grace Mugabe and a few others besides. There are some facts though. Dr Chihombori attended Jacob Zuma’s inauguration last month, she was ‘accompanying’ Morgan Tsvangirayi in some way inasmuch as she was photographed walking by his side and clearly she has made attempts to steal a farm in Chegutu.

Another apparent charlatan who may or may not be delusional is ZANU PF Senator Jamaya Muduvuri who it is reported is busy stealing his 5th farm from a French citizen on a farm in Kadoma. The farm is ‘protected’ (joke of course) by a bi-lateral trade agreement between Zimbabwe and the French government. Not satisfied with simply stealing the farm Senator Muduvuri is reported to be stealing the current crops of oranges, potatoes and maize while Ms Catherine Jouineau-Meredith is helpless to prevent it. The farm workers have been ‘forbidden’ to work by Muduvuri and to ensure that they don’t, they have been severely beaten. The police have refused to intervene on the usual excuse that the acts are ‘political’.

We trust the French government will do something to change this nauseous state of affairs. Or will they? So far they haven’t done much. Ho hum – Zimbabweans who care about a future for their children and grand-children won’t hold their breath.

Economic Sanctions

The ZANU PF regime seems to be obsessed with the ’illegal economic sanctions’ that have been applied to ‘the ordinary people of Zimbabwe’ and have ‘devastated the economy’. A headline in The Herald of Tuesday the 2nd June reads “Sanctions hit local British pensioners’ and goes on to report that ‘the Western imposed economic sanctions have hit pensioners hard prompting the British government to airlift the first 5 of 500 elderly citizens out of Zimbabwe’. No mention of the humungous efforts of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe printing press which is the real reason that pensions have been eroded. I should know. I am a pensioner whose pension has been eroded. Where once my pension was enough to send my son to private school in Matabeleland for a year, now it cannot buy me a beer. And the cause of all this? Inflation. And the cause of inflation? Printing money and even worse, creating electronic money, neither being backed by production.

The Comment on the Leader Page of the same issue relates to EU aid recently channelled into the country to enable some resuscitation of the sugar industry and informs us ‘the country has been reeling from Western imposed economic sanctions which have negatively impacted against all sectors of the economy and social strata’ and implies that once again it is Western imposed sanctions that have been the cause of the collapse of the sugar industry. No mention of devastating farm invasions that have all but ruined the entire agricultural economic base.

One has to ask whether the writers of this Goebbels like garbage actually believe it themselves. If you repeat a lie often enough and loud enough…….!

I wonder how History will record the events of the last 10 years in Zimbabwe.

The GG Saga Continues

Last week I lunched with some VIP’s who are ‘in the know’ with what goes on – and used to go on in Zimbabwe. I was told by one that GG used to have a large steel trunk in his office at the top of the RBZ where he would distribute USD to whoever was important enough to get passed his door, in whatever amounts were required. No records were kept of any of the transactions. This was made all the more simple because the RBZ controls the Zimbabwe Dollar printing press. The press would print large numbers of large denomination ZWD notes. Then there was a ‘second run’ where duplicate numbered notes were printed, and there was consequently no need to account for them at all.

These notes – the duplicates – were provided to the RBZ runners who fanned out to all ‘exchange centres’ at places like the bus terminus in Harare and Victoria Falls parking lot across the border from Zambia with bucket fulls of Zimbabwe dollars. They returned with briefcases full of USD which were handed over to GG to distribute as and when and to whom he felt like it.

On Saturday I was told by an NVIP (Not Very Important Person) that GG was on his bike. Then on Monday our octogenarian leader told the mourners at GG’s brother’s funeral that GG would serve out his term to 2013, that he was not a thief and he should not be branded as such. (What else do you call a person who takes money out of other people’s bank accounts and admits to doing it, I wonder?)

So GG’s future and the future of ordinary Zimbabweans is in the balance and on the basis of ‘who has the power’ it’s unlikely that he will go soon. My guess is that GG knows too much. There are probably only about two ways to keep his mouth shut.

Something Has to Break Soon – or does it?

It is difficult to believe that a week ago Zimbabwe held a ‘Media Conference’ to chart the way forward for a new and open approach to media management. Since then the editor and a sub-editor of the only surviving independent newspaper in the country have been arrested and detained overnight in the notorious and seriously filthy police cells at Harare Central police station. Their crime? Reporting on the facts of a court process where certain police and others officers have been named by the court as those involved in the ‘arrest’ of several political activists. It is public knowledge that these activists were abducted and hidden from the world at large, more specifically from their lawyers, for weeks and in some cases months while the police authorities denied any knowledge of their disappearance.

