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| The ZIMBABWE Situation | Our
thoughts and prayers are with Zimbabwe - may peace, truth and justice prevail. |
STATEMENT BY COLIN CLOETE - PRESIDENT COMMERCIAL FARMERS’ UNION 11 AUGUST 2001
I visited Chinhoyi and the surrounding areas of Doma and Mhangura and I am deeply disturbed at the events on the ground. I call upon all Zimbabweans to refrain from taking the law into their own hands and totally condemn violence in all its forms and cannot accept that our law enforcement agencies cannot bring the situation under immediate control in a fair and just manner.
It is apparent that the state of lawlessness has reached a height that can only be contained by swift action at the highest level. Reports received are that in some areas, ZRP are able to respond within an hour to quell any disturbances but regrettably this is not the case in Chinhoyi where it took over 5 hours for them to restore peace in one area. In Inyathi, Matabeleland farmer, Dave Joubert called on support from the Police only to then be assaulted by them.
I make a heartfelt plea to the ministers and police chiefs who took an oath of allegiance to protect all citizens of Zimbabwe, to swiftly and decisively avoid further destruction and loss of property.
As I speak more of the farms in Doma are being pillaged and looted openly and blatantly by lawless elements in marauding bands of up to 300. Little action has yet been taken to recover stolen property. Reports indicate these bands arrive on a farm, steal farm vehicles and other hard-earned property, which they then transport to their own homes.
The outlying farming area of Doma has over 107 farms and has been the scene of widespread violence and looting. Reports confirm that 60 of these farms have now been evacuated. Yesterday 9 farms were completely ransacked and buildings and property destroyed, with a further 4 farms affected today.
Local farmers have been visiting areas of Doma to move farm workers to safety and this morning we are pleased to report that at least 40 were moved off Two Trees farm. Reports that farmers are fleeing Zimbabwe are untrue, however families in troubled areas are being evacuated for their own safety within the country.
Some equipment said to have been stolen on one farm include 3 x 7840 Ford Tractors, 1 x 6644 Tractor, 1x Mazda B2200, Two and half tonnes of Soya beans, 2 x Motor bikes, I x lorry trailer, 2 x welding machines, 1x D60 Tractor, Roofing Asbestos, Urea and other Fertilisers and miscellaneous workshop equipment and spares.
According to Cde. John Nyakauru, a resettled farmer, settlers have standing orders barring them from taking property from the farms.
Known homesteads affected are: Cotswold owned by Mr York; Magamba – Mr W. Du Toit; Treelands – Mr Van der Berg; Chimani – Mr V Viljoen; Gova – Mr Nel; Pirengani – Mr J. Brown; Wyndale – Mr Hanson; Two Trees – Mr De Jager; Alpha - Mr Hannay; Chrombadzi - Mr Coetzee. Yesterday farms owned by Tony White, John Taylor, Mr Flannagan, Bob Cadman, Mr Hunt and Mr Hanson Snr.
The damage and theft is estimated to have reached alarming figures of over $210 million. Women and children have been evacuated from the Doma area and scores of farm workers have been assaulted.
The Chinhoyi farming community has been torn asunder by these events and confidence in authoritative channels of protection is completely non-existent. Farmers and their families are vulnerable and unprotected as police turn a blind eye to assaults that have taken place on their doorstep. One member of the public was told that these issues are political and the police cannot therefore become involved.
Events unfolded on the 6 August, when farmers in the Chinhoyi district received a distress call to assist the Barkley family who were barricaded in their house after seeing a menacing group of 40 persons approaching their home brandishing axes and sticks.
After their arrival, confrontation ensued and several occupiers and four or five farmers - were injured, one seriously enough to be hospitalised. The besieged and embattled farmer was eventually found inside the house, out of reach of his radio and clearly traumatised and terrified by the incident.
This resulted in 21 farmers facing charges of assaulting a group of invaders in a public place although the incident occurred on private property Linston Shields Farm, owned by Mr. Hamish Barkley.
In Mutare, Premier Estates, owned by Ivan Truscott had two houses looted of light movable properties, estimated value ZD $ 2 million. Penalonga police reacted within 45 minutes and arrested 7 at the scene and managed to arrest a further 3 in possession of stolen property. We commend this station for swift reaction.
In Inyathi on Monday, 45 to 60 strong band of war veterans were ferried to into Braemer Estates. They went into the game scouts’ compound and attacked those present with stones, sticks and knives. The melee worsened and the game scouts fired into the air and then at the feet of the intruders. The war veterans then razed the compound to the ground, stole goods and cash – a loss of over ZW$300 000. The matter was reported to the police on the same day.
A group of about 45 people made up of the Member in charge of the local station, Support Unit officers and war veterans, Central Intelligence Organisation officers Criminal Investigation's Department of Law and Order and the Asst. District Administrator, Mr Ntini arrived the next day to interview Mr Joubert about the incident.
The interview lead to Mr Joubert being assaulted by war veterans and Support Unit with sticks. He was also clubbed with a hammer and hit over the head several times while simultaneously being kicked and punched by the mob. He was then ordered to the police station until a higher ranking officer Superintendent Mitira arrived to advise him that he was being charged with attempted murder, arising from the incident at the scouts camp.
Mr. Joubert was then escorted to Inyathi Hospital where he spent the night, suffering from concussion, loss of sight and high blood pressure. On Thursday he appeared in court from his hospital bed and he was granted ZD $1 000 bail ordered to leave his passport. He was remanded to 10 September 2001.
Amidst all this turmoil, we were heartened by the positive statement made by His Excellency, Robert Mugabe, on the coming together of CFU with Government to participate in the Land reform programme by the disclosure of 911 thousand hectares of uncontested land for acquisition but the lawlessness has to stop.
This demonstrates the trust currently developing through interaction on the Joint Technical Team, comprising Zimbabwe Joint Resettlement Initiative (ZJRI) and Government, which we hope can lead to an internal resolution which will soon be implemented to restore Zimbabweans peace of mind. I am hopeful that this spirit of trust displayed will filter to all levels of Zimbabwe and we can once again begin to trust each other as we sow and reap together side by side.
