Chofamba's Perspectives

Africa’s western Diaspora: To return or not to return

2012-01-31T14:47:00.000Z

Unemployment in Europe and the United States is pushing many African immigrants to consider returning home.

FOR GENERATIONS now, the post-industrial economies of Europe and North America have bewitched Africans with their gleaming semblance of success, modernity and the promise of a secure and prosperous future. For the continent’s well-heeled and educated as well as for the unschooled but skilled in the arts of determination, life in London or New York, or Paris is well worth striving for. Or is it?

Since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, trouble has crept into paradise and the dream, either of success and happiness in the west, or of a triumphal return to the homeland, has taken on a rather disillusioning twist for many. ‘Arduous, long and uneven’ is how the governor of the Bank of England Sir Mervyn King described the British economy’s path to recovery. In the same week, the IMF also was unveiling a dampening prognosis of the global economy’s growth prospects.

The global economy’s growth forecast for 2012 had now come down to 3.25 per cent from an earlier forecast of 4 per cent, it said. From the UK’s Office of National Statistics (ONS), figures told of over 2.6m people unemployed and record numbers claiming unemployment benefit - 1.6m in all. Despite the coalition government’s austerity measures of budget cuts, no growth ensued and the economy contracted by 0.2 per cent in the last quarter of 2011.

Across the pond in the US, the same depressing numeric narrative holds sway: 13.1m people out of work despite a marginal 0.6 per cent decline in the unemployment rate since August 2011. In the EU, the unemployment rate stands at 9.8 per cent as of November 2011.Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz sums up the sense of gloom thus: ‘Fundamental problems in the US and Europe are deep. Looking at it from the point of view of the US workers, no one really anticipates us being back to normal before 2017, and that’s optimistic.’

But whilst Sub-Saharan Africa remains vulnerable to contagion from the global financial crisis and could well be sucked into its vortex if the global crisis persists, its current economic outlook is in sharp contrast to the west’s. Mouth watering growth figures litter Africa’s economic terrain, and the IMF puts average growth estimates for 2012 between 5.25 and 5.75 per cent.

In fact, across the length of the continent, several countries having been growing phenomenally and consistently over the last few years. There is a new spring in their step, with their citizens making entrepreneurial forays into the various sectors of their fledgling economies and generally loooking ahead with a renewed sense of optimism and self-belief. So, is it time for the African diapora to call time on their stay in the west and return home? Anecdotal evidence from a number of African countries shows there is a steady pattern of return which has in no small measure been bolstered by the economic recession in the west.

In the US, there is a growing number of Africans who are courageously binning the shards of their broken American dreams and taking the brave step homewards. Others are not so lucky though, having spent years working as undocumented aliens in the shadow of Uncle Sam’s immigration authorities and living off cash in hand jobs when the economy was good. But now they can barely afford the one-way ticket back to Africa.

Packing his bags: Maina prepares to leave the US for Kenya

Sammy Maina, a Kenyan immigrant who was until last year based in the US, said chasing the American dream was so demanding that it had cost several of his African friends their marriages and even led some to commit suicide. ‘It is very difficult right now and so many people are packing and going back to Kenya in big, big numbers,’ he told the BBC. Up to one million Africans are estimated to live in the US and according to the homeland security department, 130,000 Africans migrate legally to the US each year. Some Senegalese community organisers in New York also revealed they were inundated with requests from expatriates who have lost their jobs, are facing homelessness, and who want financial help to return home.

Nigeria is one country that is receiving a steady flow of returnees from its western-based diaspora in a move that is turning out to be a brain gain for the country. Media reports suggest the return of foreign-based professionals has tightened competition on the job market, with recruiters receiving ‘a deluge of applications’ from foreign-based jobseekers desirous of returning home.

‘At the height of the recession in Europe and the US it was crazy because everyone was getting in touch saying they wanted to go home,’ says Ade Odutola from the job recruitment website Wazobiajobs.com. ‘It’s calmed down a bit now but lots of Nigerians who left in the 1980s and early 90s are now seeing other people being successful back home and that’s a real magnet pulling them back.’

Whilst opportunities certainly abound, it is no walk in the park for returnees, though, as they have to contend with basic infrastructure problems. Electricity only works for a few hours every day and the streets in Lagos in particular are clogged with traffic.

Chaotic scenes on the streets of Lagos, Nigeria

A few months ago, the BBC featured Tunde Ogunrinde, a Nigerian fast food chain operations manager who had swapped life working in management for a fast food chain in Birmingham, England, for his country of birth two years ago. ‘Growth here was going in the right direction, whereas in Europe it was flattening out. It’s time to capitalise,’ he said.

Across Africa, economic growth is riding on the back of the global commodities boom. In Nigeria, it is oil wealth that has made it possible for employers to pay top dollar to their returning expatriates. If recession elsewhere leads to a collapse in the demand for oil, Nigeria could still find itself sucked into the world’s economic problems. ‘Oil drives the economy here,’ says financial analyst Bismarck Rewane, ‘Oil revenue drives investment, oil revenue drives government expenditure and consumer purchasing power. That’s the bottom line.’

South Africa has also seen a steady flow of returnees from its wetsren diaspora. South African expatriates, often white and well-educated, are flocking back home from recession-hit UK, Australia, New Zealand and the US. A study by recruitment agency Adcorp shows that of the 285,000 South Africans, mostly high-qualified Whites, who had left to work abroad since 1990, almost 40,000 returned home between mid-2009 and mid-2010.

Some were quite hardpressed and didn’t even have the money to move back home, according to Tyron Whitley, a returnee from London who now runs a company that ships returning South Africans’ cars from her Durban base. Her thriving business is evidence of just how many fellow South Africans are voting with their feet and returning home.

Media reports from Kenya dating as far back as March 2009 claim that thousands of Kenyans have been trooping back to their country from overseas every month, ‘broke and jobless’ as the effects of the global financial crisis continued to spread. The Nation website quoted a Ministry of Immigration official as saying that thousands of Kenyans were opting for home instead of languishing in foreign countries where the economic recession was blighting them to penury.

Following the establishment of a powersharing government and the adoption of the US dollar as the official currency in Zimbabwe, the resultant political and economic stability has drawn some of the country’s nationals back from the diaspora. The topic of return continues to animate Zimbabwean online forums, with opinion sharply divided on whether it was time for those in the west to return home and pursue the unfolding opportunities, or hold their breath until new elections promised by President Robert Mugabe this year but opposed by Prime Minister Morgan Tvangirai.

‘It’s the basics that we need in place; the politics can sort itself out,’ said UK-based Zimbabwean, Nate Ncube. ‘[First we need] reliable services like the supply of clean water, electricity, sewage and waste removals, reliable service provision like affordable health, education and a secure environment where the rule of law is respected by all. Also, it’s difficult to plan or budget when there’s constant price fluctuations and talk of a change of currency.’

Another UK-based Zimbabwean who had just returned from a visit to the country said his trip had brought his repatriation plans into sharp perspective. ‘The longer one stays in the west the more difficult it is to reconcile oneself to the poor standards, like living for long stretches without electricity or running water, for instance,’ he said. ‘You’ll need thousands of dollars per term for decent private school education, and if you have family you’ll need to run two cars as public transport’s pathetic. In short, you can only return to Zimbabwe if you’re truly sorted, otherwise it’ll be like jumpinmg into the deep end.’

Prime Minister Tsvangirai was booed by Zimbabweans in London in 2009
after he had called on them to return home to rebuild their country.

Lance Mambondiani, a UK-based Zimbabwean investment excutive and blogger, recently observed that for those Zimbabweans who had migrated to the UK for better prospects, the economic advantage of being in the diaspora was premised on a crumbling economy back home where the pound earned a fortune on the parallel market. But this advantage had vanished with dollarisation of the Zimbabwean economy, and the European economic downturn had now driven the final nail in its coffin.

‘To migrate or not to migrate remains an intimately personal decision. The choice, however, maybe be easier if the global economic crisis continues to bite,’ concluded Mambondiani.

Time for Africa's demographc dividend?

2012-01-19T12:47:00.000Z

Africa's young population holds the promise of a brighter future, if the necessary investment in their education and empowerment is made today.

In a world of seven billion people, Africa stands out as a strapping teenager brimming over with youthful energy and optimism and yet also prone to impetuosity, frustration and disillusionment in the absence of a sufficiently supportive environment. With a median age of just under 20, the continent's growing young population holds a 'compelling and conflicting array of opportunities and challenges' for its 54 nations.

