Mandebvhu Talks “Zimbabwe”…

ZNU 130 is released this morning.

In this programme, I look at the remarks by Koffi Annan that the Zimbabwean crisis has “shamed Africa”, whilst I have another look at the failed opportunity of the free world to institute sanctions on Zimbabwe. I also look at how the crisis in Zimbabwe affects not only those inside the country, but Zimbabweans like myself, resident outside the country. And finally I look at the opinion of a Botswanan writer on the situation in Zimbabwe.

The programme can be heard by either using the multiplayers in the right hand sidebar of The Bearded Man blog, here or even downloaded from here.

My thanks for your continued support of my podcasts.

Take care.

‘debvhu

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Zimbabwe will transfer ownership of all foreign-owned firms that support Western sanctions against President Robert Mugabe’s government to locals and investors from “friendly” countries, a state newspaper reported on Sunday.

The southern African state is struggling with an economic crisis many blame on Mugabe’s policies, which has left it with an inflation rate of over 2.2 million percent and chronic shortages of food and other basic needs.

Mugabe’s government blames the crisis on sabotage by enemies angry over his seizures of white-owned farms for blacks, and has followed up that policy with another controversial law seeking to transfer majority ownership of foreign-owned firms to locals.

The Sunday Mail said Zimbabwe had begun auditing the ownership of Western firms in the country as part of a black empowerment drive “and to counter the possible withdrawal of investment under sanctions imposed and proposed by Britain and the U.S.”

Mugabe - fighting to retain power after a winning a runoff poll boycotted by his rival - says Zimbabwe’s severe economic crisis is due to sabotage by former colonial master Britain, its European Union allies and the United States.

The Sunday Mail paper said preliminary results of Zimbabwe’s audit of foreign investments showed that 499 companies enjoyed British investments. Of these, 309 had majority shareholders in Britain and 97 were wholly owned by Britons.

The audit also found 353 firms with shareholders from other European countries, the weekly said in a story largely attributed to unnamed government sources.

“A high-ranking government source told the Sunday Mail that these companies would be targeted for takeover by local investors and companies from friendly countries, particularly those in the Far East, should they heed calls by the U.S. and European governments for them to disinvest from Zimbabwe,” it said.

“FRIENDLY” INVESTORS TO TAKE OVER

Most of the Western investments in Zimbabwe are in tourism, agriculture, manufacturing and food processing industries.

The newspaper quoted its source as saying: “In the context of growing hostility, the government is planning to invite companies from friendly countries to move in and take over companies that will close down.”

The move to line up local and Far East investors for the takeover was also aimed at boosting low industrial capacity which has led to chronic shortages on the market, it said.

Although some British investors had so far rebuffed a call by London to pull out of Zimbabwe, Mugabe was taking no chances, the newspaper said.

“It would have been foolhardy for the government to adopt a ‘business-as-usual’ approach when the UK and the U.S. are dishing out threats,” one source said. “We had to take action and this is the beginning.”

Mugabe has previously warned that he will target and nationalise companies he accuses of supporting what he calls a “racist and imperialist” plot to topple his ZANU PF government.

Mugabe’s spokesman George Charamba confirmed the government’s drive against Western firms, telling the Sunday Mail: “The government is not sleeping.”

“It is hard at work and the spotlight is on the corporate sector. We are anxious to understand the behaviour of corporate bodies and whether this (shortages and price hikes) owes to market imperatives or political obligation of the foreign investors,” Charamba said.

Industry leaders say Zimbabwe’s economy has been hurt by Mugabe’s policies, and its future lies in a negotiated political settlement between the ruling ZANU PF and the opposition MDC.

The MDC has refused to recognise Mugabe’s overwhelming victory in a June 27 vote held after its leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out, citing violence by ruling party militia.

(Source)

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Morgan Tsvangirai has agreed to enter power sharing talks with Robert Mugabe, saying Zimbabweans have suffered enough and it is time for that country’s crisis to come to an end. This was the upshot of Friday’s decision by President Thabo Mbeki, who is mediating between the various Zimbabwean parties, to appoint a reference group to assist in negotiations. Independent Newspapers understands that power-sharing talks could begin as early as next week. The breakthrough comes as SADC foreign, defence and security ministers were warned in Durban on Friday, that the region’s unity and peace, was being threatened by member states’ differences over Zimbabwe. Reached for comment on Friday night, Tsvangirai, the leader of the majority faction in the Movement for Democratic Change, said: “I think we do have to co-operate with the group and expedite the second phase which is to start substantive negotiations.”

