Posted on 12/23/2002 4:57:00 AM PST by backhoe
From SABC News, 23 December
Motorists stuck at Beitbridge
There are still long queues of trucks and other vehicles at the Beit Bridge border post between South Africa and Zimbabwe outside Musina in the Limpopo province. The border post traffic jam started yesterday morning, and by late afternoon the traffic flow at the border gate was still slow. Custom and immigration officials at the gate complained about uncooperative motorists. They say especially taxi drivers were mainly to blame for the jam. Today trucks and vehicles queued for almost four kilometers from the entrance of the Beitbridge Border Post. The shortage of fuel in Zimbabwe has filling stations at Musina and Beitbridge struggling to keep up with the demand as Zimbabweans cross the border to buy petrol.
From CNN, 22 December
Zimbabwe fuel crisis halts getaway
Harare - A fuel shortage is hampering the efforts of thousands of Zimbabweans to travel to rural homes for Christmas. Many were left stranded at bus stations across the southern African country on Sunday as a severe fuel crisis crippled public transport. Oil industry sources say emergency fuel imports that began trickling into Zimbabwe on Saturday has had little impact on a fuel shortage that has virtually ground the country to a halt. Zimbabwe's fuel pumps have run dry in the last three weeks, dramatising a deepening economic crisis which many blame on mismanagement by President Robert Mugabe's government. Harare's main rural bus station was jammed with travellers on Sunday. Some said they had waited two days. "I have been here since Friday evening, but I have not been able to fight my way into one of the few buses to my home," one woman told Reuters. "If I don't get anything by sunset today, I will have to give up and spend my Christmas here." Zimbabwe state media reported that commuters were stranded in many other cities as lack of fuel choked bus services. The crisis has dampened the holiday season in a nation already grappling with its worst economic crisis in decades, including serious food shortages.
Energy Minister Amos Midzi said on Thursday a barter deal with Libya to supply 70 percent of fuel needs had run into problems as Zimbabwe was unable to supply the beef, sugar and tobacco it pledged in return. He said Zimbabwe had ordered fuel worth over $15 million from Kuwait and South Africa, sparking a run on petrol stations as motorists waited for the emergency imports which were scheduled to begin arriving over the weekend. Oil industry sources said some supplies have been trickling in, but in very small amounts. The fuel crisis has worsened Zimbabwe's economic woes and sparked public anger against Mugabe's government. Zimbabweans are grappling with shortages of many basic consumers goods, including bread, milk, cooking oil and sugar. Nearly half the country's 14 million people are threatened by severe food shortages which Mugabe has blamed on drought but his critics blame the state seizure of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to landless blacks. Mugabe, 78, denies claims he has grossly mismanaged the economy and says the country is a victim of sabotage by domestic and international opponents to his land reforms.
From News24 (SA), 22 December
Journo accused of spying for BBC
Harare - The Zimbabwe government has accused a local journalist of spying for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the state-controlled Sunday Mail reported. The paper, which reflects government views, said Lewis Machipisa, a Zimbabwean correspondent for BBC radio, was being hired by Britain's foreign office to also film and write stories for BBC television. The BBC has been officially banned from the country, but Machipisa, a Zimbabwean national, has been able to continue working here for the broadcaster. A senior BBC official quoted in the Sunday Mail denied the allegations against Machipisa and also said the BBC was not behind an exiled radio station broadcasting into Zimbabwe from London, as the government had suggested. The permanent secretary in Zimbabwe's information ministry, George Charamba told the BBC in a letter quoted in the Sunday Mail that the BBC's denials of these charges were not accepted or believed. The charges against Machipisa come ahead of the December 31 deadline set by the government for all journalists working here to be registered, turned down or de-registered under tough new press laws.
From ZWNEWS, 23 December
Chiredzi reprieve
The 25 Chirdezi cane farmers who were yesterday threatened with arrest on charges of staying on their farms have been granted a temporary reprieve, a spokesperson for the group said yesterday. The farmers had been notified that they would be arrested last weekend, and would be likely to spend the Chrsitmas holiday period in custody because the courts do not reopen until next Monday. Yesterday police notified the group that they would instead be arrested on 27 December.
