Mandebvhu Talks “Zimbabwe”…

I have just seen a report on the Zimbabwean election on BBC News 24 - and I will endeavour to find the link if they have made it available online. (EDIT: The link to the video is here - but for how long, I have no idea!)

In the report, Mugabe states: “We taught Britain democracy - through the barrel of a gun…”

I ask you! The statement is an oxymoron… I say no more.

Take care.

‘debvhu

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President Mugabe has warned the MDC against harbouring anarchist ambitions in the event of defeat on Saturday saying such impudent adventures will be met with the full wrath of the law.

Cde Mugabe, who was addressing thousands of ZANU PF supporters at Nyanga Country Club yesterday, cited utterances by MDC MP for St Mary’s Job Sikhala whom he said announced that the opposition would embark on Kenya-style disturbances if ZANU PF wins.

Similar sentiments have also been made by MDC faction leader Morgan Tsvangirai, and faction spokesperson Nelson Chamisa, who were quoted as saying if ZANU PF wins, Kenya would look like a picnic.

The inflammatory statements, which have been condemned by progressive people countrywide, prompted the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Cde Patrick Chinamasa, to lodge a complaint with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, saying such utterances were tantamount to intimidating the electorate.

Kenya was thrown into turmoil after the opposition Orange Democratic Movement refused to accept the outcome of presidential elections that retained incumbent President Mwai Kibaki of the Party for National Unity. The post-election violence claimed over 1 500 lives and displaced over 650 000 others, many of whom fled to neighbouring countries, particularly Uganda.

“Zvino tinoda kuvati ivo veMDC, makabvuma kuiswa makasho muhuro, mutambo wenyu ngaunake. Tiri kunzwa vamwe venyu, vana Job Sikhala vachiti ah ZANU PF ikahwina tichaita mhere-mhere yekuKenya, zviitei muone, zviitei muone. Hatitambe, kana muchiyanzva maBritish enyu, muchazviona, mukangozviita izvozvo. We want to see you do it.

“Tinoda runyararo munyika muno, toda kuti vanhu vavhote murunyararo but no nonsense after victory. Tinoda peace now, peace tomorrow, vanhu vaite mabasa avo zvakanaka. When you join in a political fight by way of an election, you must be prepared to lose. You will win some seats, you will lose some.

“If you lose more seats, others win more than they lose. You must accept it. If ZANU PF wins you must accept it, if you win we will accept. We have accepted it all along. Muchihwina mumatowns, hatina kumbofa takaramba. There was never an occasion when we said you did not win. But imi munoda to tell lies, lies ‘there has been rigging’. Ndivo vakauya with the language of rigging. There was no language of rigging in this country until the MDC,” Cde Mugabe said to applause from the crowd.

Police have since declared zero tolerance for politically motivated violence, and have held anti-violence marches in Harare and Marondera, in addition to launching a blitz on all forms of violence. They have also warned all political parties to respect the outcome of the elections or face the full force of the law.

Cde Mugabe said MDC leaders were speaking the language of their masters who have since pre-judged the election. The EU recently issued a statement claiming the electoral environment was not conducive for free and fair elections, a claim that has been repeated ad nauseum by their ambassadors accredited to Zimbabwe prompting analysts to say the Westerners were running scared after sensing a ZANU PF victory.

“We know these are the lies they borrow from their masters, because their masters now are saying the elections will not be free and fair. The damn liars, devilish liars that they are. They never tell the truth, never the truth in Number 10 Downing Street, never the truth in Washington, about us, never ever,” Cde Mugabe said.

Cde Mugabe said the MDC had adopted the culture of lies mastered by their handlers in the West who never tell the truth about Zimbabwe, the same way they were lying about the illegal sanctions they imposed, which sanctions they claimed were targeted at top ZANU PF and Government leaders.

Cde Mugabe told the gathering that the sanctions - that were imposed at the instigation of the MDC - were behind the socio-economic hardships people are facing. He said no British or American companies, apart from those already here, are allowed to conduct business with Zimbabwe, the same way American officials at multilateral lending institutions were instructed to vote against the extension of any credit to Zimbabwe.

Despite this, Cde Mugabe said, Government would continue working to improve people’s livelihoods.

The Look East Policy, he said, had since begun to bear fruit as evidenced by improved foreign currency inflows.

He said the Westerners were also looking East, and found themselves in a Catch-22 situation since they could not bar Zimbabwe from accessing ‘the goods their companies were producing in the East.’