ENDS…11th August 2001
For more information please contact
Jenni Williams Public Relations Newsmakers
Tel: 011 213 885 04-702269,776323
Email: prnews@telconet.co.zw / procomm@mweb.co.zw
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Zimbabwe looting 'costs farmers $3.8m' | |||||||
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A week of looting in Zimbabwe has cost white farmers more than $3.8 million, claims the Commercial Farmers Union It estimates that over 210 million Zimbabwean dollars worth of property has been lost in a week of ransacking and looting by mobs who have also assaulted scores of farm workers in Doma and Mhangura. Looters have made away with tractors, vehicles, fertiliser and other farming equipment, in several cases leaving farms almost entirely stripped. State television reported that common thieves had joined in the fray, with some coming from as far afield as Kariba in the northern tip of the country to carry off refrigerators and other household goods from abandoned farms. On Saturday, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe warned white farmers against attacking militants, a day after a court in Chinhoyi denied bail to 23 farmers who were charged with inciting public violence after clashes a week ago on an occupied farm in the area. And Provincial Governor Peter Chanetsa was adamant those farmers had no farms to go back to when they were released from jail. "We are taking these farms" he said. Over the last year supporters of President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party have invaded hundreds of white-owned farms, backing his drive to seize two thirds of the 30 million acres for redistribution to blacks. A CFU spokesman, who declined to be named for security reasons, said four farmers were briefly detained on Sunday before being released. Nine farmers have been killed in the violence that has accompanied the invasions since they started. Orchestrated unrest "This situation has been too organised, too well orchestrated to have been unplanned," Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) President Colin Cloete said. In a statement at the weekend, he said the chaos could only be stopped by political action. The chief police spokesman, Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena, said farmers were exaggerating the situation in Chinhoyi and that police were trying to stem the crisis despite accusations to the contrary. "Despite the CFU's position that we are not doing anything, by last night alone 12 people had been arrested in the Mhangura area and we have also recovered a substantial amount of property," Bvudzijena said. "The situation has been exaggerated. We are doing the best we can under the hostile environment the farmers themselves have created," he added. | |||||
From The Telegraph [UK]
Maude calls for action against
Mugabe
(Filed: 14/08/2001)
SHADOW foreign secretary Francis Maude has called for targeted sanctions against President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
Mr Maude called for Mr Mugabe to be excluded from the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Australia and demanded an international travel ban against the leader and his "murderous henchmen".
He also expressed concern over the England's cricket team's proposed tour of Zimbabwe later this year.
"If things continue to deteriorate as they are, there will be a safety issue for them and I think they will need to think very carefully about that," he said.
Mr Maude said it was important that action should be taken against the regime rather than the people of Zimbabwe.
From the Telegraph [UK]
Listening for the slow death of a life
(Filed: 14/08/2001)
A TELEGRAPH special correspondent flew yesterday to a farm in
Mashonaland West province to witness the plight of Zimbabwe's white
farmers.
THE aircraft's engine roared against the crosswind, a herd of cattle looked up from their parched pasture and one of Zimbabwe's persecuted white farmers emerged from a homestead surrounded by militant squatters.
As the plane bounced to a standstill on the dusty grass strip, Harold, a tobacco farmer of Scottish stock, came forward, eager to exchange news about the wave of farm occupations.
"Did you hear what happened to our neighbour?" he said from underneath a baseball cap stained with tractor oil and bleached by the sun. "They came on Saturday when he was at church and when he got back they were at the house, sitting on the verandah."
The thought of giving up his home to self-styled veterans of the independence war, who have been effectively sanctioned by President Robert Mugabe's government to rampage and loot, made him shake his weather-worn face slowly from side to side.
He said: "I don't know how long this can go on, I just don't know."
Inside the thatched farmhouse Harold and his wife Nikki (not their real names) were playing the dreadful waiting game that has taken over the lives of hundreds of white farmers across Zimbabwe during the past week.
Hour after hour they sit by the farm radio listening for word of any activity by the "vets". It is a nerve-racking existence, with tension building by the minute if a neighbour is late to check in.
Gunfire two nights ago brought them out into the garden. Was this the moment to grab the car keys they have kept under their pillows each night for the past month?
It was a false alarm. The "vets" were not attacking but indulging in a bit of poaching, shooting the impala, kudu and wildebeest in a neighbour's game compound.
It was all part of a growing climate of lawlessness in the country, with the police apparently under orders not to intervene.
The stakes appear to be higher than last year when the occupations began. Then the "vets" would enter the farms of white families and peg out plots for occupation by landless peasants.
Now they are not so interested in plots of land - they want property and will stop at nothing, helping themselves to furniture, television sets, clothes, anything they can pile on the back of stolen tractors.
It is not only the white farmers who suffer. The destruction of the working commercial farms robs tens of thousands of black farm workers of a living, adding to their less publicised plight.
Scores have been assaulted in the past few days, accused of being lackeys of their white employers. The Commercial Farmers' Union estimates that 28 have been murdered since the onset of the farm invasions in February.
The image of all white farmers in Zimbabwe being as rich as Croesus, an image carefully cultivated by Mr Mugabe, is wrong. A small proportion are wealthy but the vast majority are more modest, heavily mortgaged, and with no option but to stay put.
"I have not got a single dollar outside the country. It is all tied up in this farm," Harold said, sweeping his arm across 160 or so acres of mixed farmland. "Everything I have ever earned has gone back into this place so I have nothing else. We have no kids to look after us outside the country so where could we go?"
It was part of a forlorn calculation being made in farms across the country as the white farmers try to decide what action to take.
As a minority within a minority - Zimbabwe's 4,000 white farmers represent less than a quarter of Zimbabwe's whites, who represent 0.3 per cent of the population - there is little scope for militant defiance.
The consensus appears to be to try to weather the storm, not to attract the attention of the "vets" as individual farmers hope they might be able to cut a deal and be left alone.
One farmer invited a "vet" leader to fly over his farm. He took him as high as he could and showed how small the farm looked from the air. The "vet" agreed and moved his men elsewhere. But that was a rare respite.
The "vets" have invaded only one of Harold's two farms but this is scant solace. His tobacco seed beds have been prepared but he does not know whether he will go ahead with planting.
He returned inside to the radio, listening for the slow, creeping death of the white Zimbabwean farmers' way of life.
EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Octogenarian author Doris Lessing has launched a scathing attack on Robert Mugabe, president of her native Zimbabwe, accusing him of being a "black fat cat" who is driving the southern African nation to ruin.
The outspoken novelist, who left what was then Southern Rhodesia in 1949, told the Edinburgh Book Festival on Monday that Mugabe's policy of letting self-styled war veterans overrun white-owned farms would do little to help ordinary Zimbabweans.
"It's totally political, and has nothing to do with building a future for the poor old blacks who've got nobody to look after them," Lessing said.
Over the last year, supporters of Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party have invaded hundreds of white-owned farms as part of a drive to seize two-thirds of the 30 million acres he says are in the hands of whites, and redistribute them to blacks.
Lessing, who was in the Scottish capital to promote her latest book "The Sweetest Dreams", also had stern words for the British media for being too shy in their criticism of the increasingly erratic African leader.
"They know he's mad, but don't say so," Lessing said. "It's as if the press are frightened to say anything, when they should be saying 'We should stop this man.'"
Since last year, nine farmers have been killed in clashes with the so-called 'war veterans' of Zimbabwe's 1970s independence liberation war.
Lessing said Mugabe's policies could only end in economic disaster for a country described as 'the jewel of Africa' when it won independence from Britain in 1980.
"There'll be a famine and then we'll have to send in food. But the black fat cats don't care about the poor blacks. They just care about getting rich," she said.
Mugabe, who says his political and economic problems are a result of sabotage by opponents, has denied reports that Zimbabwe is facing food shortages and said the country's economy would never collapse.
Turning from the troubled politics of the country which formed the backdrop to her first novel "The Grass is Singing", Lessing read extracts from "The Sweetest Dreams", a novel set in the heady political optimism of 1960s Britain.
"The 1960s were dedicated to the sweetest dreams, the utopias... but that promise has failed," she said.
The story, which centres on a German woman who marries into the British establishment, was written as a replacement for the controversial third instalment of her autobiography, which risked ruffling too many feathers among Britain's high and mighty with its outspoken political views.