“I am advised that the reference group with Mbeki is coming to Harare on Monday to sign the memorandum of understanding and we will obviously sign as well. It is a positive step and we look forward to finding the solution we were looking for. Zimbabweans had suffered enough and its time for this (the crisis) to come to an end.” The three man group, comprising special representatives from the African Union, the United Nations, and SADC, was agreed upon on Friday at a meeting attended by Mbeki, AU Commisioner Dr Jean Ping, UN envoy Haile Menkerios and Angola’s deputy foreign minister George Chikote, as well as the South African facilitators. Speaking on their behalf, Minister Sydney Mufumadi, described the group as a “support mechanism”. He said Mbeki had “invited” the three men “to constitute a reference group which will interact with the mediator on an ongoing basis in order to ensure that we get through the mediator systematic support to continue with the process of executing the task given to him by the SADC”.

Tsvangirai has previously resisted entering into power sharing talks, demanding that a second mediator be appointed to assist Mbeki, whom he believes is not impartial. Mufamadi said “we think it is important for the facilitators to have the benefit of such input”. He said the group would be kept informed on an ongoing basis at a strategic level and he said they would appoint people on the ground in the country wherever the negotiations take place and that those appointees would get “briefings on a daily basis from the facilitation team”. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon had accepted the move. Speaking on his behalf, Menkerios said the UN security council had supported Mbeki and SADC’s efforts and that this new reference group allowed this support “to find expression”.

Angolan foreign minister Dr Joao Bernardo de Miranda on Friday told his regional colleagues in Durban that regional differences over Zimbabwe could threaten peace and unity. Among those who have been openly critical of Mugabe, include Levy Mwanawasa and Botswana’s President Ian Khama, as opposed to the Zimbabwean leader’s traditional allies such as Angolan president Eduardo dos Santos. Miranda, who chairs the SADC organ on politics, peace and security, was speaking at the opening of its ministerial committee meeting, and warned that the region was faced with an “unprecedented situation”. The organ is the body that mandated Mbeki to become the Zimbabwean mediator. The Durban meeting was delayed by more than four hours to allow Mbeki’s talks in Pretoria to set up the reference group to conclude.

Speaking in Portuguese, which was translated into English and French, Miranda referred to the “many interpretations” about last month’s Zimbabwean presidential run-off election. “As a result the unity and cohesion of SADC is somehow fragilised (sic). Such a fact… is a very dangerous precedent, a very worrying situation because in fact it touches on the fundamental principles of our organisation and which could constitute an obstacle to regional peace.” He warned that it could also scupper the implementation of steps already taken for political integration, as well as social and economic integration of our region. “The situation in Zimbabwe is regrettably very complex, but should lead us to a deep analysis about the principles provided in the Treaty of SADC, in order to preserve our unity, as well as safeguard our gains,” Miranda said.

He told the minister present that it was their duty to defend and fight for the organisaiton?s unity, irrespective of “the political positions that we feel or even religious convictions which characterize our region”. Solidarity had always been the pillar of SADC’s unity, Miranda said. Sapa reports that a small group of Zimbabweans staged a protest near Durban’s International Convention Centre where the organ’s meeting was taking place. The small group held up a number of posters, including a banner which read: “A Brave Africa can Save Zimbabwe.” All the protesters were wearing white shirts splattered with red ink.

(Source)

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Pressure is mounting on President Thabo Mbeki to negotiate a speedy settlement in Zimbabwe, with Kofi Annan calling on him to accept the ZANU PF chief and his MDC counterpart as equals. And church leaders from Southern Africa yesterday called for immediate sanctions on Zimbabwe. “Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai must be able to enter into a dialogue on an equal footing, as two leaders,” Annan, the former UN secretary-general, said last night. He was speaking at Unisa in Pretoria, where he received an honorary doctorate in literature and philosophy. Progress can be made only when the conditions are right, Annan told the gathering. He said he was speaking on behalf of The Elders - a group that includes Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and former US president Jimmy Carter - in calling “for a speedy and robust mediation to resolve the political crisis” and to put an end to “this crisis of governance, as human lives and livelihoods are at stake”.