Cde Mugabe chronicled the critical role played by Manicaland in the liberation struggle, saying the province that gave the nation luminaries like the late national heroes Cde Herbert Wiltshire Chitepo and Chief Rekayi Tangwena had a duty to safeguard their legacy by voting overwhelmingly for ZANU PF on Saturday.

Our Mutare Bureau reports that at his second star rally, attended by thousands of supporters, at Sakubva Stadium in Mutare, Cde Mugabe said Zimbabweans must reject Western-sponsored opposition parties because their masters were the initiators of the socio-economic problems the country is facing.

He said Britain and Australia were bankrolling the opposition in a bid to effect regime change following a fallout over land, and that Britain and Australia had since confirmed pumping U$18 million and £3 million into the opposition coffers.

“We must deliver the final blow against the British on March 29. We are voting against the British, not the MDC, which is the puppet of British.

“We are under siege and they are desperate for a regime change because we took our land. The land now belongs to its rightful black owners,” said President Mugabe.

“MDC is a creation of the West. It was formed to reverse the land reform. It is not our fault, but when (Mr) Blair refused to honour his country’s obligation to fund the land reform, we said, ah waramba nemari, gara nemari yako, keep your money and we take our land,” said President Mugabe.

He said while ZANU PF and Zimbabwe owed their history in the liberation struggle that claimed the precious blood of the likes of Herbert Chitepo, Josiah Tongogara and Josiah Ziyapapa Moyo, among thousands who perished at Nyadzonia, Chimoio and Tete in Mozambique, it was shocking to note that some cadres had abandoned it at the instigation of the West.

“Kuuya kwamaita kufuratira kupoya kwakaitwa musango naSimba Makoni naDumiso (Dabengwa). Inga kana mudanga mombe dzinopoya wani, hamungaputse dangaka nekuti dzapoya, danga rinogara riripo. VaMutasa (Didymus), tinonzwisisa shungu dzenyu kuti sei zvakadai izvizvi zviri kuitika kuno kuManicaland kunove ndiko kwakabva magamba akaita saVaChitepo.

“You should not cry much because Makoni is a minor, aitove zvake kuchikoro vamwe vari kuhondo,” said President Mugabe.

He also attacked Britain for internationalising a bilateral conflict which culminated in the imposition of sanctions by its Western allies against Harare.

He said the sanctions were disguised as targeted, when they were aimed at punishing the country and suffocating it economically.

President Mugabe said although the imposition of sanctions was a desperate bid to coerce the people’s revolution into backtracking, it dismally failed to achieve its desired objectives.

“Knowing that they are staring defeat, the British are prejudging that the election will not be free and fair. Why are they not going to be free and fair? Lies, lies, these devils never know the truth. You can never go into an agreement with them, they are hypocrites.

“They devised painful ways of punishing us, sanctions and sanctions. They imposed sanctions saying there is no democracy, there is no rule of law, and there is no respect of human rights and property rights. Our fundamental differences emanated from the deadlock on land. They pretend that the sanctions are targeted, but have crippled trading, investment and balance of payments. They are not targeted, but meant to hurt our country. We are in a war situation, this is a time to fight, not pleasure,” said President Mugabe.

Cde Mugabe commissioned 23 buses, the first tranche of 35, to be distributed to districts throughout the province.

(Source)

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A Johannesburg helicopter pilot has been arrested in Zimbabwe shortly before he was due to transport presidential hopeful Simba Makoni on his campaign trail and is still in police custody, his employer said.

“He is at Harare central police station where he is being detained,” said Wessel van den Bergh, chief executive officer of ATS aviation services.

The pilot, British citizen Brent Smythe, was due to ferry Makoni to various constituencies in Zimbabwe over the next two days and was expecting to take off from an airfield north-west of the city at 7am on Tuesday, Van den Bergh said.

“He sent me an SMS just after seven saying ’please help, the police have arrested me’,” Van den Bergh told Sapa.

The helicopter “worth millions” was also impounded and Van den Bergh was still trying to establish why Smythe was arrested because he believed all the paperwork was in order.

He received a later SMS from Smythe saying he was at the Harare police station and the police had a notice to detain him.

Van den Bergh said the British Embassy and the South African Department of Foreign Affairs were assisting.

Smythe’s family was informed of the situation and the company had been informed that he was unharmed.