"Too many people would have been unhappy with what I said -- many are now very eminent," Lessing said.
The clashes between land invaders and white farmers in Chinhoyi last week represented a new threshold for communal conflict in Zimbabwe. Twenty-three farmers are now awaiting trial in prison after having being denied bail in the wake of skirmishes with Zanu-PF "war veterans". For the second time in two months, farmers had assembled a "reaction stick" to protect themselves. Both sides in the conflict employ the bitter lexicon of the Chimurenga War, evoking passions which as each day passes seem less and less susceptible to external diplomacy.
Neither the latest joint initiative by Commonwealth foreign ministers nor the threat of American sanctions are likely to deflect Robert Mugabe from the course he has taken to ensure himself victory in next year's Zimbabwean presidential elections. His own country's history is instructive: Ian Smith's Rhodesia survived 16 years of international ostracism and a decade of guerrilla war before he abdicated authority. By 1978, with half its farms affected by the insurgency and with most of its managerial workforce in uniform, Rhodesia was probably closer to the "meltdown" that the International Monetary Fund predicts for present-day Zimbabwe.
Of all the sources of pressure that brought about eventual Rhodesian capitulation, South African threats to withdraw economic support were certainly the most compelling. But Robert Mugabe has yet to experience anything resembling a threat from his soft-spoken neighbour, the President of South Africa. Although Thabo Mbeki laconically conceded in a BBC interview that Mr Mugabe wasn't listening to any advice from Pretoria, his spokesmen later insisted that South Africa was not contemplating any change in its policy of political dialogue and economic engagement
Two considerations explain the South Africans' reluctance to use the economic leverage they possess as Zimbabwe's main supplier of food, power and fuel. The public reason offered by foreign affairs spokesmen is that South African threats or sanctions would precipitate total economic collapse and a huge intensification of political conflict, events which would harm the region as a whole. As the situation in Zimbabwe deteriorates, this first rationale for restraint is probably becoming less compelling. Even so, Mr Mbeki will still be reluctant to adopt any course which will set him apart from pan-African opinion, particularly at a time when South Africa depends on consensus among African statesmen for its leadership role.
For the time being, therefore, Mr Mbeki will be glad to use the Commonwealth initiative as an alibi for inaction. Sooner or later, though, events will compel the South Africans to take a tougher line. "Meltdown" might be an overstatement but, with nearly a year to go to the presidential elections, pinning hopes on a democratic resolution to the crisis or a Zanu-PF palace-coup seems unrealistic. Neither are likely without external inducement. Too much harm may be done in the interval. In any case, if Robert Mugabe declares a state of emergency as he has threatened to, in response to US sanctions legislation, then the election won't happen until he has used martial law to destroy any organised opposition.
The consequences for the region will be catastrophic; lacking the capital resources for its own regeneration, it depends on foreign business confidence. If southern African leaders are prepared to tolerate total democratic breakdown in Zimbabwe, they can give up any prospect of fresh investment.
Already, Zimbabwe's economic plight is beginning to threaten the region's food security. Ten year's ago Zimbabwe was a net food exporter. Today it must import 800,000 tons of cereals to feed its population; this year's harvest will be down by 25 per cent from last year's. Tobacco exports are in sharp decline as well, making it harder for the country to pay for the food it will need to buy abroad.
Well managed land reform can increase productivity, but Zimbabwe's "fast track resettlement" of 2,500 farms has merely resulted in commercially productive land being transformed into squatter encampments incapable of feeding the cities which accommodate about a third of the population. Some 340,000 farm workers will lose their jobs if the government implements its threat to expropriate another 5,000 farms.
In the cities, 400 industrial companies closed doors in the past twelve months; unemployment, now at 40 per cent, is unprecedented. In July, a 70 per cent fuel price rise prompted a two-day general strike.
Protest has been relatively orderly so far; most commentators agree that violent political activism is still largely state sponsored and, moreover, located in the countryside. Zimbabwe's city dwellers have yet to witness on a large scale the food riots which analysts have been forecasting, though during the fuel strike bread delivery trucks were overturned and set alight.
Sooner or later, though, cross border migration and electoral aspirations will cease to act as safety valves and urban anger will explode. If that happens, the loyalty of Zimbabwe's already demoralised army will be put to its severest test. Helping peasants move house to white farmland may not be what soldiers expected when they joined up but it probably didn't cause them any moral anguish. Enforcing martial law against their kinsfolk in the townships will be a different matter.
Militarised political conflict in Zimbabwe – a real prospect when the government starts using soldiers to suppress civilian protest – is a threat which the region cannot ignore. Unofficial immigration across the Limpopo to South Africa is now running at about 100,000 a year.
Mr Mbeki is unlikely to issue public ultimatums, but Harare will soon learn that in a state of emergency, petrol, electricity and grain will require cash up front at commercial prices – and that deliveries may be subject to delays. The 200 holes in the border fence will be mended and there will be no more shopping visas issued to Zimbabweans at Beit bridge. South Africa will halt its negotiations to buy Zimbabwe's bankrupt state businesses. Discreet economic bullying might just be enough. Mr Mbeki must know this just as he knows that another year of Robert Mugabe will turn his African Renaissance into just another pipedream.
The writer is Professor of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
Violence on farms to blame for low production -
Henwood
Farmers, Minister in face-to-face debate
ZIMACE suspends operations, seeks legal advice
Kay wins court order on Chipesa Farm
Eco-tourism key to Southern Africa's economy
Violence on farms to blame for low production - Henwood
ZIMBABWEAN farmers have this year been unable to realise their full potential despite ample rainfall and many sectors have produced well below capacity due to the prevailing political and economic climate, and as a result, the country now faces food shortages.
Speaking at the official opening of the 58th Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) congress, the out going CFU President, Mr Tim Henwood, told delegates that while several reasons have been given for the reduced output, the major factor has been the state of lawlessness prevailing in the commercial farming areas.
Farmers have been prevented from planning and carrying out their business operations in the face of violence, threats and abuse on their farms, which has resulted in uncertainty and loss of confidence, He said
"We have all the ingredients for success and yet, after several seasons of good rains when our, larders should be full, because of the current political climate we face food shortages and reduced production." Mr Henwood said
He said for farmers to pursue profitable and sustainable agricultural production and trade there was need for the creation of confidence to invest with the knowledge that the investment is secure and that the rule of the land will be upheld and that the decisions of an independent judiciary will respected.
There had to be confidence too that our daily labours will be rewarded in a manner governed by sound economic principles and confidence from financial institutions and their customers that the environment in which they are operating is stable.
Mr Henwood said the overall farm viability was seriously threatened with input costs rising weekly and many farmers having difficulty in negotiating seasonal support from the banks. He said the interminable government lists of farms to be acquired had eroded bankers' confidence in the industry to the extent that most finance houses withdrew support immediately upon publication of the property concerned. However, he said, other players had stepped into the breach and were borrowing money to on-lend to farmers.
"Never before, even in the darkest days of the war of independence, have farmers or their workers had to face what they have been through this year, in terms of the violence, beatings, threats and orchestrated work stoppages and extreme provocation, without any notable support from the forces of law and order," he said.