The question confronting many African governments is: what must be done to harness and unleash the potential and creativity of the biggest youth cohort the continent has ever seen? And with fertility rates falling steadily and health improving in many countries amidst a burgeoning working age population, is it now time for Africa to cash in on its demographic dividend?

At the end of October, the UN published its State of World Population, which revealed that global population had surged by a billion to seven billion in little more than 12 years. Africa's own share of this increase is no less staggering- since 2000 the continent's population expanded by 200 million to reach just over one billion in 2011. Future projections for the next decade envisage an average growth of 2.2 per cent to reach two billion- or one-fifth of the global total. This rapid growth also suggests that Africa's population is remarkably young. For instance, out of every 100 Nigerians, 55 are under 20 years old.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon greeted the world's seven billionth baby with a sombre warning about the state of the world today, from failing economies and growing inequalities and stretched natural resources on a climatically fatigued planet, to the clear and present risks of crisis and collapse as a result of exhausted trust in leaders and institutions to deliver a better life.

Referring to the widespread popular protests and uprisings against bankerinduced economic recession in the west and democratic deficits in the Arab world and Africa that dominated 2011, Ban said, 'The gathering force of public protests is the popular expression of an obvious fact: that growing economic uncertainty, market volatility and mounting inequality have reached a point of crisis.'

He added, 'Too many people are living in fear. They are discouraged by uncertainty and angry at their diminished prospects. Around kitchen tables and in public squares, they are asking: who will deliver for my family and my community? In these difficult times, the biggest challenge facing governments is not a deficit of resources; it is a deficit of trust. People are losing faith in leaders and public institutions to do the right thing.'

What, then, are Africa's prospects in such a prevailing economic and political state across the world, given its massive, young and restless population? It is of some significant reassurance that the UN Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) and the AU in their joint economic report on Africa for 2011 observed that 'African economies have recovered from the global financial and economic crisis better than expected'. Their aggregate GDP growth is forecast to rise to 5 per cent in 2011, up from 4.7 per cent in 2010, the report says, adding that the exports of African economies suffered in 2009, with a decline of 32.4 per cent, but the rebound of commodity prices and strong demand from developing and emerging economies propelled a sharp upswing in their exports in 2010.

Ban Ki moon: 'People are losing faith in leaders and public institutions to do the right thing'.

Simon Freemantle, a research analyst with South Africa's Standard Bank who has embarked on a series of reports unpacking what he sees as the five main trends driving Africa's ongoing economic and commercial reinvigoration, has identified the continent's 'larger, younger, and more affluent population' as a primary driver of its enduring economic allure. Freeman de argues that first, 'when coupled with robust economic growth, population growth will support the emergence of the continent's consumer base, providing support to local firms, creating economic opportunities, and inspiring foreign investment'.

Secondly, he argues that for countries that are able to provide the necessary institutional support, a youthful, and rising, population has the potential to yield economic benefits. He explained that locked within the convergence of a rising population, declining fertility and improving healthcare systems is the potential for a demographic dividend, where countries witness a mechanical appreciation in the size, and vigour of the working age population. With low dependency ratios, the working classwhich also includes more women due to falling fertility rates - is able to save and invest a greater amount of its income thereby increasing prosperity.

'Thus, shifts in a country's age structure can, and have in virtually all large economies in the world, produce profound economic gains, fundamentally supporting the development of an industrial and man ufacturing base, and vastly altering economic performance,' Freemantle said.

The concept of the 'demographic dividend' is an interesting one for researchers and policymakers alike. Lori S Ashford of the Population Reference Bureau points out that East Asia's 'economic miracle' provides the best evidence of the potential impact of the demographic dividend.

As early as the 1950s, she said, East Asian countries developed strong public health systems that ensured child survival, promoted smaller families, and made contraception acceptable and easy to obtain. While in the 1950s the typical East Asian woman had six children, by the mid-1990s she had only two. 'A strong educational system and sound economic management made it possible to absorb the large generation of young adults into the workforce. From 1965 to 1990, growth in [GDP] per capita averaged more than 6 per cent per year[ ... ] Researchers have estimated that the demographic dividend accounted for onefourth to two-fifths of this growth,' Ashford wrote in a paper examining prospects for Africa's demographic dividend.

In Freeman tie's view, the coupling of economic and population growth to facilitate the emergence of Africa's consumer base is already evident. 'Within the next five years Africa's spending power will increase by 25 per cent. And, private consumption in Africa's 10 largest economies will more than double to $1.8 trillion by 2020- the same level as China's private final consumption in 2009,' he says. This consumer growth is being supported by a rising middle class, which is estimated to have grown to 150 million Africans since 1990, with a further 40 million households projected to become middle class by 2015.

Nigeria and Egypt alone are expected to add 20 million new households to Africa's middle class in the next decade, whilst disposable income in Africa's five biggest economies- South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco - will grow at an average rate of 8 per cent, reaching a collective $650bn by 2020.

Although there's no agreement on the precise income levels requisite for middle class classification, it is clear that the nascent development of a segment of the population increasingly freed of the poverty trap- measured as those living on less than $1.25 per day- is gaining momentum.

Africa's middle class is set to fuel economic growth as it expands

Four decades from now, Africa's working age population will swell to 1.2 billion, which translates to a quarter of the world's workers. But according to Ashford, reaping the demographic dividend will not necessarily occur as a matter of course. It will likely depend on several factors, such as strong public health systems that improve child survival and health in general; widespread availability and social acceptability of family planning; rapid and steady declines in childbearing; improvements in educational enrolments and quality; and stable economic conditions conducive to growth and job creation.

There are wide disparities in fertility rates across the continent and for many countries their significant gains in economic growth are likely to be weighed down by a dramatic explosion in population size. On average, a woman in sub-Saharan Africa will give birth to about 5.2 children in her lifetime, with at least nine countries having an average of six children per woman, in comparison to 1.7 in western countries. It would be far easier for many of these countries to develop and progress with low rates of population growth.

One such country facing massive population growth in future is Uganda. John Baliruno, from Mpigi in the country's central region, has fathered nine children but says he had never intended to have so many. '[My wife and I] had no knowledge of family planning and ended up producing one child after another. Now I cannot properly feed them,' he lamented. On account of lack of access to family planning knowledge and gender inequalities among other factors, Uganda's population of 34.5 million is expected to treble by 2050.

However, there are more encouraging stories from other countries on the continent. Assefa Hailemariam, the former director of the Population Studies and Research Centre at Addis Ababa University's Institute of Development Studies, said that young urbanites are bringing fertility rates down very fast for economic reasons.

'Urban life is demanding,' Hailemariam said. 'You can't count on relatives to look after your kids. You can't have too manybringing them up, taking care of them. Also urban people have access to communications [media] so they are aware that having a smaller number of kids is better for their future you can educate your children, buy them clothing and so on.'

Ethiopia's national fertility rate has been 3.8 for the period of 2010-2015 whilst in Addis Ababa, the capital, Hailemariam said, the rate has fallen below 1.5. 'In 2000 it was 1.9 or so; now we expect that it would be much lower. This is not necessarily just because of contraceptive use, although contraceptive use has played a role, but because of a number of development issues- a higher age of marriage in Addis, education, health improvement, [and] contraceptive access,' he said.

Freemantle observed that 'enhanced peace and prosperity across the continent are colluding, with a range of similarly supporting factors, to reduce fertility rates - in some instance dramatically'. He identifies Mauritius as one country where dramatic reduction in its fertility rate against improved health is holding out the promise of economic returns.

The drop from a fertility rate of 6.2 to 2.3 took just 20 years, from 1960 to 1980. The UN's population report corroborates this case, noting that some rapidly developing lower-income countries are following the trend in middle income countries whose fertility rates are falling significantly. It adds that the number of years in which a large, young working population can be counted on to fuel development may be fleeting, and governments and the private sector need to act now to prepare the young for productive roles and create jobs for them early in their working lives.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where economic growth rates remain relatively high as noted in the joint Uneca/ AU report, this performance is not being translated into needed jobs. The report urges more effective government intervention through the adoption of the 'developmental state' model to create employment-building policies and programmes. 'The improved economic performance achieved over the last decade has not been translated into commensurate reductions in unemployment and poverty, nor significant progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the continent is experiencing a jobless recovery, apparently perpetuating a fundamental feature of its previous growth spell,' the report says.

Where employment has been created, this has been limited in many countries and economic recovery has been driven by capital-intensive extractive sectors that have few forward and backward linkages with the rest of the economy.