Annan also called for an end to political violence and said “the current interim Zimbabwean government must meet its responsibility to protect its citizens”. He also appealed for the release of political prisoners. Despite putting pressure on Mbeki to negotiate a speedy settlement in the interest of all Zimbabweans, Annan did not criticise Mbeki for his efforts thus far, or appeal for African Union bodies or envoys to aid him in his efforts. In a careful turn of phrase, he said: “The mediation effort should have but one master: the Zimbabwean people. And they in turn should know that they have the support of the international community. They do not stand alone.” His words were delivered on the eve of Mbeki’s meeting with AU Commissioner Jean Ping, who he was expected to brief on a memorandum of understanding that was scheduled to be signed on Wednesday, but to which Tsvangirai refused to lend his signature at the eleventh hour. The Movement for Democratic Change leader has said the document is flawed and biased and that the MDC will not sign it until they are satisfied that Ping has been fully briefed on its contents.

Church leaders from across the region were less gracious yesterday when they called for an extra mediator to be deployed to the talks, and demanded that sanctions be imposed on Zimbabwe. In a petition signed by several dozen leaders, they also called for Robert Mugabe’s government to be condemned as illegitimate. In a scathing attack on Mbeki, the document appealed to him to refrain from “making any statement that might be perceived to compromise his impartiality” as chief facilitator. They also demanded that Mbeki recognise the “extreme urgency” of the situation, and use his influence to halt political violence, which they attributed to “state-sponsored intimidation”. The leaders advised Mbeki to listen to a wider range of voices, in a more honest and transparent mediation process. The petition came at the end of a four-day special summit on Zimbabwe by Southern African churches in the reformed tradition. It was sponsored by the SA Council of Churches.

(Source)

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Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s party will sign an agreement with the main opposition today paving the way for substantive talks on ending the country’s political crisis, officials from both sides say.

South African President Thabo Mbeki will witness today’s signing in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, according to the officials, one a member of the decision-making council of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front. The second is from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change’s national executive. Both asked not to be identified.

The memorandum of understanding to start full-scale negotiations will be signed after the two sides made progress in talks last week in South Africa, one of the officials said. The accord will set out the way in which the discussions between the two sides will be conducted, he said.

Mugabe claimed victory in a presidential runoff election on June 27, extending his 28-year rule of the southern African nation. MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the poll in protest at what he said was a state-sponsored campaign of violence against his supporters. The United Nations, U.S. and European countries consider Mugabe’s government illegitimate.

The MDC has said political violence must end and an estimated 1,500 political prisoners must be freed before talks commence. The party says at least 115 of its supporters have been killed by state security forces and youth militias since a first round of elections in March.

Mbeki was mandated by the 14-nation Southern African Development Community to mediate an end to the political crisis in Zimbabwe. The African Union has urged Mugabe and Tsvangirai to form a government of national unity.

The South African leader will be accompanied by Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi, who has helped mediate talks between ZANU PF and the MDC, as well as Frank Chikane, director-general of South Africa’s presidency, the officials said.

Mukoni Ratshitanga, a spokesman for the South African presidency, said he wasn’t aware that Mbeki planned to attend today’s signing. He spoke after being contacted in Cape Town for comment.

(Source)

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Zimbababwe’s ruling ZANU PF and opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are reported to be about to meet again on Wednesday in Harare where they are expected to sign something like the Groote Schuur Minute which formally kicked off negotiations between the old National Party and the ANC on May 4, 1990. That is both good news and bad news. Good because it suggests the two sides are serious about negotiating. Bad because if we are only at the Groote Schuur Minute, we could have an awful long way to go. It took another three and a half years after the Groote Schuur Minute for the ANC and NP to clinch the deal that allowed the country’s first democratic elections to take place in April 1994. True, the ANC and NP were negotiating away about 350 years of white rule in SA, while ZANU PF and the MDC are both fully-fledged political parties within what is already ostensibly a functioning democracy.

In a sense though, that is the problem. The NP, for all its past sins and the hedging still to come, essentially realised the game was up when FW de Klerk unbanned the ANC and released Nelson Mandela in February 1990. Whereas one does not get quite the same sense from Robert Mugabe. In a way, Zimbabwe has put the cart before the horse by introducing the trappings of democracy before Mugabe and ZANU PF accepted the concept in all its implications. Mugabe is not a democrat, never has been one and never will be one. While it suited him to masquerade as a democrat, he was happy to do so. When it started to backfire on him in 2000, he resorted increasingly to undemocratic methods, while retaining the increasingly-threadbare trappings of democracy.