In view of all these, he said, farmers have showed resilience. He said even attempts to undermine the leadership of the CFU and its senior executives failed.
He expressed hope that the Zimbabwe Joint Resettlement Initiative, mooted out of the CFU special congress in March, would yield positive results in resolving the land issue.
He however said the initiative would enable the country to engage the international donor community once more, without whose support successful land reform would not be possible.
Farmers, Minister in face-to-face debate
MEMBERS of Zimbabwe's Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) and Minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement, Dr Joseph Made, squared off to a face-to-face debate on a variety of issues concerning agriculture but mostly on the thorny issue of the controversial land reform programme at the union's 58th annual congress this week.
The farmers challenged Dr Made to act on the rogue so called war veterans who have significantly contributed to the slump in production by disrupting farming activities through threats and violence. They told Dr Made that while this was happening police watched from the sidelines despite appeals for help from the farmers. Farmers said they wanted to know why the war veterans were being allowed to take the law into their own hands.
However, Dr Made stunned farmers when he defended the war veterans. Amid audible sighs of disbelief, he claimed those who were causing havoc were not genuine war veterans but impostors as genuine war veterans were a disciplined lot.
"Surely our war veterans with the discipline they got in the struggle can not do that," he said
Farmers said while they acknowledged the need for land reform the redress the land imbalances the fast track land reform was not sustainable and not transparent as it was not properly planned and funded. The country was now facing maize shortages despite the assertions by Dr Made earlier in the year that the there would be no food shortages because the newly resettled farmers would produce about 600 000 tonnes of maize.
Dr Made said Zimbabwe was not the only country in the region that was facing shortages and that maize was now being used by some elements for political reasons.
Dr Made also said with the $15 billion input scheme for communal and resettled farmers, production for 2001/2002 season was set to increase with a record maize crop of 4,8 million tonnes expected.
CFU director, Mr Hasluck said he did not think the $15 billion referred to by Dr Made was available at all considering that the country was even failing to pay its debts running into billions of dollars among other things that also needed money. He said at the moment Grain Marketing Board needed over $6 billion, which it does not have to purchase maize.
Mr David Hasluck said 4 593 farms covering over 8 million ha of land have so far been listed for acquisition and farmers were now uncertain on the future. Other farmers said they did not understand the reasons behind the listing of almost all the farms for resettlement.
Dr Made said these farms were listed because most of them were not being fully utilised. He said each farmer should now approach his ministry and show why his farm should be spared. He said each farmer should only have that part of the land that he is fully utilising and relinquish the rest to government for resettlement.
"Who among you here can tell me they are fully utilising all the land they have? Dr Made asked.
He told farmers it was only fair that land dispossessed and land hungry people, from moral and economic points of views, are given a fair opportunity of utilising the resource that they have been long denied.
"You know our process based on the land identification committee. Make your representations as to the reasons why you think yours should be delisted," said Dr Made.
He said the land issue raises a lot of challenges for each farmer whose property has been designated. He urged those affected not to take the law into their own hands but to consult with his ministry to minimise a "head-on collision."
In his presentation to congress, Mr Hasluck, said land reform should be done in accordance to the law and "stick by our principles with a realistic view of long-term prospects". He said farmers should take all legal defences available to them and compromises that are reached "outside the law de facto become political gestures."
Dr Made then warned farmers that going to court would not stop the government from continuing with what it had already started. He said, "If you so desire to take the government to court in this noble exercise the government is left with no option except to defend our noble cause in the courts."
Cattle producers Association chairman, Mr Tim Reynolds, appealed to Dr Made to help the cattle industry. He said at the moment the Veterinary Services Department officials were being harassed and prevented from carrying out their duties of regulating cattle movement and expressed concern over the deteriorating situation in Save Conservancy and the Gonarezhou where veterinary fences were being cut and cattle being moved in and out. Mr Reynolds said this was threatening the EURO beef export quota.
Dr Made said the communal cattle needed alternative grazing land. He said communal people had the largest herds of cattle compared to commercial but little grazing land and until that was addressed such problems were bound to continue.
ZIMACE suspends operations, seeks legal advice
THE Zimbabwe Agricultural Commodity Exchange, Zimace a private marketing agency for agricultural produce, has suspended operations and is investigating the possibility of challenging in court the government ruling declaring maize and wheat controlled commodities.
Government issued Statutory Instrument 235A of 2001 on 16 July which declared maize and maize products, wheat and wheat products to be controlled products within Zimbabwe in terms of the Grain Marketing Board Act. This effectively made it illegal to buy, sell or move maize or wheat and their respective products within Zimbabwe other than to or from GMB depots.
In a statement entitled ""Free trade in Zimbabwe abolished" this week, Zimace chairman, Alan Burl said ; " We are currently seeking legal council as to the legitimacy of the legislation and plan to take the matter further."
But in the interim, he said: " it is not sustainable to continue operations at the exchange and it has been proposed that trade be officially suspended until the matter is resolved."
Mr Burl said Zimace was still trying to establish the motive for the new legislation, as it was unlikely to ameliorate the impending maize shortage in the country. "We have failed to establish the positive effects," he said: "There is a shortage of maize in the country and the new legislation will not improve the situation, if anything, it will deteriorate," Mr Burl said.
He expressed concern that there was no consultation between the responsible Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement and the industry as a whole. "It is unclear what exactly the objectives of the new legislation may be," he said. "Furthermore, there still remain many gray areas that need to be clarified." For instance, he noted, the industry was initially informed that the legislation was not retrospective and existing contracts would remain intact yet there have now been many cases where deliveries on such contracts have been halted with no apparent recourse.
Zimace was set up to operate an open market where buyers and sellers of agricultural products, including maize and wheat, could meet, through their brokers, to trade at transparent market prices, after the government liberalized agricultural commodity trade in 1993. The exchange has grown steadily since then and accounts got $3 billion in trade per annum.
Kay wins court order on Chipesa Farm
IAIN Kay, the Ruzawi River farmer brutally assaulted and left for dead by illegal squatters last year, has been granted a provisional High Court order preventing further illegal activity on his Chipesa Farm. The order was granted by High Court judge Mrs Justice Sandra Mungwira, and issued against police commissioner Augustine Chihuri, Mashonaland East Governor David Karimanzira, local provincial and district administrators, the local police and the Central Intelligence Organisation.
The order instructs all respondents to allow Mr Kay to continue with his normal farming operations and to prevent all further pegging and laying out of household plots on the property.
Last month, Iain Kay faced another harrowing invasion when self-styled war veterans forced their way into his home, driving about 120 farm workers ahead of them. Kay spent a nightmare weekend barricaded in one side of his home while war veterans chanted racist slogans from his dining room. Police stood by impassively throughout the invasion while the Mr Kay heard that he had 30 days to leave the property.
In the home with Kay were his son David and neighbours Kim Nielson and Trevor Steel who withstood the terror siege while so-called war veterans vandalised Kay's tobacco seedbeds, causing an estimated $600 000 worth of damage. Alongside the property senselessly damaged were experimental seedbeds for Kutsaga Research Station where top researchers were growing methyl bromide - free seedlings. The experimental seedbeds were destroyed completely, together with hundreds of metres of plastic tunnels and irrigation pipes.
