Mandebvhu Talks “Zimbabwe”…

Zimbabwe’s prison walls have not insulated inmates from the effects of the country’s economic meltdown. A recent report has warned that the nation’s 55 prisons have become “death traps”, with conditions deteriorating rapidly and diseases spreading even faster.

The Zimbabwe Association for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of the Offender (ZACRO), a prisoners’ rights group, said jails were in a “deplorable state”.

Israel Chamboko, 30, (not his real name) from Highfield, a low-income suburb in Harare, the capital, spent three years in Chikurubi maximum security prison on the outskirts of Harare for car radio theft. He has vowed never to go back.

“Generally, life was unbearable; we hardly had enough food to eat, not enough water, our cells were hot, dingy and smelly in summer and extremely cold in winter,” he said.

“If you told the guards you were sick they would laugh in your face and say, ‘criminals deserve to die’. They didn’t care if you were HIV positive, or you were diabetic, or that you had any of these chronic illnesses. We were all just criminals with no rights.”

The ZACRO report said water cuts were frequent, while sanitation often consisted of one bucket in the corner of a cell occupied by a number of inmates, and another bucket with water for washing and drinking.

Findings also revealed that the country’s 55 prisons including satellites, with a capacity of around 17 000, were holding over 35,000 inmates. Overcrowding and the unhygienic conditions were also contributing to the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis (TB) and cholera.

Pellagra, a deficiency disease, was also common. It is caused by a lack of vitamin B3 and trypophan, an essential amino acid found in meat, poultry, fish and eggs, all foodstuffs no longer available in jails.

The lack of condom distribution in prisons has also exacerbated the spread of HIV/AIDS. Prison authorities refuse to provide condoms to inmates in the belief that it will encourage homosexuality, which is illegal in Zimbabwe.

HIV positive prisoners

In a country with one of the highest prevalence rates in the world, prisons have not been spared the effects of the pandemic. ZACRO’s information officer, Wonder Chakanyuka, said at least 10,000 people in prisons were living with HIV/AIDS, but their needs were being neglected.

Although antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) were available, the treatment was not accompanied by proper nutrition. Inmates in most prisons were surviving on just two meals a day, and at least two prisoners died every day as a result of hunger and disease.

“The main problem is that nutritious food is not available, which is necessary to boost immunity of inmates affected by the pandemic. The shortage of food in most prisons remains a scenario undermining disease mitigation programmes in the prisons.”

HIV-positive inmates also do not have access to drugs to treat opportunistic infections. ZACRO found that because of the shortage of drugs, prisoners were obliged to buy their own medicines through their relatives, but the escalating cost of medicines meant many families could barely afford this extra expense.

Sebastian Chinhaire of the Zimbabwe National Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS said HIV-positive inmates suffered the double tragedy of being stigmatised because of their positive status and being labelled criminals.

“People in prisons have rights like us that should be protected and respected. The justice system in Zimbabwe is such that people want to throw away the keys after locking someone up; society simply forgets about them.”

Acting spokeswoman for the Zimbabwe Prison Services (ZPS) Granitia Musango said the prison service was doing the best it could in light of the economic meltdown in the country.

“The Zimbabwe Prison Services’ mandate is to ensure all prisoners are treated with respect and dignity while in prison … However, it must be noted that the Zimbabwe Prison Services, like any other government institution, has not been spared by the economic crisis.”

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UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Wednesday urged African leaders to take ‘very decisive’ steps to end a standoff between Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

The 15-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) has called for an urgent summit to end the deadlock between Mugabe and Tsvangirai over a unity government aimed at ending Zimbabwe’s political crisis.

‘Now that SADC has decided to convene their full summit meeting, I hope that these leaders of SADC - considering their responsibility to see peace and stability maintained in their region - should really take very decisive measures to help resolve this crisis,’ Ban told reporters in Manila, where he attended an international conference on migration.

‘This has been taking too long,’ he added. ‘I sincerely hope that President Mugabe should no longer disappoint the international community.’

Ban noted that there has been ‘a long and urgent call’ from the international community for Mugabe to agree to power-sharing under a September deal in which he would remain president and Tsvangirai become prime minister.

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Zimbabwe’s main opposition party said on Tuesday that President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party was not sincerely committed to entering into a genuine cooperative government under a power-sharing deal.