The Groote Schuur Minute was about matters such as releasing political prisoners, ending the armed struggle and normalising politics so that negotiations about how to create a democracy, in effect how to transfer power - could take place. Much anguish was to follow the Groote Schuur Minute as the ANC and NP wrangled about when to release political prisoners, how to reassure apartheid-era securocrats they would not be persecuted and so on - the nitty-gritty of a transfer of power. Such negotiations should not, in theory, be necessary in an ostensible democracy like Zimbabwe but since it is a sham democracy, where ZANU PF’s securocrats are perhaps more in control that those of the NP, they probably are. Presumably one of the major issues the imminent Zimbabwe negotiations will have to address will be what happens to the generals and other high officials who are guilty of atrocities against the Matabele in the 1980s and the MDC more recently.

If the Zimbabwean negotiations do follow something like this track, it may prove a liability that SA on Friday helped defeat a US and UK-inspired attempt to impose United Nations Security Council sanctions against Zimbabwe. If one casts one’s mind back to the SA negotiations, the ANC had several cards in their pack, including the armed struggle and sanctions, which they could use as leverage in negotiations. The ANC held them in its hand until it felt that the process of negotiations had become irreversible. In the case of sanctions they called for them to be lifted at the moment when they knew they would soon be at the helm and so it became in their interest not to hurt the economy any more. The MDC holds neither of these cards in its hand and one wonders what they can do to bring pressure to bear on Mugabe. The SA government’s argument for voting against the sanctions resolutions was that it would probably make Mugabe recalcitrant in negotiations. But he has shown no real signs of a genuine willingness to negotiate himself out of power anyway. If the ANC was thinking strategically on Friday, rather than fraternalistically, perhaps it might have voted differently.

(Source)

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I have just watched the Prosecutor with the ICC give a Press Conference on the warrant of arrest they have issued for the President of the Sudan for “War crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide”.

It was a deeply moving affair with the Prosecutor often quite clearly emotionally engaged. He justified the use of the term “genocide” by saying that after they had bombed villages killing men women and children indiscriminately, they then attacked the refugee camps to which the population had fled.

This action has profound implications for Mugabe as the ICC is acting against a sitting President on grounds that can clearly be used against Mugabe and his inner circle.

Eddie Cross

(Source: via email)

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The United States on Saturday launched a scathing attack on South African President Thabo Mbeki after South Africa’s UN envoy voted against targeted sanctions against Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad spoke to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) after China and Russia vetoed a US draft resolution in the UN Security Council that would have imposed a travel ban and an assets freeze on Mugabe and 13 of his cronies as well an arms embargo on the Harare regime.

South Africa, along with Libya and Vietnam, voted against the US draft which received the support of nine of the council’s 15 members. “We are surprised by what appears as Mbeki appearing to protect Mugabe while Mugabe uses violent means to fragment the opposition,” Khalilzad said. “I think Mbeki is out of touch with the trends inside his own country.”

“We are concerned, but we are encouraged by the trends that we see inside South Africa,” he added.

China said on Saturday that sanctions against Zimbabwe’s government would “complicate”, rather than ease, conflict in the troubled African country, defending its decision to veto the resolution.

China’s decision to block the sanctions may bruise relations with Western powers weeks before Beijing hosts the Olympic Games. China also faces international pressure over Sudan, where international prosecutors are pursuing arrests for alleged war crimes in Darfur.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s chief spokesperson Liu Jianchao was quick to defend the veto as right for Zimbabwe.

“Under present conditions, passing a sanctions resolution against Zimbabwe would not help to encourage the various factions there to engage in political dialogue and negotiations and achieve results,” Liu said in a statement on the Ministry’s website.

“On the contrary, it would further complicate conditions in Zimbabwe,” Liu said, adding that China’s call that the African Union (AU) be given more time for mediation was ignored.

“The international community should provide constructive help” for South Africa’s and the AU’s mediation efforts, Liu said. “Avoid adopting actions that could have a negative effect on the atmosphere for dialogue.”