The respondents were given 10 days from 30 July to respond to the order. If they fail to do so, the case will be heard unopposed by the High Court in Harare. Augustine Chihuri, who is named as the first respondent, has in the past openly declared his support for Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party.
Despite repeated threats and a brutal beating, Kay has said he will not leave the farm he was born on.
Eco-tourism key to Southern Africa's economy
THE Southern African region is unlikely to compete effectively in international markets without subsidies and will have to diversify to other alternatives where it has an unparalleled advantage, which is wildlife-based tourism.
Guest speaker at the 58th annual congress of the Commercial Farmers' Union, Dr David Cumming said there is enormous wealth in attractive landscapes, charismatic wild animals and plants. Although these were under pressure from expanding rural populations and settlement, these resources were still intact but presently disappearing in many parts of Zimbabwe.
A renowned environmentalist, Dr Cumming said, "A major opportunity exists for the region to diversify land use practices in marginal areas and encompass eco-tourism as a viable and sustainable primary land use."
He said Zimbabwe was one of the first countries to devolve resource access rights over wildlife to landowners and CAMPFIRE, played a significant role in stimulating similar development in the region. He said, "There were strong linkages between communal and commercials farm Safari hunting operations that saw safari hunting earn more foreign currency in the 1990s than the beef."
He said major initiatives in conquering poverty and conserving natural resources in Southern Africa will have to come from farmers and the agricultural industry and they will almost certainly have to become the springboard for industrialisation.
However, he said, the Southern African Region has yet to appreciate, let alone acknowledge that its development is constrained by rather weak natural resource base that is greatly in need of careful nurturing.
He said Southern Africa was a predominantly arid or semi arid region with uncertain rainfall averaging less than 750mm with recurrent but unpredictable droughts.
"It is clear that we have a variable and unpredictable climate in which low input and subsistence farming can not be relied upon to regularly produce adequate staple food," he said.
He said the soils of Southern Africa were geologically some of the oldest hence key nutrients had long since been depleted and the soils are mostly infertile. He said 66% of Southern Africa's soils have low or no agricultural potential.
Dr Cumming said there is a mismatch between the distribution of human populations and of land suitable for cultivation and the production of staple foods was not keeping pace with human population growth and there is the prevalence of human and animal diseases.
06 August 2001
Leadership, not PR
ZIMBABWE'S commercial farmers have chosen a new leader. It was a smooth transition, which is good, but it was also a sensible one. Colin Cloete, who was vice president, is now the union's president. William Hughes will remain as vice president, with Doug Taylor-Freeme joining the trio as the other vice president. The transition will ensure continuity while bringing in fresh blood in the form of Mr Taylor-Freeme, who showed considerable mettle as chairman of the oilseeds association.
Still, it's not enough for farmers to welcome the new without acknowledging the old. Tim Henwood will return to his farm in Banket after two bruising years as president. No leader in the history of organised agriculture in Zimbabwe endured the sustained pressure he suffered, though he did his job with honesty and integrity. Mr Henwood's critics say that he offered no solutions, no answers to the terrible plight farmers find themselves in. Of he course he didn't. Because there are no answers, still less solutions.
The honest thing to say is that between now and next year's presidential elections, precious little progress will be made. There will be talk, there may even be promises made (and quickly broken) and there will be reassurances. While all that is happening, Mr Mugabe will ensure, whatever the cost, that his Machiavellian plans to remain ensconced are implemented. Farmers will continue to endure threats and intimidation until the election.
This is a low level war, fought at one level on a public relations battleground. Farmers, for some reason, set great store by public relations, though public relations is little more than the art of lying and prevaricating, of putting an acceptable gloss on the unacceptable. Government is using every public relations trick in a special book used by pariah regimes from Baghdad to Bujumbura. To counter this, farmers need leadership, not PR. And leadership with the courage to admit that the immediate future looks bleak, but that in a year's time they will be able to resolve the crisis facing agriculture. It is a waiting game, a time to sit tight and accept that nothing much will change right now.
Mr Mugabe has a plan. Whatever the cost to Zimbabwe, he wants to win next year's presidential election and to that end he has brought anarchy to his country. To counter the negative effects of the anarchy, he has hired very expensive, if unprincipled, PR consultants in the USA. He uses deluded has-beens like Mr Andrew Young to promulgate the insane assertion that the Zimbabwean Crisis is a figment of the west's imagination, that there is nothing wrong with wholesale terror, intimidation, rape and murder to achieve one's goals.
Farmers need to understand that. But they also need to understand that having a plan is one thing, making it succeed quite another. Mr Mugabe's plan is a desperate one, and like many desperate plans, it's more likely to fail than succeed. That is where organised agriculture's hope lies - and no where else.
It is obvious that Mr Henwood understood all this, but that those who thought themselves "bigger and better" (to use his words) attempted to undermine his leadership, with near disastrous consequences for farmers. The fact of the matter is that Tim Henwood did his best, and in doing his best he maintained unity among farmers under impossible conditions. He also averted disaster, for it was always ZANU-PF's intention to topple the CFU leadership and divide farmers. "There are two ways of destroying a people. Either condemn them en bloc or force them to repudiate the leaders they adopted. The second is the worst." The words are Sartre's, who also fittingly said, "I hate victims who respect their executioners." Both are entirely apposite in today's context.
It will take strength to match Mr Henwood's to take farmers through to the election. And honesty, too. It'll also take brains, because Mr Mugabe is intelligent if nothing else and this isn't (nor ever was) a war that's going to be won in the sergeants' mess. Bravado and bombast won't achieve anything, nor will fulminating at a problem that won't go away until it's supposed to go away.
But there are many problems. While farmers are generally united, they are perhaps not quite united enough. There are still those who believe the problem can be talked through - and sadly some who believe it can be bought. There is no problem with talk, provided it costs nothing, but there are huge problems with buying oneself out of the crisis - not least the fact that it can only be a temporary measure. A resolution requires integrity, not the obfuscation of a PR merchant, and the strength of character to admit that, as of this moment, there will be no letting up of pressure on farmers. For almost two years, ordinary farmers have been begging for answers. It's time they were told there are none, though there will be in the future. The problem is that leadership is about politics, and politicians don't much like being bearers of bad news, or no news at all. Now that those farmers and businessmen who've been trotting around the country promising that agriculture's salvation lies in the arms of the ruling party have been discredited (though perhaps not sufficiently discredited), it's time for those who know that salvation lies only in surviving the next nine months to come out and say so.
Brian Latham
Editor- The Farmer
Internal links
Zimbabwe's police are helping rampaging supporters of President Robert Mugabe's ruling party to loot property worth an estimated £2m from white-owned commercial farms north-west of Harare, the farmers said yesterday.
The Zimbabwe Republic Police have often been accused of being used by Mr Mugabe's government to target political opponents. A spokesman for the Commercial Farmers Union in Chinhoyi said at least 80 white families had been evacuated from the area because of the increasing lawlessness and "police inaction" in dealing with the violence against farmers.