The MDC opposition’s Secretary-General Tendai Biti said the allocation of ministries was still being discussed in talks on forming a cabinet. He said the opposition party was committed to reaching an agreement but would not accept a bad deal.

“The core of our differences with (the ruling) ZANU-PF is the pure lack of sincerity on the part of ZANU-PF,” Biti told a news conference.

Biti said that talks can be concluded in two days if there is good faith on outstanding issues.

A regional meeting failed to break a deadlock threatening Zimbabwe’s power-sharing accord on Monday, prompting the 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) to call for an urgent full-scale summit on the crisis.

Officials said the meeting could be held this week or next week in an attempt to persuade Mugabe and opposition factions to implement the accord, widely seen as vital to any effort to pull Zimbabwe out of economic meltdown.

INTERIOR MINISTRY

The SADC said the allocation of the interior ministry, which oversees the police force, was the main sticking point in negotiations.

Zimbabweans had hoped a new leadership could provide relief from an economic meltdown. Inflation is out of control and food and fuel shortages are widespread in Zimbabwe, a once prosperous country and former British colony.

Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in a presidential election on March 29 but by too few votes to avoid a run-off in June.

Mugabe won the second round after Tsvangirai pulled out, saying his supporters had been subjected to violence and intimidation.

Mugabe, 84 and Zimbabwe’s sole ruler since independence from Britain in 1980, has dismissed Tsvangirai as a “pathetic Western puppet” and vowed that he will never get near power.

The 56-year-old opposition leader has called Mugabe a “raving old man with nothing to offer”.

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Former ZANU PF politburo member Simba Makoni who contested the March presidential elections as an independent candidate has now set eyes on forming a vibrant opposition party as he seeks to grip support for future survival.

Makoni, a former finance minister who announced just before the March harmonised elections that he was contesting as independent presidential candidate came a distant third in the election behind President Mugabe and Movement fro Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

He said there was now need to form a vibrant political party in the country for the future of Zimbabwe.

The main political parties in the country ZANU PF and MDC are on the verge of forming an all-inclusive Government after they signed a power sharing deal last month.

“Volunteers who supported my campaign for president in the March general elections have agreed with me that Zimbabwe needs a new political player that identifies and stands with the disenfranchised, disempowered, impoverished and alienated people,” said Makoni.

Makoni’s campaign was mainly supported by individuals who did not align themselves to any political party during the March elections.

He said a draft constitution had been produced and nationwide consultations had commenced to produce a roadmap towards the launch of the party.

“My vision for our country is very simple,” Makoni said. “It is a Zimbabwe in which all peoples have a better life than today and a continually improving life; a Zimbabwe in which all the peoples are at peace with themselves and their neighbours, free of fear and want, secure and enjoying equal rights before the law and equal opportunities for their sustenance.”

Makoni said such a Zimbabwe could only emerge from a combination of good leadership and disciplined, hardworking and law abiding citizens.

Analysts said that although ZANU PF and MDC would remain as separate parties in the new Government, there was need for a vibrant opposition party that will be providing the checks and balances from a non-participatory role

“If the all-inclusive Government finally succeeds, ZANU PF and MDC will be working together and obvious we need a strong opposition that will be voicing concerns. That is why Makoni must quickly move in to fill in this gap. Remember there are a number of people in the country who are not happy with both ZANU PF and the MDC so they need an alternative voice,” said Gorden Moyo, the leader of Bulawayo Agenda, a civic organisation.

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Zimbabwe’s ruling party is pushing for rotating control of the disputed Ministry of Home Affairs, ahead of Monday’s emergency summit of southern African leaders, a state-run newspaper reported here on Sunday. Quoting the Zanu PF position paper on a month-long deadlock over the sharing of cabinet positions between President Robert Mugabe’s party and the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), The Sunday Mail said co-sharing of the contentious ministry would “ensure that there is continuity and that there are checks and balances”. The Ministry of Home Affairs controls the police force and differences between President Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai over who takes charge of the portfolio have stalled progress towards forming proposed unity government. The Sunday Mail said the ruling party accepted the proposal by the mediator, former South African president Thabo Mbeki, to allow rotating control of the home affairs ministry between Zanu PF and the MDC. “In order to break the deadlock over this issue, Zanu PF will accept the co-ministering of this ministry, a proposal initially forwarded by Mr Tsvangirai,” the newspaper reported. Leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) converge in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, on Monday for a rescheduled meeting aimed at ending the deadlock over forming a new cabinet. The SADC meeting was postponed last Monday when Tsvangirai failed to travel to Swaziland, citing problems in securing a passport.