(Source)

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Britain’s diplomatic strategy in Zimbabwe collapsed last night in an historic defeat for the West in the UN Security Council that will have repercussions across Africa and beyond. Russia and China wielded their veto to kill a resolution imposing UN sanctions on President Mugabe and his inner circle in a defining vote in the 15-nation council. Sir John Sawers, the British Ambassador to the UN, said: “The people of Zimbabwe need to be given hope that there is an end in sight to their suffering. The Security Council today has failed to offer them that hope.” Russia declared that it was casting its veto to prevent the council, under the influence of Western members, from meddling in the internal affairs of a UN member state. “We have seen an effort to take the council beyond its charter prerogative,” Vitaly Churkin, the Russian Ambassador to the UN, declared. “We believe such practices to be illegitimate and dangerous, leading to a realignment of the UN system. This draft is nothing but the council’s attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of a member state.”

China, which supplies arms to Harare, said that the Zimbabwe crisis did not constitute a threat to international peace and security, over which the council had jurisdiction. “Internationally, to use or threaten to use sanctions lightly is not conducive to solving a problem,” Wang Guangya, the Chinese Ambassador to the UN, said. Britain and the United States forced the draft resolution to a vote because they counted on the support of the nine members needed to secure adoption. In a dramatic show of hands, the draft did indeed earn the requisite nine votes to pass, with five against, but was not adopted because of Russia’s and China’s block. South Africa, Vietnam and Libya also voted against, while Indonesia abstained. The showdown heralds a chilling of international relations as Russia and China resist growing UN intervention in other repressive regimes, such as Burma, and it represents a shift in the balance of power at the top table of diplomacy. Russia, China and developing nations are flexing their muscles after Western dominance since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“China and Russia have stood with Mugabe against the people of Zimbabwe,” Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador, told the council. “This resolution would have supported the courageous efforts of the Zimbabwean people to change their lives peacefully through elections.” The statements by Britain and the US reflected their anger days after President Medvedev of Russia agreed a tough statement at the G8 summit in Japan threatening sanctions against Zimbabwe. Sir John read out the G8 statement promising further steps, including “financial and other measures against those individuals responsible for the violence.” He described the Russian action as irresponsible. Mr Khalilzad went further, calling the Russian veto a “U-turn” and suggesting that it raised questions about Russia’s “reliability as a G8 partner”, hinting that it might be ejected from the elite club of leading industrial nations.

The UN resolution would have imposed an arms embargo on Zimbabwe and clamped a worldwide asset freeze and travel ban on Mr Mugabe and 13 of his henchmen accused of orchestrating election abuses in the June 27 presidential run-off vote. It would also have required the UN to name a special representative to act as a mediator in Zimbabwe. Britain hoped that the resolution would step up the pressure on Mr Mugabe and his closest aides and sideline the discredited mediation efforts by President Mbeki of South Africa. Last night’s defeat left British policy in disarray. “With the vetoing of this resolution, we need to look for a new way forward,” Sir John said.

Even in the absence of international sanctions, a growing number of Western companies are pulling out of Zimbabwe. Among others, Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant, has announced its withdrawal. Companies operating in Zimbabwe have been under fire for remaining in the country and the British Government has suggested that they could be forced to leave. Tesco said that it would no longer source food from Zimbabwe, while WPP, the advertising agency, is in the process of selling its business, which is part-owned by a relative of Mr Mugabe. Barclays Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and the mining corporations Anglo American and Rio Tinto have decided to stay.

(Source)

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The decomposing body of Gift Mutsvungunu, a polling agent in Kuwadzana East in Harare during the 29^th March election who went on missing last week, was discovered in the same suburb yesterday.

His body shows signs of intense torture, his eyes were gouged out and his backside suffered serious burns before his abductors killed him.

There is reasonable suspicion that state security agents killed him, as his injuries are consistent with those of other deceased persons who were abducted and later killed by state security agents who have unleashed terror on MDC activists and polling agents following ZANU PF’s historic defeat on 29 March.

His death brings to 113 the death toll of MDC activists who have been murdered by ZANU PF supporters state security agents since 29 March. He will be buried on Monday at Granville cemetery in Harare.

His relatives say Mutsvungunu went missing on Saturday last week. His decomposing body was found yesterday at a co-operative in Kuwadzana 3. May his soul rest in eternal peace.

(Source: via email)

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