The spokesman confirmed a report by Zimbabwe's privately owned newspaper, The Daily News, that police officials helping the looting and police trucks were ferrying marauding supporters of the ruling Zanu-PF to these farms. The paper said its reporters had seen police vehicles being used in the "well-orchestrated" farm looting.
"The reason why we have had to evacuate so many families is precisely because of police inaction," said the farmers' spokesman, who requested anonymity. "The [police] are encouraging the lawlessness. They help them [the looters]. We have seen property being destroyed and farmers being assaulted in the presence of the police." Vehicles belonging to the police were seen loaded with stolen harvested crops, fertiliser and household furniture.
But a police spokesman, Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena, rubbished the reports of officers helping looters. "It's unfortunate for the Zimbabwean press and other people to suggest that we are participating in criminal activity," he said.
Mr Bvudzijena said police were doing all they could to help white farmers terrorised by the squatters, but said they did not have the resources to assign details to every individual white farmer. "If they (the white farmers) want, they can make their own extra private security arrangements but we are doing all we can to patrol the area and provide them with security within the resources at our disposal," said Mr Bvudzijena. Eighty-five officers had been brought to help curb the lawlessness, he said, and 47 people had been arrested over the violence against white farmers. That, he said, was ample evidence that police were doing something.
But one farmer from Chinhoyi said: "If they have been active, then can you get them to explain why 45 farms have been looted and why houses have been destroyed and property stolen on all these farms in broad daylight."
The violence in Chinhoyi started after the arrest of 23 white farmers last week. Their lawyer, Roseline Zigomo said she had filed an application in the High Court demanding their release on bail. She hoped a judge would be found to hear the case today.
Mr Mugabe is also having neighbour problems. In Blantyre, Malawi, African leaders voted him out as chairman of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community, saying he had made decisions without proper consultation.
* South African authorities plan to outlaw land seizures, making it a criminal offence to grab land for shelter or financial gain, in an effort to prevent Zimbabwe-style invasions.
| August | |
| Police vehicles used in farm looting spree | |
|
8/14/01 11:35:18 AM (GMT +2) | |
Staff Reporters
In well-orchestrated acts of lawlessness, in which police vehicles were allegedly used, suspected Zanu PF supporters and war veterans burned at least 10 houses and looted property worth millions of dollars from 40 farms in the Doma, Lions Den and Mhangura areas between Saturday and yesterday.
A Daily News team witnessed the looting of Mhungwe Farm in Mhangura yesterday afternoon. At Palm Tree Farm, eight people tried to stab Ronnie Strathers, 71, before other farmers came to his rescue. Another farmer who refused to be named said Kelvin Nel, of Temperly Farm in the same area, yesterday spotted a group of about 60 looters loading stolen bags of fertiliser onto a truck belonging to the farm. They fled when they realised they had been caught red-handed. The looters got away with $3 million worth of agricultural chemicals and 5 000 litres of diesel from the farm. One farmer said the main house at Kalami Farm in the Doma area was torched on Saturday and most of the farmers were forced to evacuate their wives and children to safety as the farm violence escalated. At least 60 families were evacuated from the Makonde District. The police spokesman, Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena, yesterday confirmed the lawlessness on the farms and said 12 people have been arrested in connection with the looting. Speaking on ZBC-TV, Bvudzijena said the police had increased the number of mobile support units in the area and he appealed “to the nation” to desist from looting. A spokesman for the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) on Saturday said: “There was an evacuation of women and children. Some flew out, others drove out. They were all accounted for.” The CFU said by Saturday, $167 million worth of buildings and property had been destroyed on nine farms by the rampaging mobs. On ZBC-TV on Sunday, John Nkomo, the Zanu PF national chairman and Minister of Home Affairs, said there was a criminal element among the war veterans and Zanu PF supporters spearheading the violence and looting on the farms. Yesterday, a farmer in the Mhangura area, who refused to be identified, said: “They are stealing maize and carrying away fertiliser. We hear that there are busloads that have been brought in. The situation is terrible.” “Some of them are driving around in police vehicles. They are taking furniture, television sets and video cassette recorders and throwing them into swimming pools.” On Saturday, a mob besieged Jeremy Brown in his house at Piringani Farm for about six hours, threatening to shoot him. He was rescued by colleagues after the police failed to respond to calls for help. At Chifundi Farm, the invaders broke into the house of the farm owner’s mother a widow in her 70s and looted nearly all the household property, before they were disturbed by other farmers. The current wave of attacks started last week as 21 farmers appeared in the Chinhoyi magistrates’ court charged with public violence after a clash with illegal settlers at Listonshields Farm in the Chinhoyi area. The farmers were remanded in custody to 24 August by senior magistrate Godfrey Gwaka last Friday. Lawyers representing the farmers failed to file an urgent bail application with the High Court because there was no one to receive their papers at the Attorney-General’s Office on Saturday.
| Zimdollar continues to depreciate | |
|
8/14/01 10:52:47 AM (GMT +2) |
By Ngoni Chanakira Business Editor
While the government
maintains that the Zimbabwe dollar is worth $55 against the United States
currency, the parallel market rate has skyrocketed to about $300 against the
greenback.
A stockbroker said last
week: “The United States dollar is actually chasing the new $500 note that is to
be released shortly by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ). The situation has
actually got out of hand.”
The new $500 note is to be introduced on 31
August. A $5 coin will also hit the streets on the same day, replacing the $5
note.
The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, in conjunction with
the RBZ, continues to peg the Zimbabwe dollar at $55 against the US currency,
even though all companies, government-influenced business organisations, such as
parastatals, as well as commercial banks, are using parallel market rates.
The National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (Noczim), the Zimbabwe Electricity
Supply Authority (Zesa) and the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) are all
facing billion-dollar debts because they have to source their money from the
parallel market.
Sagit Stockbrokers (Pvt) Ltd, in its commentary last week,
said: “All macroeconomic indicators point to a troubled economy, if the present
monetary policy stance is pursued. The official exchange rate market has
completely dried up as the government maintains the exchange rate at $55:1,
while the parallel rate is now more than $220:1. Sometime this year we pointed
out that unless the government periodically adjusted the official exchange rate
in line with macroeconomic developments the dollar would continue to depreciate
on the parallel market.”
Stockbrokers said speculation on the currency had
continued, reflecting the underlying shortage of foreign currency in the
economy.
They said all importers were facing the parallel market exchange,
which had been factored into prices of products with an import content.
“This has fuelled inflation as Zimbabwe imports much of her raw materials
and manufactured commodities,” Sagit said.
The Confederation of Zimbabwe
Industries (CZI) has already expressed its concern and dismay with the measures
announced by the RBZ on
25 June regarding the sharing of foreign currency
earned by exporters.
Exporters were forced to give Noczim and Zesa 25
percent of their earnings.
Zed Rusike, the outgoing CZI president, said: “It
seems the authorities are concentrating on the sharing of the dwindling foreign
exchange pie instead of taking measures to increase it, which is our only real
way of reviving the economy.”
Stockbrokers said it was saddening to note
that it now seemed there was “no workable solution in sight to the foreign
currency crisis and the balance of payments position continues to worsen”.