(Source)

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TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE SECURITY FORCES
(Police, intelligence services, youth brigades, prison warders and army personnel)

We the PEOPLE of Zimbabwe, both inside and outside the country call on YOU as our defenders and protectors to exercise your power and role in Zimbabwe, in the interest of your mothers, fathers, siblings and children.

We are days away from another election. The hope and expectation of every Zimbabwean is that this election will herald the beginning of a life of dignity and quality. The political elite is hopeful that YOU will protect their positions and maintain the status quo. The people of Zimbabwe are hopeful that YOU will support their yearning for change.

You have heard your commanders declare that they would not support and salute anyone other than the current president. But it is this President and his elite that have made the lives of you, your family and all of us, a daily misery. The security establishment holds the key to what a post election Zimbabwe will look like, and whether reconstruction and development will take hold. You are recognized as a key force in Zimbabwe that holds the balance of power. It is YOU that can ensure an environment that is conducive for the reconstruction of Zimbabwe.

You hold an extreme amount of power. Power that can be abused and manipulated, as has been done in the past, to hurt, intimidate and further subjugate the ordinary people of our country. As sons and daughters of Zimbabwe, who hold a position of strength and power, we call on you:

ACT RESPONSIBILY and HONOURABLY

DEFEND YOUR PEOPLE, NOT THE POLITICAL ELITE

YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE THE SITUATION IN ZIMBABWE

It is not too late to refuse to be used as pawns by those who hold no allegiance to you and your families and whose only interest is in their own personal greed and ambition.

Show your support and allegiance to the people of Zimbabwe.

ACCEPT the will of the people as manifested through the electoral process, irrespective of the outcome.

REFUSE to be party to any form of vote-rigging and underhand attempts at manipulating the results of the forthcoming election.

REFUSING to intimidate, harass and carry out acts of violence. Go against the orders of your commanders. Lay down your arms and rally behind the people of Zimbabwe to foster reconstruction and development.

Your role as defenders and protectors in the post-election period is most critical, especially where and when the needs and demands of people are not met. PROTECT the people of Zimbabwe and not the narrow interests of the greedy political elite.

USE YOUR POWER WISELY, BE COUNTED AS THE TRUE DEFENDERS OF THE INTERESTS AND ASPIRATIONS OF THE PEOPLE OF ZIMBABWE.

DR LOVEMORE MADHUKU
00263912286804
0027827794565

(Source: via email)

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Hilton Takundwa died an old man in his own bed - the only part of this tale that is not a tragedy. On Easter morning his wife Winfildah got up to make the breakfast and Hilton to pray. “Leave me a while so I can speak to my God,” he told her.

Then he got up from his knees and lay back down on his bed. “Now I must rest a while.”

When I arrived that afternoon, Hilton was dead. Inside his filthy bedroom, his body lay under an ancient furred brown blanket on the mattress where he and Winfildah had slept. She crouched on the floor beside the bed, her blind eyes lit with tears.

Next door in the slum dwelling’s only other room, the family sat fretting over what to do. Tendai, Hilton’s son, had just returned from the undertaker where he went to plead for time to pay the Z$300 million it would cost to take his father’s body to the mortuary.

He returned with not only a refusal but worse news yet. In three days the price had risen threefold to Z$1 billion, a mere £12 at black-market rates.

“It’s the fuel increase,” he said in despair. Their father’s body would stay where it was.

Hilton Takundwa had cheated the odds to live until yesterday, stretching his life out for a full 74 years, exactly twice the average life expectancy for a Zimbabwean male.

But as the years stretched on so the price of death rose until his family could no longer afford to send him with dignity to his grave.

This is Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe on the eve of this weekend’s historic elections; a land of empty shelves and broken hearts where annual inflation runs at 100,000 per cent, turning life into a struggle to survive and death a struggle to afford.

Four months ago the highest denomination note available was Z$200,000. Now it is Z$10 million.

Money earned one day melts into nothing the next and basic commodities are so scarce and expensive that housewives buy carved-off slivers of soap instead of bars and cooking oil is sold by the spoonful not the litre.

The Takundwa family were never rich but they got by. Hilton and Winfildah’s three sons worked in textile and canning factories and earned a basic wage.

Ten years ago their youngest son lost his job and committed suicide. Three years after that the other two were laid off.

Diabetes cost Winfildah her sight six years ago, not long after Mugabe’s land reform programme started in what was once the breadbasket of southern Africa.