Only a few countries, such as Egypt and Mauritius, made marginal reductions in unemployment in 2010, due to their relatively strong expansion of the labour-intensive services sector. Woefully, public expenditure on social spending falls below the level needed to achieve the MDGs.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has warned that youth unemployment and situations where young people simply give up looking for work 'incur costs to the economy, to society and to the individual and their family', adding that 'there is a demonstrated link between youth unemployment and social exclusion'. In 2011, amid revolutions on the streets of Arab countries, the ILO also suggested that a 23.4 per cent youth unemployment rate in the Arab world was a major contributor to the uprisings.

In South Africa, one of the most economically unequal societies on the planet, unemployment stands at 25 per cent, rising to 57 per cent among township youth. The increasingly militant ANC Youth League and its suspended leader Julius Malema seized the country's political centre stage fronting the anger, disillusionment and growing militancy of South Africa's youth who feel betrayed by 17 years of majority rule.

In neighbouring Mozambique, Rui Pedro, a 24-year old geography student at the University Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, is equally despondent. 'It's hard to be a young person in Mozambique,' he said. 'Normally in youth, you're supposed to gain experience for the future ... But here you have more problems than opportunities. There's no way to overcome the obstacles.'

So, can Africa reap the demographic dividend? Experts concur that there are a number of preconditions that must be fulfilled before countries can reap the advantages of youthful and growing populations, the main one of which is institutional quality. This refers to maintaining the rule of law, efficient bureaucracies, government stability, lack of corruption, and a stable business environment that encourages domestic and foreign investors.

Political and economic freedoms must also be supportive. 'Overall, North African countries, particularly Egypt and Morocco, rank favourably on most metrics, with countries such as Ghana, Mauritius, Senegal and South Africa also displaying structural potential,' says Freemantle.

Uneca's Africa youth report for 2011 calls for more investment in education and skills development for young people beyond merely increasing basic literacy rates to ensure dynamic, multifaceted knowledgebuilding at higher and tertiary levels. This will go a long way in preparing young people for the evolving labour market, the report says. Depressingly, despite increase in school enrolment, access to post-primary schooling is still a challenge for most young people in Africa.

Uneca says a change of attitude towards young people and by young people in Africa is essential. Many initiatives have been put in place, but much remains to be done. 'Clearly, as with the lessons learned from gender and development, stereotypes and the attitudes of both young people and the general population slow progress towards youth development in Africa,' it says in the report.

Secondly, Uneca says that in an era of the promotion of regional integration and rapid globalisation, African governments should take proactive measures that harness the potential and competitiveness of their young people in the global economy. 'These measures [ ... ] include: enhancing infrastructure; training and retraining to address skill shortages in the region; reforming immigration policies; promoting policies of inclusion and the right to education and work; and strengthening social protection systems, which would increase demand, protect people and support change in society'.

UNFPA's report, The Case for Investing in Young People as Part of a National Poverty Reduction Strategy 2010, advocates for investment in the youth. 'Adolescence is an important time to acquire the skills, health, social networks and other attributes that form the social capital needed for a fulfilling life. The fact that the human capital formed during adolescence and in youth is also an important determinant of long-term growth makes a strong macro-economic argument to support investing more in young people,' the report noted.

Social investment in young people's education, health and employment can enable countries to build a strong economic base, thereby reversing intergenerational poverty, said the report, adding that enhancing young people's capacities can yield larger returns during the course of their economically active lives. 'Young people are also an enormous resource for growth in the short run. Having young people sit idle is costly in foregone output ... The loss of income among the younger generation translates into a lack of savings as well as a loss of aggregate demand.'

To combat rising population against low economic growth, the need for reproductive health services, especially family planning, remains great. The attainment of a stable population is necessary for accelerated, planned economic growth and development.

And governments that are serious about ending poverty should also be serious about availing the services, supplies, information that women need to exercise their reproductive rights.

In countries like Ethiopia, where many girls are married off before they reach 18, child marriages are declining. 'Child marriage undermines nearly every Millennium Development Goal; it is an obstacle to eradicating poverty, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, improving maternal and child health and reducing HIV and Aids,' the Population Reference Bureau survey says. Child marriages are a violation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and many countries in Africa have signed up to these international instruments.

Across the continent, many African youth are refusing to sit idly and risk their future being frittered away by unresponsive politicians. In Nigeria, where the median age is 18.5, young people have been taking an increasing part in political life in order to make their voices heard and their presence visible, including through the country's Youth Parliament.

The youth-registration and voting drive mounted by Fauziya Abdullahi and her colleagues for elections in 2011 is continuing as a civic awareness campaign, and Abdullahi said the elections showed 'a need for intensive civic education and capacity building that empowers young people to be at the driver's seat of their destiny.'

On the peripheries of the Egyptian city of Ismailia, on the Suez Canal, a teenage boy reflected the excitement of his generation and its hope of building political influence after the uprising in his country: 'We have made this revolution. Our families were used to keeping quiet. We didn't keep quiet. We went out to get our dream.'

Tsvangirai’s Prime Ministerial baby mamas

2011-11-25T15:45:00.001Z

Lothario: Tsvangirai has been linked with a string of women since his wife's tragic passing in a car accident in 2009

There's something incongruous about how Zimbabwean independent media journalists at home and in the Diaspora are reporting the debacle surrounding Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's marriage-that-allegedly-never-was. Whilst the state-controlled Herald has, predictably, gleefully reported on the 'union' and its attendant soap operatic saga, the independent press has bizarrely preoccupied itself with efforts to ‘uncover’ the ‘truth’ about the origins of claims that Tsvangirai had married his lover, Locadia Tembo, a wealthy businesswoman hailing from a traditionally ZANU PF family and whose sister is an MP in President Mugabe’s party.

Newzimbabwe.com published a story entitled The curious case of Tsvangirai’s marriage on Thursday which sought to reconcile the gaps between the Tembo family’s claims of a marriage between their daughter and the Prime Minister on the one hand, and denials of such a union by Tsvangirai’s spokesman Luke Tamborinyoka on the other. The story quoted journalist and political commentator Pedzisayi Ruhanya who suggested that Tamborinyoka’s denials correctly reflected Tsvangirai’s position on the alleged marriage. Further, Ruhanya averred that Tsvangirai could be a victim of factions in his party that are trying to play matchmaker for him in a bid to gain influence and control over him.

SW Radio Africa took it a notch further with a story also published on Thursday alleging an apparent conspiracy to corner Tsvangirai into marriage. The story also quoted Tsvangirai’s aides dismissing the veracity of the marriage claims. Ruhanya also features in this story, and this time he openly fingers Tsvangirai ally and co-Home Affairs Minister Theresa Makone as the troublesome matchmaker whose interference in the Prime Minister’s private life portends ill not only for Tsvangirai himself, but for the MDC-T’s overall mission to deliver democratic change. It is hard to quarrel with Ruhanya’s perspective on the goings-on within the MDC-T as he is solidly well-informed on the subject.

Married or merely 'damaged'? Tembo is said to be carrying Tsvangirai's twins

All this is very well and makes for interesting reading too, what with the sense of political intrigue and sex scandal it throws up all at once. Indeed, the story has provided much comic relief to legislators in Parliament, where the Prime Minister was yesterday mockingly hailed as a ‘ZANU PF’ son-in-law by MPs from that party as he arrived for the national budget presentation by Finance Minister Tendai Biti.

However, what I found most disturbing and disheartening about the independent media’s reporting (I’m not addressing the Herald for obvious reasons – they have no pretensions about their partisanship!) on this latest Tsvangirai debacle was their apparent diversion of popular attention from the real controversies of this episode. What’s beyond dispute is that the Prime Minister has made yet another young Zimbabwean woman pregnant, and out of wedlock. Immediately after official denials from Tsvangirai’s office rolled into newsrooms, alarm bells should have rung long and shrill about the falling moral probity of a national leader, a father figure, a grandfather and, inevitably, a role model for young men across the country.

The confirmation by his office of Tsvangirai having paid damages to the Tembo family in acknowledgement of his responsibility for Locadia’s pregnancy should have elicited hard questions by the media about the growing notoriety of the Prime Minister’s salacious lifestyle in the wake of his wife Susan’s tragic passing in 2009. The insistence of the Prime Minister’s office that Tsvangirai had only paid damages and no marriage had taken place seems to put it beyond doubt that Tsvangirai has no intentions to take Locadia as his lawfully wedded wife now or any time in the future. Otherwise, why create all this hullabaloo between two people who have every intention to live together happily ever after?