From BBC News, 14 August
US attacks Zimbabwe 'abuses'
The United States has strongly criticised Zimbabwe's Government for "serious human rights abuses" as the looting of white-owned farms continues. A State Department spokesman said the US was "deeply concerned about the level of political violence and intimidation in Zimbabwe", as well as the country's rapid economic decline. "The situation is taking a toll on southern Africa as a region and it's discouraging foreign investment, creating a potential for a refugee crisis and food shortages, and reducing trade within the region," he said. "We condemn the serious human rights abuses and growing climate of fear and intimidation for which the Government of Zimbabwe bears primary responsibility," he added. The statement followed mounting concern about events in northern Zimbabwe, where farming officials now say more than 50 properties have been attacked by marauding bands of government supporters. At least 300 people have fled white-owned farms. The Commercial Farmers' Union CFU said it had held frantic talks with Zimbabwe's police to try and stop the anarchy around the northern town of Chinhoyi. On Monday there were reports of a slight improvement in the situation, after police and paramilitary units moved into the area.
But CFU president Colin Cloete told Reuters news agency it would take time before white families returned. "It is still not safe. Those people will not go back until they get some sort of assurance," he said. Earlier there had been reports of squatters breaking into houses, stealing and then setting fire to property. Throughout Zimbabwe's land crisis the police have been criticised for failing to stop the encroachments onto white-owned farms, which are backed by the Zimbabwean Government. But police said on Monday that they had increased their patrols, arrested 12 looters and had recovered substantial property in the area. Mr Cloete told the BBC he had issued an impassioned appeal to the government to act swiftly to restore law and order. But BBC correspondent Rageh Omaar says the Chinhoyi region has become so volatile and dangerous over the past week that independent Zimbabweans and foreign journalists are finding it virtually impossible to gain access. The trouble in Chinhoyi began last week after the arrest of a group of white farmers accused of beating up government supporters who had invaded a farm belonging to a white farmer. The farmers are in jail awaiting a court appearance on Tuesday.
Last week, the US Senate approved and passed on to Congress a bill that threatens sanctions unless the Zimbabwean Government respects democratic rule and law and order, and carries out a legalised land reform programme. President Mugabe has denounced the sanctions threat as racist and aimed at thwarting his efforts to "correct colonial imbalances". Zimbabwe has been plunged into political and economic crisis for the past 18 since a government-backed campaign of land seizures began. Many occupations have been carried out by self-styled war veterans. The government has targeted more than two-thirds of the land owned by whites - some 4,600 farms - for confiscation. The land invasions are widely seen as a ploy by Mr Mugabe to overcome the threat of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, with presidential elections due by 2002.
From The Times (UK), 14 August
Farmers driven off by 'orgy of banditry'
Harare/London - White farmers in Zimbabwe suffered a fresh round of plunder and violence yesterday as more than 250 pro-Government militants ransacked properties in the northwest. Ninety families, totalling about 300 men, women and children, have been evacuated from the farming district around the town of Chinhoyi, 75 miles north of Harare. Nearly £2.8 million-worth of tractors, vehicles and other farming equipment was stripped from a number of farms in the area. "My farm was one of the first to be trashed," one farmer said. "A 250-strong mob arrived at the farm on tractors stolen from other properties. They went through my house from top to toe, smashing everything in their sight. Six of my dairy cows were butchered with axes," he said. "They made our workers join in. Anyone who refused was beaten up. My foreman was left with a broken arm. Then they set fire to the bush behind my house. The police made no arrests for destruction of property or stock theft. About 28 of the 90 farms in the area have been trashed so far. There is tonnes of farm equipment lying about all over the place. It’s complete chaos."
Another farmer said that scores of black workers had been assaulted by the war veterans. Farm documents were scattered or burnt in what appeared to be an attempt to prevent the owners from resuming production. "What couldn’t be loaded on to tractors, trucks and even donkey carts was destroyed or set on fire in an orgy of banditry," he added. The Rev Deon Van Dyk, a local clergyman, inspected four of the farms belonging to his parishioners in the Mhangura area, near Chinhoyi. "Not a single piece of furniture is left. Combine harvesters have been trashed. Seed and fuel has been scattered everywhere," he said. "Twenty-eight houses in the area have totally gone - just gone. The farmers are completely traumatised by what has happened to them. Yet not one has fired a shot in anger."
More than 100 of the 400 farms in the Chinhoyi-Mhangura-Doma area have been abandoned in the week since 21 farmers were detained for coming to the aid of a besieged neighbour. Fresh approaches will be made to judges today for their release. Nearly all of Zimbabwe’s 5,500 white-owned farms, totalling 30 million acres, have been designated for seizure.
From The Financial Times (UK), 14 August
Zimbabweans seek way out of chaos
Harare - Heroes weekend in Zimbabwe's capital of Harare could not have been quieter. It is school holidays; the restaurants are crowded; families are enjoying the clear skies and warm sun - idyllic weather for golf or tennis. Yet just 100km away in the commercial farming districts of Chinhoyi, Doma and Mhangura, 350 people have fled their homes under threat from so-called war veterans said to be high on alcohol and drugs. Those who read the state-owned media or rely on state radio and television - the vast majority of the country's 13m people - have a very different idea of what is happening in Chinhoyi than the professional and middle classes. These people read the website ZWNews on the internet or tune in to the World Service of the BBC, the Voice of America or CNN, BBC and Sky satellite television channels. While attention has been focused on the plight of white farmers, political analysts regard their difficulties as an irrelevance when compared to the crisis confronting the black majority.
The conversation at dinner tables and cocktail parties – black and white - in Harare's plush northern suburbs focuses on decisions to stay or go; start a new life elsewhere or find some kind of investment that offers a return approaching an inflation rate of 70 per cent and rising. Zimbabwe's dwindling white citizens are pawns in a much wider game, say analysts. Although 5,000 white farmers own two-thirds of the prime agricultural land in the economy, recent events demonstrate just how powerless they really are. Undeniably wealthy, they stand to lose everything unless the rule of law is recognised, say observers. At most there are 70,000 whites left in Zimbabwe - the peak was 270,000 in the mid-1970s. A large proportion is elderly. The number of economically active whites is no more than 25,000, with a growing number of them expatriates. Among professionals, black and white, there is a sense that the presidential election next March will mark a watershed. "If Mugabe wins," says a white farmer, "I am out of here." He speaks for many, many others.
But it is the majority who do not have that luxury of choice for whom, analysts say, a Mugabe victory would mean more misery, more unemployment, more Aids and more poverty. Local analysts are critical of the international media that focuses on the 70,000, many of whom can and will move on. They complain about the little attention that is paid to the 13m who will suffer as the economy slides towards oblivion. Across Harare, in the high density townships, an opposition member of parliament tells of a visit to his constituency and how he could scarcely believe just how many people were crammed into a single room - a classic case of what the World Bank refers to as "urbanisation without growth".
Zimbabwe has the world's third highest adult Aids infection rate - one adult in four is HIV-positive. Yet public spending on health has been cut by a third in real terms this year. A black university lecturer who has just taken up a post at a South African university tells how his wife, a registered nurse, will go to live in England with their young baby, where she can earn far more than in Zimbabwe. He, too, will be much better off at a South African university than at home. Many black professionals are, in Zimbabwean parlance, "taking the gap" - seeking jobs elsewhere where they can earn enough to be able to buy a home, bring back a car and educate their children in what they call "the world after Bob". One of the top accountancy groups says it is losing black professionals at "a frightening rate". An engineering consultancy group says it has to pay a rising proportion of benefits in US dollars to keep staff, black as well as white.