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Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader says he wants to see justice in the wake of widespread political violence blamed on President Robert Mugabe’s police, soldiers and party militants.

Morgan Tsvangirai was speaking Saturday to a cheering crowd in an area of northern Zimbabwe believed to have seen some of the worst of the violence that prompted him to withdraw from a June presidential runoff. Mugabe claimed victory in the runoff, but the vote was widely denounced as a sham.

Tsvangirai has called in the past for truth-and-reconciliation hearings.

Mugabe and Tsvangirai signed a power-sharing agreement last month, but remain divided over who controls which Cabinet posts.

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It’s easy to forget that Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe was once seen as a liberator. Now his country lies in ruins.

“In the weeks after the election, as the political stalemate persisted, the value of Zimbabwe’s currency plummeted,” Jon Lee Anderson writes. “Before crossing the border from South Africa, I had exchanged a hundred American dollars for three trillion five hundred billion Zimbabwean - thirty-five billion to a dollar. Most of the cash was newly minted five-, twenty-five-, and fifty-billion-dollar notes, with pictures of giraffes and grain silos.

A few days later, the going rate was a hundred billion to one. Food prices tripled overnight, and many salaries were made virtually worthless. Cash was becoming nearly impossible to obtain; banks were allowing customers to withdraw the equivalent of only one US dollar per day.

The effect was a state of existential madness. Prices bordered on the fantastic, and ordinary people had to grapple with calculations in the trillions for the most prosaic transactions.

One day, I wandered into a supermarket to buy some water. The price for a half-litre bottle was $1,900,000,000,000. On a nearby shelf, I found a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black for $83,000,000,000,000.”

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This year’s harvest in Zimbabwe has been the worst in the country’s modern history.

In Mashonaland West province, some people are trying to survive by eating wild fruit and digging for roots

“It’s very very bad. I’ve got 12 children and it’s hard to find anything to give them,” says a local village chief. “The whole of my village is struggling. No-one has food.

“There’s nothing left here. So there’s nothing I can do.”

Driving deep into Mashonaland West is a reminder that most Zimbabweans live in rural areas.

The area around Karoi - 200km (124 miles) north of the capital, Harare - provides an illustration of the suffering currently being experienced in the countryside.

Farmers are without seeds, fertiliser and fuel. Next year’s harvest is already being written off as a disaster as well.

As the political paralysis over the formation of the new power-sharing government continues, people are experiencing severe food shortages brought on by the catastrophic mismanagement of the economy and the virtual destruction of the country’s commercial agricultural sector.

School dropouts

Some Zimbabweans get by on one meal a day if they are lucky, but there is a growing sense of desperation.

One consequence is that thousands of children are said to be dropping out of school to look for food.

“In one district, 10,000 children of a population of 120,000 left school in a period of six months,” says Rachel Pounds, country director of UK charity Save the Children.

“There’s a lot of lost hope. Zimbabweans put up with things that get worse and worse, but you can see the despair in some of the poorer families in the villages.

“It’s causing a breakdown of the community when people have to leave in order to find food,” she added.

One villager in Mashonaland West pleaded for help before it was “too late”.

“If we don’t get help now, most of us are going to die. Nearly everyone here is starving.”

He showed me three tins of stored maize, but said that with seven children to feed, the supply would only last for a week.

Earlier this month, the UN World Food Programme appealed for $140m (£86m) to provide vital relief rations over the next six months.

The UN warned that more than five million people (45% of the population) could need assistance by early 2009.

In the meantime however, non-governmental organisations working in Zimbabwe have been hit hard by the economic collapse of this once prosperous country, and the resulting cash crisis stemming from levels of inflation that are now completely out of control.

But it is not just the rural population which is suffering.

Bizarre and depressing

In the towns and cities, food is also in increasingly short supply.