One notch in along string? The PM with Arikana Chihombori

Journalists are no secret-keepers for the PM and they’re doing him no favours by failing to hold up his increasingly embarrassing lifestyle to public scrutiny under the specious excuse that it is his private business. Well, for what it’s worth, it ceases to be his private business if young people living in one of the most HIV/Aids-affected societies in Sub-Saharan Africa should find encouragement to eschew condom use because their Prime Minister goes ‘bareback’ and still appears untouched by disease.

You might say that’s a presumptuous conclusion, but not so if you factor in poor Loreta Nyathi, the young Bulawayo girl whom the Prime Minister allegedly knocked up and left to raise his son on her own and whome he claimed to not remember. And that brings me to another worrying point – this apparent sowing of wild oats by Tsvangirai. One expects an irresponsible young man who knows no better – nhubu yomunhu - to leave a litany of baby mamas across the country, not the Prime Minister! Anywhere in the civilised world, this unbecoming and morally reprehensible behaviour would have haunted any politician into resignation, but not so in Zimbabwe.

Powerful men have carte blanche to behave outrageously when it comes to sexual affairs, and society tends to acquiesce to this appalling indulgence. Journalists sustain it by nibbling at the periphery of these disquieting moral contradictions, preferring to leave the core of the matter publicly untouched. They do gossip of course, over a beer or two, about all the skirt-chasing and altogether unbecoming behaviour of national leaders which they’re privy to.

Perhaps the new crop of national leaders from the MDC believes that any public scrutiny of their sexual lives is unfair, since many of their ZANU PF colleagues have enjoyed more than 30 years sexual and material profligacy unmolested by hostile press publicity. That is largely true, of course – many ZANU PF politicians have, over the decades, sired multitudes of fatherless children and sunk into putrefying sexual scandals involving small houses and even under age girls as well as gay lovers, in spite of their leader’s trenchant homophobia.

However, these ‘Chinja’ leaders have come into public life at a new historical juncture, and they have found a generation that seeks to escape the scourge of HIV infection and make up for the country’s sad loss of human capital over the last 20 years. Key to that survival is the restoration of its moral fibre, which can only be achieved by this generation taking responsibility for its future. The growing readiness to be tested and to know one’s HIV status means this generation is ready for openness and accountability in moral as in political matters.

Journalist Pedzisai Ruhanya: 'Romance will shape Tsvangirai's destiny'.

This is the generation that Prime Minister Tsvangirai wants to lead as president of the country. He may very well still do so in future, but presently his own personal affairs are an incorrigible mess. Hardly the picture of inspiration for aspiring young Zimbabweans, and firebrand independent politician Margaret Dongo is right to excoriate Tsvangirai for ‘dropping his pants everywhere’ and impregnating women. Pedzisai Ruhanya’s insightful observation that romance could shape Tsvangirai’s destiny appears even more illuminating in light of recent developments.

Resource nationalism takes hold in Southern Africa

2011-11-07T02:47:00.000Z

ANC Youth League president Julius Malema leads thousands of party cadres on a 56km 'march against poverty' from Johannesburg to the capital Pretoria recently

IT WAS Zambia’s then-opposition Patriotic Front (PF) leader Michael Sata’s shots across the bows to Chinese miners during the 2006 presidential election that brought the issue of resource nationalism in Southern Africa into sharp focus. The following year, south of the Zambian border, Zimbabwe was to pass a law claiming majority equity for black locals in foreign-owned mines, among other businesses.

Further down south, a resurgent radicalism among the party’s youth was to assert its boisterous confidence with Jacob Zuma’s election as the new leader of South Africa’s ruling ANC party in December 2007. Four years later, President Zuma’s government stands buffeted by the powerful ANC Youth League and its firebrand leader Julius Malema’s demands to nationalise the country’s vast mining sector.

Back in Zambia, Sata is now the new tenant at State House after putting an unceremonious end to the 20-year reign of President Rupiah Banda’s Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) in elections held in September. His fiery nationalism drew the admiration and support of largely young and unemployed Zambians who feel left out of the mining boom that has made the country’s economy one of the best-performing in Africa.

Sata is sworn in as the new Zambian President, bringing an end to the MMD's 20-year rule

Chinese companies have become key players in

Zambia

’s economy with total investments by the end of 2010 topping $2bn, according to official Chinese government data. Hungry for raw materials to power its burgeoning economy, the Asian dragon has in recent years led the influx of foreign direct investment (FDI) in natural resources in Africa, contributing to the continent’s accelerated growth.

Africa’s GDP growth rate is approximately 5% a year and is forecast to continue at this pace or faster. African countries face the challenge of translating this resource boom into continued and sustainable economic growth, as well as ensuring that it benefits ordinary citizens and is consistent with national and regional development priorities.

‘The resource nationalism trend appears to be gathering pace in Southern Africa,’ observed Peter Leon, a South African legal expert who co-chairs the International Bar Association’s Mining Law Committee. Efforts by countries to secure an equitable share of their natural resources have led to calls for outright nationalisation, indigenisation, or state control of strategic minerals.

In response, mining companies have no choice but to surrender to the sovereign right of resource-endowed countries to establish a stronger participation in their mineral industries. If they should pull out, other companies with much less to lose stand ready to take up their place. This is already happening in

Zimbabwe

, where foreign miners in the country are moving to comply with indigenisation regulations forcing them to cede at least 51% of their stock to local blacks.

According to the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation (EFIC)’s World Risk Developments newsletter for September, resource nationalism is proving to be a clear and present risk for miners as ‘governments in a variety of countries are examining options to gain a greater share of the windfall profits flowing from strong commodity prices.’

Advisory and accountancy firm Ernst & Young (E&Y) also noted in a recent report that resource nationalism is the biggest threat facing the mining sector this year and next as governments seek to take advantage of higher commodity prices to try to restore fragile finances.

‘Because the mining and metals sector rebounded quickly from the global financial crisis, it became an early target to help restore treasury conditions,’ the firm said, adding that it had identified at least 25 countries in 2010/11 that had increased, or announced plans to increase, their government take via taxes or royalties. E&Y also observed a growing trend by governments to seek to increase local participation in investment projects.

Mick Davis, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange-listed mining company Xstrata lamented the pattern by many resource-rich countries to pursue retrospective changes to mining contracts as they seek to increase rents from their natural resources. “Changes in resource rent sharing between the owner of the resource and the beneficiator of that resource should be prospective not retrospective,’ he wrote in Xstrata’s halfyearly report for 2011.

Xstrata's chief executive, Mick Davis

‘Mining companies take on board significant financial, development, construction and then operational risk when they invest their capital in projects. It is not sound policy to rewrite the basis on which those investments were made after the risks have been borne and the investment implemented.’

But according to EFIC, apart from a handful of countries, most seem intent upon not carrying resource nationalism to the point where it ‘kills the goose that lays the golden eggs’. Most countries have shied away from nationalisation and seem content to increase taxes and royalties, or buy into resource ventures, or both. In some countries the promotion of resource nationalism is consistent with healthy private investment and production, EFIC said. But others, such as Zimbabwe and

South Africa

, could threaten profitability and force mine closures and therefore needed to be watched closely.

Ever touted as the paragon of stability and good corporate governance, Botswana is the highest ranked African mining country in this year’s Fraser Institute report. The E&Y survey also hailed the country as a good example of how African governments can balance collective and individual participation in mining. The diamond-rich country jointly owns Debswana, the world’s leading producer of diamonds by value, with De Beers in a successful public-private partnership.

Mozambique also belongs to the more cautious group of resource-endowed countries as it treads carefully towards a review of its mining laws. Dubbed the world’s last coal frontier on account of its massive coalfields in the northern Tete Province, the country reportedly favours increased royalties and taxes on new mines, a 10-20% stake in ‘strategic’ projects for the state mining firm, and licence cancellation for firms that fall behind with their agreed development schedule, but has not hinted plans for a windfall profits tax.

Mines Minister Esperanca Bias said back in July that the review may be completed by year-end and emphasised that ‘we will not do anything without discussing with the companies.’ Unlike other countries in the region, Mozambique has no local ownership or equity requirements for miners and it is unclear if that could be subject to change. Mining accounts for less than 5 percent of the former Portuguese colony’s economy despite large deposits of coal, tantalum, gold and other minerals.

In Zambia, however, the mining sector is in for some anxious times, at least in the short term, as Sata sets about reconciling the promises of his election manifesto with the realities of the Zambian economy. He has moved quickly to suspend theissuance of new metal export permits ahead of the release of new guidelines. Analysts say Sata has been rightly concerned about exporters misreporting the amount of ore leaving the country and has directed that all export payments would now have to be handled by the central bank. But more significantly for the country’s miners, the new government wants to increase its shareholding to at least 35% in all mining projects.