None of the family have had a regular job since, scraping by on profits from selling vegetables by the roadside or mixing up sugar, water and colourings to make a crude soft drink to sell in plastic bags.

Hilton scraped together the cash to buy diabetes medication for himself and his wife. They used to get their treatment free but last year had to start paying.

This month Hilton had gone to the hospital to beg for government assistance. The Takundwas had no family abroad to help them as their luckier neighbours do.

A quarter of the population have left the country as the economy has crumbled and one in three families relies on remittances from relatives abroad. Once it was for extras - school uniforms and books. Now it is for the most basic food.

“Life is very, very hard for us,” Winfildah tells me, her cloudy eyes darting in the gloom. It was not always this way. When she and Hilton married in 1965 their wedding was a big one, a traditional tribal gathering, with hundreds of guests feasting. Her face breaks into a smile as she recalls the day.

“There was a cake and chicken, rice and drinks,” she remembers. “Oh it was very fine.” What was Zimbabwe like back then, I ask. Her reply throws me for an instant: “Rhodesia, oh it was beautiful, we could buy all the food we needed.”

Then her eyes filled with tears. “Zimbabwe, life is very hard. Now I’m crying. You can’t even buy a bar of soap. If Mugabe stays it will be worse, even worse than now.”

Zimbabweans are finally daring to dream that might happen. But for the Takundwas, the immediate future looks bleak. Winfildah still needs medication for her diabetes; how much she doesn’t know, but whatever it is, she cannot afford it.

“My husband bought it for me, from the money he got from selling the drinks. Now he is gone, I am desperate. I don’t know how I will buy it now.”

Tendai comes in to the room and sits on the bed, next to his father’s corpse, shame written on his face. He has returned from going round the neighbours, begging for contributions to have his father’s body taken away.

They are sympathetic, but he is empty-handed. The body will have to stay.

The flies were already beginning to circle as we left, Winfildah still sitting in the gloom. Just up the road, stonemasons were hard at work chiselling names into the grave stones that Hilton would never have.

“In loving memory of Father, Benjamin Chimalizeni,” read one, but the dates were missing, blank spaces where the masons had etched the words “Born” and “Died”.

Benjamin Chimalizeni was still alive, it transpired, but his family had bought the gravestone knowing that they would not be able to afford it if they waited until he died.

I flipped through my notebook to where I had written down Hilton’s birthdate from his identity card. “23.3.34”. It was his birthday. Hilton had died on his 74th birthday but no one had told us or even remembered. They were too busy trying to survive.

Catherine Philp and Richard Mills paid for the funeral. It cost £12.

Worthless money

- Hyperinflation occurs when the price of goods and services increases at a rate so fast as to render the currency essentially valueless

- The most severe month of hyperinflation occurred in Hungary in July 1946 when prices increased by 4.19 quintillion per cent (419 followed by sixteen zeros)

- In the same year the Hungarian National Bank issued a 10 quintillion pengo note (one followed by 19 zeros)

- During the hyperinflation episode in Germany from 1922 to 1923, the Weimar Republic printed postage stamps with a face value of one billion marks, as prices doubled every two days

- In Yugoslavia prices increased by 5 quadrillion per cent between October 1, 1993, and January 24, 1995

(Source)

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ZNU 113 released. In today programme I look at the case of police officers being imprisoned for 2 weeks for allegedly supporting the MDC, whilst the top cop in the land freely supports ZANU PF, and also the MDC’s decision not to pay any debt incurred by the Mugabe government if it wasn’t for the betterment of the country. I also look at “Charlie Wilson’s War” and compare it to Rhodesia, and I also question Makoni’s inclusion of himself when registering outrage at Operation Murambatsvina.

The show can be heard on The Bearded Man blog, or in the multiplayers in the right hand sidebar of that page, or here, or downloaded from here.

My Odeo page holds all 113 programmes, should you ever wish to listen to any show.

Take care.

‘debvhu

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I speak to many people all over the world. Some know about the situation in Zimbabwe, some lived there, and even more lived there before it was Zimbabwe. One such soul mentioned the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War” to me and it piqued my interest.