From The South China Morning Post, 21 December
Mugabe accused of blocking food aid for his foes
The Zimbabwean leader has created such a climate of fear that many villagers are afraid to accept help, says an aid agency
Deutsche Presse-Agentur in Harare
The World Food Programme, perhaps Zimbabwe's last bastion of mass food aid for a starving population, has warned of an increasingly deadly control being exercised by President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party over people in famine-hit rural parts of the country. A group of workers from the UN famine-relief agency was registering people to receive food aid in the northern village of Mashambanhaka, where they tried to explain to villagers the food did not come from the government. Like most places in the district of Uzumba-Maranga-Pfungwe, about 150km north of Harare, the village's grain stores have run empty and many were hungry. "But they wouldn't have anything to do with it," said an agency worker. "They thought the food was coming from the opposition [Movement for Democratic Change]. It took a lot of talking to reassure them we have nothing to do with any political parties." Local politicians refer to the district as a ruling party "one-party state". In the flawed presidential elections in March, Mr Mugabe got 93 per cent of the vote in the district, the highest in the country. The turnout of 73 per cent was also the highest. The election was followed by a campaign of violent retribution against anyone suspected of voting for the opposition.
Meanwhile, a surprise find was made at Musanhi, in the Uzumba-Maranga-Pfungwe district. In a classroom at a primary school sacks were found of maize stamped with the words: "Gift of United Kingdom", the country constantly at the receiving end of Mr Mugabe's hate rhetoric. Officials of the UN agency wearing blue T-shirts are distributing maize to about 4,000 people in the village. Heads of families are grouped according to their villages and sit in the shade of trees, patiently waiting their turn for a monthly ration of 12kg. It is surprising that there are no t-shirts printed with Mr Mugabe's face, no war veterans or members of the notorious green-uniformed youth militia, no slogan chanting: no politics at all. It is rare for any gathering of a couple of thousand people in Zimbabwe to form without the control of the ruling party. However, the UN agency has been the world's most important distributor of food aid since 1963, usually in countries run by corrupt or repressive administrations. Out of this experience came the agency's principle that any taint of local politics compromises the principle of giving food to the hungry.
Aid agencies have reported widespread, comprehensive evidence of Mr Mugabe's government excluding even suspected opposition supporters from state famine relief operations. There is constant "low level political interference", said Goodson Murinyi, programme assistant for the agency. "Party people always think they have to benefit first." The agency this month plans to feed a total of 5.9 million people in Zimbabwe, out of about seven million believed at risk from a national population of 14 million. Until last month, the organisation was catering only to the most vulnerable - children, the elderly and the bed-ridden. But now everybody is vulnerable, the UN agency says. "The last two months have been the breaking point," said agency spokesman Luis Clements. "Many people who had some resources have sold them off. They are desperate now, they have no other source of food. We have hit the wall."
At Musanhi's primary school, most children fall asleep at break time. "They are not getting enough to eat," said a teacher. "If you wake them up, they will look at you without listening. We leave them to sleep." The key to the agency's system of distribution is its comprehensive list of recipients. They consult the local famine relief authorities' lists, but it's usually inadequate. Earlier this year in Zvimba district, Mr Mugabe's home area, agency workers found that the official famine relief list appeared to leave out a ward. They were told it did not exist any more. The workers went in search of it. They found the missing ward, with several thousand hungry people. Mr Murinyi said: "They told us they were always left out of anything to do with the government. Because they were opposition." Comment from ZWNEWS, 23 December To have or have not
By Michael Hartnack
Few Zimbabweans will celebrate Christmas this year. The country’s festive season is overshadowed by the collapse of commercial agriculture, long fuel queues, struggles to find basic commodities, let alone a Christmas Day chicken, soaring inflation, millions facing starvation, and increasing state-sponsored violence. But there are just a few in celebratory mood - such as the daughter of a prominent Zanu PF establishment figure who is a sixth form pupil at one of Harare’s elite private schools. Before the school broke up for Christmas she proudly invited all her classmates to spend a few days over the holidays "at our new farm." In addition to the mansion-like homestead, with spectacular views of the Enterprise Valley 40 km northeast of Harare, there were wonderful facilities including tennis and squash courts and a swimming pool, she boasted. Sources at the school said the invitation was politely declined by pupils who knew the family recently evicted, at a few hours' notice, from the home four generations had built up over 80 years.