‘But that will depend on how well we negotiate with the mining firms,’ Zambia’s Mines Minister Wylbur Simuusa made sure to point out in an interview with Reuters in early October. He swiftly allayed fears of nationalisation, saying: ‘We just want to have more benefits from the mines. There is no cause for apprehension, because nothing will be done without consulting the mining companies.’

Arguments in favour of resource nationalism have noted how mining companies, with their disproportionate might in relation to poor African governments, compel them to accept skewed terms that undermine their own people’s interests. Zambia’s current tax collection system is a case in point.

‘We want to introduce a tax collection mechanism based on production or earnings. Under the current system, which is profit-based, some mines have been declaring losses for the last 10 years,’ Simuusa said.

Growing disillusionment with their failure to benefit from resource extraction in their countries has engendered more radical approaches by some of Southern Africa’s nationalist governments. Earlier this year Namibia announced that it intended to declare copper, coal, gold, uranium, and zinc as strategic minerals, and thus subject to ‘additional national protection’.

Namibia's Mines and Energy Minister Isak Katali

Mines and Energy Minister Isak Katali said the state-owned mining entity, Epangelo Mining Company Limited (Epangelo) would now enjoy exclusive exploration and mining rights to all these minerals and that interested investors would in future be required to partner with Epangelo. The move sent jitters up the spines of mining investors as far afield as London, The Namibian newspaper claimed. The country is currently working on new mining legislation to effect the indigenisation of control over its minerals.

Whereas Zimbabwe has openly played its hand on indigenisation, South Africa’s ANC party is agonising over whether or not to nationalise the country’s mines. Its decision-making organ, the National Working Committee, appointed a research team in February this year to investigate and report back in a year on the feasibility of mine nationalisation. ‘This decision has left a cloud of uncertainty over the industry for the next year as it awaits the recommendations of the ANC’s policy conference in June 2012, followed by its elective conference in December 2012,’ Leon observed, ‘All of this potentially increases the country's sovereign risk profile.’

Mining investors are not expected to stay away, whatever the outcome of the ANC’s policy debate. ‘The few high-quality ore reserves left untapped in the world are largely located in Africa. As such, companies are unlikely to leave, even in the face of higher taxes and tougher economic terms,’ Javier Blas, the Financial Times’ commodities editor, concluded.

Angola: A changing of the guards?

2011-09-29T01:55:00.000+01:00

Farewell? The quiet godfather of Angolan politics has signalled his intention to step down from the presidency after more than three decades. However, analysts believe he will continue to be the power behind the throne.

Southern Africa’s longest-ruling leader Jose Eduardo Dos Santos of Angola is a man whose 32 years in office belies the security of his hold on the oil rich country. Ushered to the fore of national life when the country’s founding President Agostinho Neto died of cancer in office in 1979, Dos Santos is moving to ensure that his departure from power is as gradual and planned as his assumption of it was fortuitous and sudden.

In the opaque internal workings of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which is one of the region’s most hardened liberation movements-turned-governments, it has not often been easy to decipher the party’s plans on the hitherto taboo question of succession. However, in early September the Angolan Novo Jornal newspaper set the country abuzz when it reported that the 69 year-old son of immigrants from Sao Tome and Principe was to stand down as president before or after next year’s elections.

The chosen one? Sonangol's Manuel Vicente

Quoting unnamed MPLA sources, the weekly claimed that Dos Santos had picked Manuel Vicente, head of the state oil company Sonangol, as his successor. Party spokesman Rui Falcao de Andrade also told business news publisher Bloomberg that the MPLA will meet in December to appoint its presidential candidate for next year’s election and was currently ‘talking about probabilities’ although no formal decision by the party had been taken. According to the country’s 2010 constitution, only MPs are now directly elected by the people, and the person who is named at the top of the party list of the winning party automatically becomes president.

The news coincided with planned anti-Dos Santos protests in Luanda, leading to speculation that the MPLA may have sought to pacify increasingly restless opponents by promising impending change at the top. Riding on the coat-tails of the Arab Spring, which toppled longstanding dictatorships in North Africa, Angolan activists have several times this year held protests calling on Dos Santos to step down. On 25 September, a day after MPLA supporters had demonstrated in support of Dos Santos in Luanda, police crushed an anti-government protest by youths.

The man at the steering wheel of Sonangol and the President share a striking similarity: both are trained engineers with a background in the oil industry. Vicente is a career technocrat who understands the country’s oil industry like the back of his hand. He has been at the helm of Sonangol since 1999 and has spent two decades with the company whilst simultaneously juggling other corporate roles and consultancies. At face value, he has no basis to feature as the leading figure in a cast of MPLA contenders for the leadership of Southern Africa’s most militarised state.

But his appointment to the ruling party’s powerful politburo in 2009 as well as the critical role that Sonangol occupies within the parallel governing structure that is tightly woven around the country’s presidency suggest that Vicente is far much more than a politically connected corporate suit. In a June 2011 situation report on Angola published by the South Africa-headquartered Institute for Security Studies, Africa analyst Paula Cristina Roque described the country’s political order as composed of parallel ruling structures, with the ‘formal, fragile’ MPLA government on one hand, and ‘the more resilient ‘shadow’ government controlled and manipulated by the presidency [on the other], with Sonangol […] as its chief economic motor.’

Among other things, this shadow government is responsible for the formulation of international policy independently of the established government and foreign ministry, Roque added, and ‘to a certain extent, Sonangol is the vehicle used to control the international image of Angola, investing internationally in the strategic areas of telecommunications, gas and petroleum as well as the banking sector,’ she said. Sonangol, and, to a lesser extent, Endiama (the national diamond company), play a central role in the management of the state and in the MPLA’s financial strategy. This background makes Vicente a strong candidate to fulfil for Dos Santos the role that Dmitry Medvedev played in Russia for the outgoing President Vladimir Putin in 2008.

‘The president will likely look to implement an organised hand-off to Vicente or another trusted ally while remaining, like Vladimir Putin in Russia, the power behind the throne for an interim period,’ Philippe de Pontet, Eurasia’s Africa director, wrote in a recently published research note. Analysts say Dos Santos could lead the party to another victory in the 2012 elections and retire from the presidency thereafter whilst remaining MPLA leader, leaving Vicente to run the country without the threat of imminent elections. He could also appoint Vicente as his vice-president in preparation for him to take over the reins at whatever point he wishes to step down. This prospect gained currency in view of Vicente’s own announcement earlier this year that he will be leaving Sonangol before year-end.

The expectant one. Vice President Nando

However, this would mean superseding the powerful securocrat and current Vice President Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos who also served as the country’s prime minister from 2002 to 2008. The 61 year-old ‘Nando’, as he is known, is said to control a paramilitary group of 10,000 rapid response units (‘Ninjas’), the police, and is not known to be overly compromised by corruption. Long seen as the President’s right-hand man and a clear front-runner for the top job, his elevation to the vice-presidency was widely perceived as a preparatory step for the ultimate office.

De Pontet said the old MPLA guard would likely be more comfortable with a seasoned party insider such as ‘Nando’ with his security background, although this would raise a bigger question mark for investors. ‘In the past, Dos Santos has stared down such sentiment, and can likely do so again, particularly if party cadres know that he will continue to be the prime power-broker behind the scenes. Defying Dos Santos tends to be a poor career move,’ he added.

‘Vicente’s main weakness in the MPLA is his relatively tepid and only recent commitment to the party, an institution that takes itself very seriously. He lacks a military pedigree or credentials from the civil war, which loses him support from the old guard and influential ex-generals. This could potentially limit his ability to drive economic reforms over internal party opposition.’

In with a chance? The technocratic Feijo

Sebastian Spio-Garbrah, an analyst at DaMina Advisors, a frontier market risk consultancy, expressed surprise at the choice of Vicente as the man to replace Dos Santos saying he will likely have to grapple with tense relations with the dozens of disappointed ministers and ex-military leaders who had always hoped that the President would have drawn his successor from among them. ‘Dos Santos, himself an oil engineer trained in

Azerbaijan

, was likely drawn to the similar personality and energy savvy of Vicente, as well as their close personal relations. Dos Santos had historically been very weary of allowing any single minister to gain too much popular influence, and regularly reshuffled his cabinet to keep his ministers on their toes,’ he said.