First a very brief synopsis from IMDB: “In the early 1980s, Charlie Wilson is a womanising US congressional representative from Texas who seemed to be in the minor leagues, except for the fact that he is a member of two major foreign policy and covert-ops committees. However, prodded by his major conservative supporter, Joanne Herring, Wilson learns about the plight of the people that are suffering in the brutal Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. With the help of the maverick CIA agent, Gust Avrakotos, Wilson dedicates his canny political efforts to supply the Afghan mujahideen with the weapons and support to defeat the Soviet Union. However, Charlie Wilson eventually learns that while military victory can had, there are other consequences and prices to that fight that are ignored to everyone’s sorrow.”

So I watched it last evening. I wasn’t sure whether I was angry or cheated when it finished.

I do realise that it is a true story, and that I find all the more shocking. I knew that the Russians were being financed by the CIA/US and then the tables turned and the financing went to the opposing side - and the deaths are unacceptable.

The duplicity is unacceptable. And I fail to understand the political kudos in such an action.

Just what did the US gain by playing the two ends against the middle? A few friends?

And today, the main players in the “Axis of Evil” were, to begin with, sponsored by the West…

As was said in Frankenstein: “I have created a monster.”

The writer got it right when he saw the opportunity to highlight the injured children. Because that, I believe, is what it is all about. The next generation. If they grow up with the hatred and loathing that we might feel - or, indeed, DO feel, then this world is in for a seriously wild ride.

And when I compare this film to the sanctions that Rhodesia fought under, I shake my head. Super powers were financing the terrorists, and democracies were starving the Rhodesians - how brilliant were our sanctions busters? How on earth did we sustain hit after hit after hit and so very nearly have it beat on the ground?

For what? To allow the do-gooders to hand the country to a man who took just a few years to break the country’s spirit, break its economy and deride its people…

Unfortunately stories and pictures in the press and on the internet do not have the same power as a movie, a documentary or the like. Have you ever seen “Beyond Borders”? A brilliant movie - but one which rubbed the heart raw with the abuse that the human body, the human mind and the human race takes at the hands of despots, dictators and megalomaniacs. But I digress…

Will there ever be a book or film about the truth how the West handed such a brilliant country to its destroyer - and how they tried to tell the world that what they had done was right? Somehow I doubt it. The West will never allow a film to be shot from within its midst that shows them in the worst possible light.

And any movie shot outside of the West that attempts to tell the story honestly, truthfully and with conviction (use the word advisedly) will be ridiculed - even if it made it to foreign shores.

Thatcher, Carter, Kissinger, Wilson - and so many others. The blood is on their hands - but they don’t see it because they are wearing rose-coloured spectacles to begin with, and are so busy counting their money, that they seldom see their hands. That, and the fact that they are without any conscience…

I think that the makers of “Charlie Wilson’s War” deserve a medal - and they should be already writing the script for another foray - on the truth behind Zimbabwe.

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I’ve had it with elections. Zimbabwe has been in election mode since 1999. No fundamental change seems to come from any of it. So I am changing tactics. I have looked at everyone’s manifesto for 2008 and it’s all same old hot air. I am tired. But I am still going home to vote: this time for the man who will rev my engine. Yes, I am voting for a presidential candidate who I can bear to look at for five years. We have three presidential candidates, Bob, Morgan and Simba. This whole nonsense in Zimbabwe of calling the leader of a two-person party “the President” is what gets to their heads. Three years ago I parked my car outside Harvest House (MDC HQ), only to be shooed frantically away by a rather aggressive pimply youth: “Get away, that’s the president’s parking spot.” I wondered why Bob needed yet another parking spot, but I discovered this is what they call Morgan. Similarly, Arthur Mutambara had barely led his MDC faction for five seconds when I heard a friend in his party say: “Let me talk to the president first.” As another friend put it in utter frustration, when a country has three presidents and none of them can end this mess you know you are f*$%*d! But I digress, back to the line-up.

Bob

Bob is just too ancient. Despite guzzling Lucozade and obsessive exercising, he has become terribly unattractive to look at. Not that he ever was, with that little Hitlerite moustache. Saville Row suits - or is it now Shanghai flea-market row? - won’t make him look better. As they often do on terribly old men who can’t behave their age, the suits look oversized and ostentatious in the middle of such poverty. Around election time though, Bob dons those awful Mobutu-style shirts with his mug all over them. I will never forgive Bob for foisting this style of dress on women in his party. Somehow the tailors who make those clothes always manage to get his picture smack in the middle of a woman’s ample bosom, or worse, on equally ample buttocks. Though it must be said there is something quite satisfying about squashing that face as one sits down after being forced to attend a long rally in the 37-degree heat of Muzarabani. Failed governance aside, Bob as a man is quite frightening. His tendency to bang tables like Nikita Krushchev doesn’t say “come closer”. Neither does his foul mouth. Seven university degrees just haven’t bought him good manners. The most important reason I am not voting for Bob is the way he never acknowledges his wife in public. Notice how he often leaves Grace a few steps behind. Granted Bob was born in the days when men had to walk in front of their wives so they could protect them from lions, but now?