Then we have the arrest yesterday of a human rights lawyer on allegations of ‘obstructing the course of justice’ after he allegedly connived with a ‘junior’ High Court official to facilitate the rerelease on bail of a photo-journalist and other aide’s to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirayi. The junior aide has also been arrested and incarcerated with her child at Chikurubi maximum security prison. Like most of those arrested over the past twelve months for ‘treason’, ‘terrorism’ and other acts of ‘banditry’ we can expect that in the fullness of time either these people will never get to have their crimes heard in a court of law, or if by some miracle they do in, probably, twelve months from now they will be acquitted through ‘lack of evidence’

But when one reads that the first resolution of the media conference was that ‘illegal sanctions must be lifted in order to facilitate media freedom’ one realises what is going on here. It’s just another ZANU PF talk shop to attempt to justify their sheer stupidity.

Then this week we have the President welcoming a delegation from the ‘Democratic’ Peoples Republic of Korea where the President and later the Commissioner of Police, Augustine Chiuri explain to the delegation that the reason Zimbabwe is out with the begging bowl is because Western sponsored illegal sanctions have devastated the economy.

Inviting the DPRK to Zimbabwe at this time of supposed political reconciliation is naïve in the extreme. Many thousands of Zimbabweans suffered at the hands of the DPRK trained 5th Brigade in the 1980’s, thirty thousand Matabele were killed and are not here to remember anything, but others who survived have long memories of the atrocities perpetrated on themselves and their families. Not surprisingly there is a wave of anxiety from ordinary citizens and a demand that the DPRK delegation go home in a hurry. And just what does the President and his ZANU PF think the DPRK are going to bring to the economic regeneration of Zimbabwe? Not a lot when they cannot feed themselves either.

But Morgan Tsvangirai treads on, step by step, trying to create a new future with little action and far too many conciliatory words about his opponents and their continuing efforts to place road blocks in the path of progress. How long can he continue with this charade?

Something has to break soon. Or does it? After all, this is Zimbabwe where talk is cheap, action is little, plans are made but never implemented and the future takes care of itself while ordinary people suffer more instead of less.

More Reason for Gono to Go-now

The Gideon Gono battle goes on with Finance Minister Tendai Biti of the MDC anxious for his removal while Mugabe and his cohorts desperately want him to remain at the helm – presumably for two reasons. First because if he goes, a can of worms from the past may be opened. All sorts of horror stories will then emerge as to who has benefitted from his largesse and at what astronomical amounts. Second because if he goes, he will not be there in the near or distant future to continue with the largesse. The largesse has apparently evaporated for the present. I am told that the contractor who was painting Gono’s Borrowdale mansion has moved off the property due to lack of payment.

Last week the Zimbabwe Independent provided refreshing insight into further inappropriate activity of the Reserve Bank Governor. Five or so years ago The RBZ appropriated the assets of two banks – Trust Bank and Royal Bank and formed their own bank – the Zimbabwe Allied Banking Group (ZABG). Four years ago a judgement was handed down by the Supreme Court that the acquisition of the assets was an illegal act, yet nothing was ever done to repair the illegal damage. Now in the ‘New Zimbabwe’ the assets are to be returned to their rightful owners.

Gono has made a few statements of late attempting to justify his blatant theft of foreign currency from a number of accounts, his withholding of foreign exchange payouts to the mines and the farmers. He justifies his actions by claiming that in raiding the accounts (or withholding payments) he was ‘keeping the country afloat’. In fact all he did was to create the conditions for less and less production and economic activity in the pursuit of personal wealth and the distribution of wealth to other undeserving individuals. As I have said before, Gono and those who received the stolen property should be prosecuted in the criminal courts for theft and receiving respectively.

This last week CABS – a well known private financial institution has advertised that it will provide account holders with interest of up to 7% per annum on US dollars deposited for a fixed period of 90 days, lesser interest rates for dollars deposited for 60 days, 30 days and 7 days. I remarked on this to a friend whose response was quite simple. “As long as Gono is running the Reserve Bank, I’ll keep my money under my pillow in preference to leaving it anywhere where he might get his hands on it.”

No-one, it seems, trusts the man - not the international aid agencies, not the international governments and not the man in the street.