However, most analysts agree that Vicente’s status as a respected figure in international business circles will likely be reassuring to investors especially if his presidency is backed by Dos Santos’ power exercised quietly from behind the scenes. In 2008 Angola held its first elections since the advent of peace following the killing of Jonas Savimbi, leader of the-then rebel movement UNITA in 2002. The MPLA romped to victory with 82 per cent of the vote, but presidential elections were put on hold as a cross-party commission drew up a new constitution, which was subsequently approved in January 2010. It abolished the position of prime minister, which was replaced by a vice president. UNITA, which once held 70 parliamentary seats after the 1992 elections, only managed 16 in 2008.

Having lost its statutory funding of up to $14m in the process, UNITA is certain to offer only feeble opposition to the Sonangol-powered MPLA juggernaut.

Academic and MPLA veteran, Neto

According to a 2011 report assessing risks to stability in Angola, the Washington-based Centre for Strategic International Studies (CSIS) said poverty is the single most important issue which could lead to instability. ‘The mean schooling years for an Angolan adult are just 4.4 years, life expectancy is 48.1 years, and a staggering 22 per cent of newborn babies will not survive beyond their fifth birthday,’ the CSIS report noted. At 2.6 per cent per year, Angola has a rapidly growing population even by Sub-Saharan African standards, and more than two-thirds of it is 20 years of age or younger whilst 70 per cent of the country’s estimated 19 million are crammed in the barely capable urban areas. Coupled with yawning inequalities and rampant corruption, these demographic trends do not augur well for a stable and secure future unless the government moves to deliver basic sanitation, health care, education and jobs faster than it is currently managing. With restless youths becoming more daring in challenging the government, whoever succeeds Dos Santos has his work neatly cut out.

Zimbabwe's indigenisation policy confounds investors

2011-09-29T00:54:00.000+01:00

Indigenisation Minister, Saviour Kasukuwere enjoys President Mugabe's full backing

Zimbabwe’s economic indigenisation programme has rendered the country a very uncertain place to do business for white nationals and foreign investors. Harangued by bellicose threats of closure one minute, and mollified with promises of investment protection the next by a government apparently playing good cop-bad cop with foreign-owned banks and mining conglomerates, it is no wonder that they should feel thoroughly confounded.

The controversial black economic empowerment legislation was passed by a majority Zanu PF parliament in 2007, placing statutory requirements on targeted businesses to cede at least 51 per cent of their equity to black Zimbabweans. The deadline for mines to comply with these regulations expired on 24 September, and the fledgling economy has not seen more unpredictable times.

Driven by President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF party, the indigenisation programme has faced its most trenchant opposition from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who formed a coalition government with the demagogic Mugabe in February 2009 following disputed elections a year earlier. The MDC leader blames his power-sharing partners for the policy inconsistencies that have wrong-footed economic recovery.

‘Mugabe comes out and tells investors, ‘your investment is safe’, and then indigenisation minister Saviour Kasukuwere says, ‘I want to close this and that mine.’ This kind of policy conflict cannot inspire confidence,” Tsvangirai told supporters commemorating his party’s 12^th anniversary in Harare last month. He was referring to Kasukuwere’s outlandish threats to shut down foreign banks and mines that failed to comply with the indigenisation regulations.

Only a few weeks earlier, Mugabe had reassured foreign investors saying: ‘Other possible investors are still waiting in the wings, some possibly frightened about Zimbabwe because of its reputation given by the media in the West. We say come, don’t be afraid. But come as friends and not as exploiters.’

But no sooner had the ailing 87 year-old leader given his nebulous reassurances than Kasukuwere emerged to strike fear at the heart of the country’s financial sector with threats to shut down Standard Chartered, Stanbic, and Barclays - the only three foreign banks operating in Zimbabwe. He also announced the imminent closure of more than 50 mines, including the platinum giant Zimplats which is on the verge of proceeding with a planned $460 million expansion project that would bring its total investment in

Zimbabwe

to close to $1 billion.

The government had in 2006 signed a ‘Release of Ground Agreement’ with Zimplats providing the company – 87 per cent owned by Implats of South Africa - security of tenure over mining claims required for the long-term expansion programme. However, it now sought to amend certain aspects of that agreement and also rejected Zimplats’ idea that firms could sell their shares to black Zimbabweans by listing them on the stock exchange.

In a policy twist that brought relief to Zimplats and other threatened miners, albeit doing little to clear the confusion, mines minister and the country’s mines licensing authority Obert Mpofu sought to calm restive investors by declaring that his ministry had no intention of cancelling mining licenses. It is believed Kasukuwere was leaned upon to accommodate Zimplats.

As the Economist magazine observed, the threats against the foreign mining companies seem reminiscent of a shakedown game: ‘the investors are terrorised with the imminent risk of closure, they are hit with various deadlines and ultimatums, and then they are allowed to negotiate a deal to continue in business.’

Despite these conciliatory remarks, investors still remain unsure as to whether the government could be trusted. The prevailing sentiment at the mining indaba was that this new tone could change any time it suited the government’s ends and that with the rules of engagement so undefined it was impossible to really know what could happen.

The government wants to set up a sovereign wealth fund which will hold shares in various mining businesses, according to Kasukuwere. But the crucial question is how cash-poor Zimbabwe will afford to pay for more than half of all foreign and white-owned equity across the economy. Kasukuwere is on record as having said that with respect to paying for mining equity, the mineral reserves in the Zimbabwean soil were sufficient payment, which suggested that the government seeks to take control of the mining sector without paying a cent for it.

According to Reuters, ‘investors and foreign companies are unsure if they will be compensated if they give up the stakes. Even if compensation is offered, many wonder how the government can afford it with foreign debt already at 115 percent of GDP’.

Chinese firms do not suffer such anxieties, however, as they were exempted from full compliance with the indigenisation regulations because they supported vital sectors of the economy. But Kasukuwere has made it clear that he will not exempt ‘companies from countries which have put our country under sanctions’. The US and the EU have since 2001 and 2002, respectively, maintained targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe in protest at the country’s human rights record.

In the banking sector, Kasukuwere is at war with Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono, an open critic of the current indigenisation model. Responding to Kasukuwere’s two-week ultimatum to the three foreign-owned banks to submit their indigenisation plans to government, Gono warned the minister against ‘reckless’ and ‘excitable flexing of muscles’ which ‘could irreparably harm the nerve-centre of our recovering economy’.

RBZ Governor Gideon Gono (left) and Finance Minister Tendai Biti

But the abrasive Kasukuwere, who clearly enjoys Mugabe’s full support, insisted he was the authority on implementing the government’s indigenisation law and nonchalantly dismissed Gono’s intervention. Finance Minister Tendai Biti, a key Tsvangirai ally and favourite with the IMF and donor countries, has waded into the banks indigenisation saga to negotiate an agreed threshold with Kasukuwere and the affected banks. ‘One thing that we have made clear to the Minister of Indigenisation is that banks are different from mines. Mines sit on capital. Banks are middleman. They are conveyors of capital. A bank is as good as its deposit base so naturally a different approach has to be taken,’ he said.

The Bankers Association of Zimbabwe is opposed to the statutory indigenisation of Barclays, Stanbic and Standard Chartered banks arguing that it is not necessary since 85 per cent of the country’s banking sector is locally owned. Indeed, many critics of Mugabe’s indigenisation policy hail the indigenisation model that opened up the financial sector to new local investors over the past two decades as it focused on creating new capacity within the economy and bringing competition in the financial services sector.

Critics of the empowerment policy within and outside Zanu PF fear that ministerial discretion over the selection of empowerment partners for foreign firms will benefit Zanu PF’s dwindling patronage system. The party could easily give empowerment-related funds as well as access to indigenised equity only to its loyalists. Mugabe, faced with a deeply divided party and opposition to his plans to fight yet another election as the Zanu PF candidate early next year, is keen to dangle this new carrot to secure the support of party stalwarts.

Critics also say the policy is merely a top-down empowerment strategy that will only indigenise the elite and only saddle average citizens with the negative impact of its failure through declining productivity and job losses. The policy battles within Zanu PF as well as in the coalition government mean that there will be no quick end to the confusion for foreign investors as implementation of the indigenisation programme will remain a slow, grinding affair.

Social networks break news of Mujuru death - Newsday: Everyday News for Everyday People

2011-08-17T11:16:00.001+01:00

Social networks break news of Mujuru death - Newsday: Everyday News for Everyday People

Retired General Solomon Mujuru aka Rex Nhongo died in a house fire at his farm in Beatrice, just outside of Harare.