Morgan

Let’s look at Morgan. A president should dress well, so Morgan please lose the ugly cowboy hat. Morgan just hasn’t got the message that those hats are so… thuggish, so tacky. They don’t do anything for us girls. They make short men look like ducks with a disability. By the time the man emerges from under that hat - after talking interminably on his cellphone - I, for one, will have lost any inclination to listen to his economic plan. Those hats breed cowboyish unilateralism; we saw it with George W, Jonathan Moyo and now Morgan. Coupled with the Papa Doc routine that Morgan and his security men have now adopted, my heart just sinks. He will arrive at a rally in a convoy of 4×4 vehicles - a statement of the party’s values if ever there was one - with a dozen or so young men hanging out from open doors, wearing dark flea-market shades. Dreadfully unattractive. These same tontons macoute will proceed to shoo the poor working masses out of the way. Even some of us who still regard him as our “Comrade Boycott”, former chair of the NCA (National Constitutional Assembly), are too scared to come anywhere near the tontons. Morgan has an equally foul mouth, especially at his rallies, and in Shona. There is something quite crass about a president “shouting,” as we say at home, like that. Thankfully some of Morgan’s rough edges have been smoothed by a glammed-up wife. Susan looks ever so refined thanks to facial treatments from Theresa Makone, Morgan’s mate’s upwardly mobile wife. But, like Bob, Morgan always forgets that Susan is right beside him. Not a touch. Not a smile.

One who got away

I am so sorry Arthur dropped out of the presidential race. If nothing else the fellow knows his Pierre Cardin from his Yves St Laurent. I am sure he took the grooming and sartorial elegance module at university. Oh, and our prof can use power point! I don’t think Bob can turn on a computer. Can he? Every time he goes to donate computers to schools he always stands a safe distance from the critters. Arthur so loves his laptop. Takes it everywhere. His presentations might lack substance, but they are so well accessorised his audience is always agog. Sadly there is not much electricity in Zim these days, so he has to resort to his student politics ways of shouting - too stridently. Perhaps it is a good thing Arthur has dropped out, he needs to grow up a bit. The last thing Zimbabwe needs is a Thabo Mbeki. Too much book is not good. Look at where Bob got us having “eaten so much book”.

Simba

The man of the moment is Simba. I for one don’t care how many gallons of ZANU PF milk he was reared on. I will ignore that his manifesto barely talks about women’s rights. I just want his picture hanging in my office for the next five years. Who doesn’t want to walk into a government office and be greeted by that smile? Those funky little glasses just do it for me. Arthur, please pass on to Simba the power-point skills, and I am sold. And he ate just the right amount of book. Simba speaks calmly. Diplomatically. As a president should. He acknowledges his wife, Chipo. Since that day he lovingly held her hand as he went into Parliament to present his first budget as minister of finance, I just knew this man was going to go far. At his campaign launch the message I got was, this is my partner and we share a life. My big problem with Simba is his so-called backers, who love the Morgan-like big hats. Their looks and their politics just scare us girls off. Lose the men with the hats and big tummies, they are bad for your image and your future, Simba. On the plus side Simba has so far eschewed the convoys and the insignia with his visage and other undesirable paraphernalia on women’s anatomy. Long may it stay this way. Ideologically, the men on that ballot paper are interchangeable. So technically, Bob has nothing to be afraid of. There is no regime change in the offing, just a photo change. I am voting for the man whose looks and habits I can live with for the next five years. At least when he messes up, I have set the political bar so low it won’t matter. After 27 years of the ugly and ancient one, give me a younger and better-looking man, in a PINK shirt. Got ticket, will vote.