However, despite special credit lines arranged for them by Robert Mugabe’s regime, even the political elite are having difficulty getting soil back into production on the seized farms. And many so-called war veterans and peasants who were allocated or grabbed plots during Mugabe's three year fast track land reform have abandoned them in the search for food relief handouts. "Zimbabwe is now a nation where everything is in short supply except violence, misery, disease and death," Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, told reporters at a pre-Christmas news conference. Inflation last week reached 175,5 percent, according to the Central Statistical Office, and the International Monetary Fund predicts it may hit 522,2 percent in a few months. Some firms plan to extend their annual Christmas shut-down well into the New Year since they can neither afford to sustain production in the face of soaring input costs and officially-imposed price controls, nor go into liquidation and pay redundant workers the termination benefits stipulated by law.
Mugabe and his cronies, however, press on – real life examples of the observation by award-winning Zimbabwean novelist Chenjerai Hunzwi: "African governments are never bankrupt until the pantry is State house is empty." As Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo feuds with the opposition-controlled Harare City Council, residents wonder whether there will be water in the taps come Christmas Day in addition to the usual shortages of maize meal, bread, sugar, cooking oil, salt, pet food, paraffin, petrol and diesel. The council was finally given the foreign exchange to import it last week. Meat - particularly beef - has become the latest casualty of Mugabe's attempts to force prices down below costs of production. Retail chains have withdrawn beef from their shelves following a state edict that it had to be sold for 30 - 50 percent less than it can be bought from slaughterhouses. Butchery shelves last week displayed a few 500g packets of chicken pieces at Z$750, and similar size packets of imported lamb chops for Z$2 000 - half the entire monthly wage for a domestic worker. In rural areas, people are already dying of starvation, says Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo. In towns, two children were killed in stampedes for maize meal. Maize meal supposed to sell for Zimbabwe Z$380 a 5kg pack fetches Zimbabwe Z$800 for 3kg "under the counter"; cooking oil (controlled price Z$136) is Z$1 000 for 750ml, and sugar (controlled price Z$150 for 2kg) is $700. A 20 litre can of petrol sold for 10 times the Z$74,40/litre official pump price.
Officials at Tongogara Refugee Camp at Chipinge, in the southeast of the country, report starving Zimbabwean women are begging male inmates to marry them so they can get on the ration list. "If I do not show him love, he will kick me out," said one reluctant bride. Families at Midzi, in the northeast, say funerals have become a nightmare with thousands of "mourners" turning up in the hope of customary food handouts from the grieving family. It will be a relief to many rural households if famished urban relatives cannot get transport home for the holidays. Mugabe pledged at his ruling party congress December 14 to tackle the fuel crisis personally, saying without a trace of irony that he didn’t understand why there were fuel shortages, and adding: "There has to be quick action to ensure the holiday spirit is not spoiled." For everyone else the explanation is obvious. Libya, the main supplier, has demanded hard currency or bankable assets up front, and reportedly wants shares in banks, industries, commercial enterprises or tourist facilities if payment cannot be made in US dollars.
Like the sixth form schoolgirl with the new family farm, another Zimbabwean smiling this Christmas will be Zanu PF administration secretary Emmerson Mnangagwa, who doubles as parliamentary speaker and fancies himself as Mugabe's political heir. He sneaked in a quick shopping trip to Cape Town under the guise of representing Mugabe at the ANC party congress. He was loudly cheered by delegate for denouncing the "neo-liberal individualistic and predominantly capitalistic world view which is totally alien to our African people … this view which holds the rights of a few to be supreme over those of the majority." Mnangagwa got an affectionate hug from Mbeki, who studiously ignores Zimbabwe's widening gap between rich and poor, between the political elite and the 12 million ordinary citizens. Next week Mugabe and Mnangagwa may play act the roles of Good King Wenceslas and his page at a few celebrations for the party faithful. However, the sentries with their AK47s and CIO men in dark glasses will ensure no one gets a glimpse behind the high walls and imported South African razor wire to see how they really feast with their families.
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