Zimbabwe's traditional media needs to make greater use of social media. None of them run any live blogs by their reporters to enable them to break news in real time and give minute-by-minute updates of trending topics; a reporter blogging live updates from their mobile phone right from Gen. Mujuru's farm describing what's transpiring, for instance. Short audio and video clips i.e of interviews or vox pop on websites cld provide a multimedia experience and scoop ZBC, thus challenging it to wake up or seal its lethargic approach to reporting news in the information age. With superspeed broadband being laid out in Zim, the future of news media belongs to those that will embrace this technological revolution.

Why is Africa still hungry?

2011-08-10T16:34:00.000+01:00

Somali refugees wait for precious food handouts at Dadaab camp

FROM the cliff of television screens in western homes, images of emaciated African children with throngs of flies buzzing over their parched mouths fall like boulders, crashing audiences into an outpouring of sympathy and philanthropy.

Purveyed by the global media on an industrial scale, this harrowing pornography of human suffering has become standard fare in humanitarian appeals by western aid agencies in response to perennial famine on the African continent. Despite accusations of perpetuating negative stereotypes of the African condition, this formula has worked quite effectively for the aid agencies in mobilising massive amounts of food and basic necessities for humanitarian relief on the continent.

But after generations of disaster shock therapy, aid agencies fear that citizens of richer societies may have been fatigued by the unending cycle of suffering and helplessness. The slow global response to the current famine in the Horn of Africa, where the UN says tens of thousands – mostly children -have died so far, is a case in point.

Donor fatigue thus poses serious concerns for those facing acute food shortages because western humanitarian relief remains the most visible intervention and often makes the difference between life and death in situations of serious hunger. This unpalatable reality sorely underlines Africa’s woeful incapacity to come to the aid of its own in times of famine.

According to the UN Millenium Development Goals report for 2011 released last month, African children remain the most undernourished in the world, with countries such as Ethiopia, Mozambique, Zambia, Angola and the DRC among the most vulnerable. ‘The poorest of the world are being left behind. We need to reach out and lift them into our lifeboat,’ UN chief Ban Ki-moon said during the launch of the report in Geneva.

‘Based on current trends, sub-Saharan Africa will be unable to meet the hunger-reduction target by 2015,’ the UN reported. By contrast, South-Eastern Asia, Eastern Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean are said to be on course to meet the target.

Stephen Devereux, an expert in food security and rural livelihoods at the University of Sussex who has worked in East and Southern Africa, says that during the twentieth century, famine was effectively eliminated from most regions of the world except Africa. ‘There has been no famine in Europe since the 1940s, in East Asia since the 1960s, or in South Asia since the 1970s,’ he observed. Ethiopia recorded the continent’s worst famine in 1984-5 when an estimated 590,000 people died.

Internally displaced women await assistance in Mogadishu

But why are contemporary famines exclusively confined to Africa? In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Africa saw famines in Ethiopia, Malawi and Niger (in 2000, 2002 and 2005, respectively), and the second has kicked off this year with hunger and death in the Horn of Africa. The UN says East Africa is experiencing the worst drought in 60 years, with more than 10 million people threatened by starvation in four countries - Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and

Djibouti

In its Global Information and Early Warning System for June 2011, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) identified 30 countries requiring external assistance for food, 23 of which are in Africa. The reasons given for their need include exceptional shortfall in aggregate food production or supplies, widespread lack of access, and severe localised food insecurity.

According to FAO’s East Africa representative Mafa Chipeta, Africa consumes about 33 per cent off global food aid with Eastern Africa, which holds 3.6 per cent of the world’s population, consuming nearly 20 per cent of global food aid in normal years and more during drought periods.

‘In most African countries, food production is rising slower than population. For instance, in Southern Africa, between 1980-2001, cereals output rose

3 per cent whilst population grew by 34 per cent,’ he observed.

In Chipeta’s view, fast population growth coupled with the kind of armed conflicts that have blighted countries such as the DRC, Somalia, and Eritrea and Ethiopia have undermined agriculture. ‘In addition, there is inadequate public investment for agriculture, poor incentives to producers, and instability of policies and approaches to development,’ he added.

In a paper titled ‘Why does famine persist in Africa’, Devereux contends that famines in Africa are the outcome of three main causes: production failure owing to droughts, environmental processes and population issues; exchange failure, or economic reasons determining food availability and affordability, and response failure by governments and aid agencies to intervene to protect household food security following supply and/or demand failures.

It was Indian economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen who broke down the sources of all legal food to three – production, exchange (purchase or barter), and transfers (including food aid); and famine occurs when all three have failed.

According to Devereux, ‘food production and/or market access to food might fail, leaving people vulnerable to starvation, but a famine only occurs once there is also a failure of response - lack of transfers of food or cash to buy food’. He argues that the recurrence of humanitarian appeals in Africa reflects failures of policy to address fundamental vulnerabilities in African livelihood systems, which requires a range of pre-emptive measures and broader developmental interventions.

‘[A] concerted effort to eradicate famine in Africa requires intervening to reduce vulnerability and risk in each of the three areas discussed above: production, exchange, and response,’ he suggested.

Tackling production risks means addressing the vulnerability to food insecurity of the smallholder farmers who dominate the continent’s agricultural regions and who often grow a single or narrow range of crops for subsistence. Climate change is likely to make this situation worse, with the projected invariability of rainfall set to make planning difficult and harvests more precarious.

Devereux suggests that interventions to address this fundamental vulnerability could include more support to farmers, specifically, renewed research into high-yielding and drought-tolerant crops to stabilise yields, and subsidised access to agricultural inputs and credit to boost yields.

Africa needs to support smallholder farmers to increase food output

‘In this context, the recent reintroduction by governments in Malawi and elsewhere of fertiliser and seed subsidies, usually against donor advice, is an encouraging indicator of renewed public commitment to small farmers,’ he noted.

According to FAO, African governments need to prioritise and implement measures to develop agriculture and sustainable natural resources management to ensure food security for their people. ‘The ‘business as usual’ approach to the climate change problem will not reduce the vulnerability as this vulnerability is exacerbated by existing developmental challenges such as endemic poverty, complex institutional dimensions; limited access to capital, infrastructure and technology; ecosystem degradation; and complex natural disasters and conflicts,’ the organisation said in a paper to its May 2010 regional conference held in Angola.

The FAO report recognised that climate change jeopardises the economic progress achieved by Africa to date ‘due to the substantial diversion of resources required to fund adaptation initiatives. Estimates predict economic losses as a result of climate change as up to 14 per cent of GDP if adaptation measures fail to be implemented.’

Economic liberalisation policies across Africa effectively removed several pillars of food security support for the poor, such as price subsidies or open market operations by agricultural marketing parastatals to stabilise food prices. As a consequence, Devereux has argued, poor food purchasers have no protection against unregulated markets, which can result in staple food prices quadrupling or more within a few months. In the cases of the famines in Malawi and

Niger

, analysts argued that unaffordable food prices were the main driver of the famine.

Chipeta is more scathing, calling market liberalisation by African governments ‘irresponsible’. ‘ Africa has deregulated trade irresponsibly, opened up to imports even from heavily subsidising countries... Its local products cannot compete even in domestic markets – no other region has been so generous in trade concessions,’ he said, adding that structural adjustment led to the withdrawal of government support for agriculture precipitously, and downsized public sector institutions excessively.

Experts have recommended that weak commodity markets be strengthened or regulated, to protect the market-dependent poor against food price shocks. Devereux and Chipeta agree that building rural infrastructure - especially roads, transport and communications networks - is a prerequisite for integrating rural markets and equilibrating food supply and demand across surplus and deficit areas.

‘Rural investment is too low. There’s severe lack of infrastructure; for example, Africa is at India’s 1950s road density level, and on water use, Africa uses only 4 per cent available for farming in comparison to Asia’s 40 per cent. On fertilisers, Africa is at about 9kg per hectare, OECD countries are at 125kg, whilst East Asia is at about 250kg,’ Chipeta remarked.

Key proposals to address the reality of weak markets include allowing public intervention to correct for market failures. Devereux favours the inclusion of ‘effective management of national or regional grain reserves to stabilise staple food prices - buying grain at low post-harvest prices, storing it and releasing it at cost plus storage costs before the next harvest to dampen ‘hungry season’ price inflation’. On the other hand, farmers also need to be assured of reasonable prices for their produce, to boost smallholder incomes and ensure adequate food supplies.

In recent years, several studies have demonstrated a low correlation between levels of humanitarian need and levels of humanitarian response, and identified the strategic interests of donors as the main determinant of how much attention particular crises receive. The recent famines in Africa were all predicted by various early warning systems but these were ignored, emphasising the need for all sources of information to be treated seriously whilst recognising the potential for misinformation by interested parties.