(Source)

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David Muchinguri, the general manager of Bakers Inn, was arrested and detained at Southerton police station in Harare on Tuesday. The Wednesday edition of the state owned Herald newspaper carried an interview with National Incomes and Pricing Commission Chairman Godwills Masimirembwa, boasting that they had also ‘caused’ the arrest of Asian businessman Mr Shaazard Shaukat of Kevaree Investments. Shaukat’s company was accused of selling cement at Z$300 million a bag instead of the stipulated Z$120 million. The arrests follow a countrywide crackdown on the business community who are struggling to keep their companies afloat in the hyper-inflationary environment.

The pricing commission is accusing Lobels Bread and Bakers Inn of over-charging for bread. It says the companies are supposed to use 80 percent of their flour to bake standard loaves and 20 percent on confectionary and fancy loaves. Instead the companies are alleged to be using most of their flour for fancy loaves. Masimirembwa warned they would de-classify bread categories so that all bread will be sold at uniform prices. Acting Attorney General Bharat Patel threw his weight behind a tightening of the controversial pricing laws. He recommended that mandatory jail terms be imposed on businesspeople found guilty of over-charging.

Behind the big talk however is an attempt to divert blame for the economic crisis in the country. The government has been accused of creating a political climate that has destroyed the economy and in lashing out at the business community Mugabe is said to be hunting for scapegoats. Images of business leaders being arrested are being used on TV to whip up sentiment against them as the cause of the high prices and inflation. Only this month the Joint Operations Command, a grouping of security chiefs, summoned business leaders and accused them of supporting the presidential bid of Simba Makoni while also creating artificial shortages in their shops. National Foods Managing Director Jeremy Brook was arrested later in that week.

(Source)

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Sarudzai Gumbo was a victim of Robert Mugabe’s evil regime almost from the day she was born. Her courage in the face of her appalling suffering and disfigurement moved thousands of readers of The Times. And now she is dead - at the age of 7 - a young girl who never stood a chance.

Richard Mills, the Times photographer, and I first met Sarudzai in a church in Mbare, a slum in southern Harare, last March. Her mother pushed her forward and pulled off her dirty woollen hat.

We gasped. Sarudzai’s head was covered in festering red sores. Pus oozed from her eyes. A growth on her tongue made speaking difficult.

Her tearful mother, Silibaziso, said that she had never been to school, other children refused to play with her, and she could not sleep for pain.

Her parents told us how President Mugabe had destroyed their house in 2005 when he razed slums in Operation Murambatsvina (”Clean Up Trash”), and then destroyed their jobs by banning street vendors.

Both parents had AIDS. They were living with their five children in a tiny shack built on wasteland from plastic sheeting and corrugated iron. They could give Sarudzai barely a bowl of sadza - maize-meal porridge - a day. They had been turned away by hospitals for lack of money.

After Sarudzai’s story appeared in The Times, readers called to offer help, and donated £7,500. Sarudzai was sent to an Aids clinic, but last April her mother died and her father took her away to the ancestral village, fatally interrupting her treatment.

Sarudzai was transferred later to Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare just as Zimbabwe’s healthcare system was imploding. That was where we found her when we returned to the country last November. She was lying alone and neglected in a dirty side room. Her head was a mass of septic lesions. Two large cancers were devouring the right side of her face. She had lost the sight in one eye. A filthy hat concealed untold horrors on her scalp - and the stench of putrefying flesh was overwhelming.

The hospital had run out of medicines and its doctors and nurses had left in droves for better-paid jobs abroad. It had become a place where patients were left to die. We moved Sarudzai to a private hospital. Tracey and Anne, two church workers from Mbare, volunteered to visit her daily.

A Harare paediatrician - one of the few left - agreed to treat her free of charge. Kidzcan, a charity that helps Zimbabwean children with cancer, adopted her.

For the first time in her life Sarudzai was clean, cared for and eating proper food. We left her playing with two new teddy bears that she had named Rudzai and Rudo - Shona for “praise” and “love” - and returned to Britain knowing she was in good hands.

Sadly Sarudzai’s cancer was too advanced, Harare’s one radiotherapy machine worked spasmodically, and there was no hard currency to repair it. She died early yesterday.

Sarudzai was a sweet, brave and affectionate girl who won the hearts of all who met her. She seldom cried or complained. She smiled at visitors, and waved when they left. Her personality shone through her disfigurement.

She was also an apt symbol for a country that has suffered so much under Mr Mugabe, a country whose beauty has been corrupted by his evil.

There were tears shed for Sarudzai yesterday, but there will be few shed for Mr Mugabe if her death is followed by the end of his pernicious rule in this month’s presidential election.

(Source)

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