A walk around a suburban supermarket in Harare is a bizarre and depressing experience.

One store I visited looked as though it was in the final stages of a clearance sale.

Only two of the 19 check-out tills were operating, and most shelves were entirely empty.

There was no milk, cheese, margarine or yoghurt.

Some cabbages, onions and limp bunches of spinach were available, along with a few odd packs of frozen meat.

The aisles intended for household goods such as soap and toilet paper were empty and closed off.

The only fresh-looking food items in the shop were a few loaves of bread, priced this week at Z$30,000 a loaf (about $1).

However, Zimbabweans are only permitted to withdraw Z$ 50,000 a day from the banks.

Most people often cannot afford what little food is available.

Only those fortunate enough to have access to foreign currency can circumnavigate the shortages.

“We are distinctly aware that this is a food crisis that is growing,” says Karen Freeman, the director of USAid in Zimbabwe.

“The issue of urban vulnerability has never really been felt here before.

“You could go to the store and buy food in the past, but now you have no option.

“There’s no food in the store and there’s no food on the ground. The crisis now is one where you can neither buy food nor grow food.”

This is almost entirely a man-made crisis, created by President Robert Mugabe’s government, and his administration stands accused of having done nothing to help.

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Zimbabwe’s militant war veterans today threatened to take action against opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and urged President Robert Mugabe to form a government without him.

Jabulani Sibanda, who chairs the militant grouping of the veterans of Zimbabwe’s war of independence, said the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader was stalling a power-sharing deal, which has hit deadlock over cabinet posts.

“He is leaving the people of Zimbabwe with one option: to take action,” he told the official Herald newspaper. “If he behaves the way he is behaving, this nation will take action to defend itself from him.”

The MDC, which has accused the war veterans of attacking its supporters, said on Tuesday Mr Tsvangirai could boycott power-sharing talks next week and that fresh elections may be needed to break the political impasse.

Mr Tsvangirai and Mr Mugabe have clashed over the allocation of powerful ministries, threatening a September 15th deal that Zimbabweans hoped would help the once prosperous country recover from a devastating economic meltdown.

Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF says Mr Tsvangirai, set to become prime minister under the deal, is stalling. But Mr Tsvangirai accuses the president of negotiating in bad faith and trying to seize the lion’s share of key ministries while sidelining the MDC.

Mr Tsvangirai’s frustration with weeks of fruitless talks boiled over on Monday when he refused to attend an emergency Southern African Development Community summit in Swaziland meant to break the deadlock, citing passport issues.

The summit has been moved to October 27th in Harare.

The MDC says pro-Mugabe war veterans brutally attacked its supporters in the run up to the June 27th presidential run-off, which Mr Mugabe won after Mr Tsvangirai dropped out in protest over the violence.

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The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Monday deferred a crisis meeting on the political instability in Zimbabwe to 27 October, after a key opposition leader failed to attend scheduled talks in Swaziland. SADC, which is brokering a power-sharing deal between the government and the opposition in Zimbabwe, had called a meeting of a special organ of the regional body dealing with politics, defence and security to discuss a deadlock in the implementation of the Kenya-style agreement signed by the two sides last month.

But main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai failed to travel to Swaziland for the Monday meeting, saying the government had refused to renew his passport.

He said the authorities gave him a temporal travel document Sunday, but this was only valid for Swaziland, yet he had to pass through South Africa, where the document was invalid, on his way to the SADC meeting.

Tsvangirai’s passport expired sometime last year, but the government has reportedly refused to renew it, to restrict his movements abroad.

The government and opposition have reached a deadlock in the allocation of ministerial posts in a proposed government of national unity, and appealed to SADC to intervene.

The opposition has accused the government of grabbing all important ministries, including defence, finance, home affairs, justice and information, and leaving it with peripheral cabinet portfolios.

The Swaziland meeting, presided over by the leaders of Angola, Mozambique and Swaziland representing SADC, was supposed to try and break the impasse.

But after Tsvangirai’s failure to attend, SADC deferred the meeting to next week Monday in Mozambique.

SADC, which appointed former South African President Thabo Mbeki to mediate in Zimbabwe’s long running political crisis on its behalf, sees power-shaing between the government and the opposition as the only viable way of ending the leadership squabbles in the country.

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