From The Times (UK), 14 August
England cricketers urged to cancel tour
The violence and plunder sweeping Zimbabwe have plunged into doubt both England’s cricket tour to the country and Robert Mugabe’s participation in the Commonwealth summit this autumn. Zimbabwe’s white farmers suffered fresh attacks and looting yesterday as more than 250 pro-government militants swarmed through the north-west farming district around the town of Chinhoyi. Ninety families have been evacuated from the area, where £2.8 million worth of tractors, vehicles, and other equipment have been destroyed. A Foreign Office spokesman said that if the situation did not change, it would be "problematic" for Mr Mugabe, the Zimbabwean President, to take his place alongside the Queen and Tony Blair at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Brisbane on October 6. "We expect this to be a difficult issue," he added.
On the fate of England’s five-match one-day international series against Zimbabwe, scheduled for this autumn, the spokesman said: "We are in close touch with the cricket board. The situation is being monitored." Gareth Thomas, the Labour MP and secretary of the all-party parliamentary sports group, has called for England to pull out of the tour. "To play cricket matches in a country where the Government is clearly condoning violence against its opponents must be questionable. Unless the situation improves dramatically this tour should be cancelled." John Read, for the England and Wales Cricket Board, said: "We are still planning to go ahead but this is being reviewed daily. We will be guided by the Foreign Office." The US entered the international debate about Zimbabwe yesterday. "We remain deeply concerned about the level of political violence and intimidation in Zimbabwe and that country’s rapid economic decline," a State Department spokesman said. "We condemn the growing climate of fear and intimidation."
From The Independent (UK), 13 August
This spiralling crisis in Zimbabwe threatens the future of Africa
By Tom Lodge
Migration and electoral aspirations will cease to act as safety valves and urban anger will explode
The clashes between land invaders and white farmers in Chinhoyi last week represented a new threshold for communal conflict in Zimbabwe. Twenty-three farmers are now awaiting trial in prison after having being denied bail in the wake of skirmishes with Zanu PF "war veterans". For the second time in two months, farmers had assembled a "reaction stick" to protect themselves. Both sides in the conflict employ the bitter lexicon of the Chimurenga War, evoking passions which as each day passes seem less and less susceptible to external diplomacy. Neither the latest joint initiative by Commonwealth foreign ministers nor the threat of American sanctions are likely to deflect Robert Mugabe from the course he has taken to ensure himself victory in next year's Zimbabwean presidential elections. His own country's history is instructive: Ian Smith's Rhodesia survived 16 years of international ostracism and a decade of guerrilla war before he abdicated authority. By 1978, with half its farms affected by the insurgency and with most of its managerial workforce in uniform, Rhodesia was probably closer to the "meltdown" that the International Monetary Fund predicts for present-day Zimbabwe.
Of all the sources of pressure that brought about eventual Rhodesian capitulation, South African threats to withdraw economic support were certainly the most compelling. But Robert Mugabe has yet to experience anything resembling a threat from his soft-spoken neighbour, the President of South Africa. Although Thabo Mbeki laconically conceded in a BBC interview that Mr Mugabe wasn't listening to any advice from Pretoria, his spokesmen later insisted that South Africa was not contemplating any change in its policy of political dialogue and economic engagement.
Two considerations explain the South Africans' reluctance to use the economic leverage they possess as Zimbabwe's main supplier of food, power and fuel. The public reason offered by foreign affairs spokesmen is that South African threats or sanctions would precipitate total economic collapse and a huge intensification of political conflict, events which would harm the region as a whole. As the situation in Zimbabwe deteriorates, this first rationale for restraint is probably becoming less compelling. Even so, Mr Mbeki will still be reluctant to adopt any course which will set him apart from pan-African opinion, particularly at a time when South Africa depends on consensus among African statesmen for its leadership role.
For the time being, therefore, Mr Mbeki will be glad to use the Commonwealth initiative as an alibi for inaction. Sooner or later, though, events will compel the South Africans to take a tougher line. "Meltdown" might be an overstatement but, with nearly a year to go to the presidential elections, pinning hopes on a democratic resolution to the crisis or a Zanu PF palace-coup seems unrealistic. Neither are likely without external inducement. Too much harm may be done in the interval. In any case, if Robert Mugabe declares a state of emergency as he has threatened to, in response to US sanctions legislation, then the election won't happen until he has used martial law to destroy any organised opposition.
The consequences for the region will be catastrophic; lacking the capital resources for its own regeneration, it depends on foreign business confidence. If southern African leaders are prepared to tolerate total democratic breakdown in Zimbabwe, they can give up any prospect of fresh investment. Already, Zimbabwe's economic plight is beginning to threaten the region's food security. Ten year's ago Zimbabwe was a net food exporter. Today it must import 800,000 tons of cereals to feed its population; this year's harvest will be down by 25 per cent from last year's. Tobacco exports are in sharp decline as well, making it harder for the country to pay for the food it will need to buy abroad.
Well managed land reform can increase productivity, but Zimbabwe's "fast track resettlement" of 2,500 farms has merely resulted in commercially productive land being transformed into squatter encampments incapable of feeding the cities which accommodate about a third of the population. Some 340,000 farm workers will lose their jobs if the government implements its threat to expropriate another 5,000 farms. In the cities, 400 industrial companies closed doors in the past twelve months; unemployment, now at 40 per cent, is unprecedented. In July, a 70 per cent fuel price rise prompted a two-day general strike.
Protest has been relatively orderly so far; most commentators agree that violent political activism is still largely state sponsored and, moreover, located in the countryside. Zimbabwe's city dwellers have yet to witness on a large scale the food riots which analysts have been forecasting, though during the fuel strike bread delivery trucks were overturned and set alight. Sooner or later, though, cross border migration and electoral aspirations will cease to act as safety valves and urban anger will explode. If that happens, the loyalty of Zimbabwe's already demoralised army will be put to its severest test. Helping peasants move house to white farmland may not be what soldiers expected when they joined up but it probably didn't cause them any moral anguish. Enforcing martial law against their kinsfolk in the townships will be a different matter.
Militarised political conflict in Zimbabwe - a real prospect when the government starts using soldiers to suppress civilian protest - is a threat which the region cannot ignore. Unofficial immigration across the Limpopo to South Africa is now running at about 100,000 a year. Mr Mbeki is unlikely to issue public ultimatums, but Harare will soon learn that in a state of emergency, petrol, electricity and grain will require cash up front at commercial prices - and that deliveries may be subject to delays. The 200 holes in the border fence will be mended and there will be no more shopping visas issued to Zimbabweans at Beit bridge. South Africa will halt its negotiations to buy Zimbabwe's bankrupt state businesses. Discreet economic bullying might just be enough. Mr Mbeki must know this just as he knows that another year of Robert Mugabe will turn his African Renaissance into just another pipedream.
The writer is Professor of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