In response to the goal to eradicate hunger, the African Union, through its Nepad programme, took up the challenge to increase both the amount and quality of food produced on the continent and, by doing so, ‘make families more food-secure, exports more profitable, and improve social and political stability’. It is from this ambitious aim that the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) was born in 2003. CAADP’s mission is to address policy and capacity issues across the entire agricultural sector and the African continent, and among its key targets is the achievement of agricultural growth rates of at least 6 per cent per annum.

However, it was not until 2007 that the first country, Rwanda, signed the CAADP Compact. By May 2011, 26 countries had incorporated CAADP into their agricultural strategy by signing the CAADP Compact. Without being overly uncharitable, CAADP is yet to make its mark and the fact of its slow endorsement by African countries is sufficient evidence of its effectiveness thus far in the struggle to eliminate extreme hunger in Africa by 2015.

Chipeta has urged Africa to swiftly move beyond adopting declarations and commitments to implementing them and calls for the continent to increase public support for agriculture. ‘Pious hopes are that external partners – and not Africa itself - will fund the Africa-led Nepad [but] the evidence is not encouraging,’ he said.

‘The bottom line is that Africa must urgently boost production and productivity to levels exceeding population growth rate … There is need to reverse much current public policy [and the] key is greater public investment to first create conditions attractive to serious private capital,’ he urged. African governments are encouraged to invest in domestic production rather than buy from the international market when prices are low because they do not have the resources to subsist on cash purchases, food prices will not remain low in future, and food is a national security issue able to threaten political freedom, Chipeta said.

Africa must be wary of argument that when international food prices are low it should buy food rather than invest in domestic production because prices it does not have the money, prices will not remain low, and food is a national security issue able to threaten political freedom.

There is strong currency in the argument that Africa has grown complacent from decades of receiving food relief and must stop acting as if food aid is a right and is a sustainable solution. Development experts say Africa needs to become self-confident about domestic production and follow it up with substantial investment of its own resources. Several countries have begun moving towards CAAPD’s goal to increase their investment in agriculture in relation to their GDP.

A crucial part of this strategy, experts say, is to make farming both competitive and rewarding. Governments are urged to make inputs available and affordable, and ensure protection of local products from unfair competition of subsidised imports by watching inequitable trade and partnership agreements.

With climate change projected to compound Africa’s precarious food security situation, nothing short of durable solutions is required to ensure the elimination of extreme poverty on the continent. According to Ban Ki-Moon, ‘It means climate-smart crop production, livestock rearing, fish farming and forest maintenance practices that enable all people to have year-round access to the nutrition they need’.

Bingu waMutharika: uneasy lies the head that wears the crown

2011-08-04T17:38:00.000+01:00

Angry Malawians took to the streets on July 20 to protest at the rising cost of living and increasing government repression

MALAWI

’s President Bingu wa Mutharika is a man under siege. Only a few weeks out of a costly diplomatic standoff with Britain in which the latter swiftly effected a freeze on crucial aid to the country, the beleaguered president faced vicious riots at home in the last half of July as Malawians vented their frustration with the high cost of living and shrinking civil liberties.

The riots of 20 July, which rocked the capital Lilongwe and the northern city of Muzu as hordes of protesters set up barricades whilst some looted shops, exploded from a tinderbox of economic and political frustrations that have been brewing in this characteristically stable country for a while now. According to Malawian historian Paul T. Zeleza, the immediate causes of the growing popular disaffection include the government’s growing authoritarianism and arbitrary power as reflected in the passage of harsh laws against civil liberties, and worsening economic mismanagement as manifested in shortages of fuel and foreign exchange, power outages, rising unemployment and inflation.

Zeleza also said Malawians were angry at Mutharika’s dangerous mobilisation of ethnicity as evident in the redistribution of jobs in the public sector to favour people from his ethnic group. The president has also railroaded his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to endorse his brother Peter, a former law professor in the US, as the party’s candidate in the presidential succession after Mutharika’s second term ends in 2014.

Often accused of ineptitude in controlling crowds and using disproportionate force to break up demonstrations, Malawi’s police force went for overkill – literally – in their efforts to disperse protesters over the two days of rioting. Although human rights activists concede that there were pockets of violent rioters armed with stones, they blamed the police’s use of excessive force for the deaths of at least 19 people.

Analysts say the government provoked an already tense situation by applying for an injunction to prevent protests the night before they were scheduled, leaving organisers with the impossible task of conveying the message to all participants. When the riots broke out the following day – 20 July – the government used its court injunction to declare the strikes illegal and thus legitimise its heavy-handed response.

On Thursday 21 July the Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC), organisers of the demonstrations, took out a public service announcement urging a stop to further protests. They said only Wednesday 20 July was the legitimate date for demonstrations, and a petition had been delivered to the president to that effect. Any further protests after that date were illegal. The president accused the protesters of committing treason warning, ‘If you go back to the streets, I will smoke you out. Enough is enough’

Man under siege: President waMutharika

Mutharika’s response to his countrymen’s growing disaffection with the economic hardships is that it was the IMF that had ordered the government to liberalise oil importation and the foreign exchange system, and leave them in the hands of the private sector. But there is widespread belief that Mutharika’s government is itself extravagant and refuses to accept self-sacrifice and austerity measures on itself to cut expenditure.

When Mutharika came to power in 2004 Malawi was experiencing serious food shortages which by 2005 had become a full-blown famine. As he had promised during his presidential campaign, once elected, he defied donors by implementing the most generous subsidy programme Malawian farmers had ever seen - the $74m Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP). Under the scheme, the government doled out bags of fertiliser and hybrid seed to maize farmers, with the budgeted subsidy increasing year by year.

The subsidy programme has been hailed as a regional success story. It has also earned Mutharika electoral capital as it has favoured small farmers, pulling many of them out of chronic food insecurity and saving the country money on its imports bill. In four years, maize production doubled and national food self-sufficiency increased substantially. Donor concerns with the programme’s sustainability centred on the increasing amount of gross domestic product that it is taking up and the volatility of both maize and fertiliser prices, as well as recurrent droughts. However, despite their initial opposition and lingering reservations, donor countries - including the UK and Norway – gave their support.

However, all this has now changed drastically following Mutharika’s expensive confrontation with Britain as well as the fallout from the recent riots. In April this year the Malawian government expelled the British High Commissioner in the country, Fergus Cochrane-Dyet after Cochrane-Dyet angered the Malawi government by describing Mutharika as ‘a combative president’ who is increasingly becoming ‘autocratic and intolerant of criticism’ in a leaked memo.

‘The governance situation continues to deteriorate in terms of media freedom, freedom of speech and minority rights,’ the British envoy said in a leaked cable which had been sent to Foreign Secretary William Hague. In retaliation for what he called the ‘totally unacceptable and unwarranted’ expulsion of the British envoy, Hague also expelled Malawi’s acting High Commissioner and her dependents from London.

‘It is a worrying sign that the Malawian Government is expending its energies in this way, rather than focussing on the real and substantial challenges facing it, including the need for improved governance,’ Hague said, announcing the Malawian envoy’s expulsion. He said he had also ordered officials ‘to review rapidly the full range of our wider relationship with Malawi’. Britain announced a month later that it was freezing aid worth $550 million over the next four years as a result of the diplomatic fallout. In June, it froze its financial support for Malawi’s fertiliser and seed programme.

It has been a rough year for Mutharika. In March, the country lost more than $400 million in aid money when donors, including Germany, Norway, the World Bank, African Development Bank, and the European Union, suspended or ended their budget support. Britain,

Malawi

’s former colonial master and the country’s biggest donor, $31m in budget support for 2011.

The latest round of aid freezes has come courtesy of the government’s murderous response to the recent riots. The American aid agency Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) on July 16 unleashed its own body blow to Malawi’s depleted coffers by freezing its $350m accord with the troubled country. Up to 40 per cent of

Malawi

’s national budget comes from foreign aid.

Malawian officials have remained silent over the latest round of aid suspensions, AFP reported, adding that the silence of senior officials on the issue of MCC’s pullout says much about the prevailing political condition in the current administration. ‘Under Mutharika’s tightly controlled administration, ministers rarely dare speak out until the president himself has commented,’ the agency added. Malawi has an entrenched tradition of strong presidential rule as established by Mutharika’s two predecessors, founding father Hastings Kamuzu Banda and recent past leader Bakili Muluzi.
The Malawian media has laid into Mutharika for costing the country critical support from donors, with the Daily Times newspaper saying in its editorial that

Malawi

‘needs every penny its partners pledge to help… This is particularly so now when the country’s economy is teetering on the brink of collapse under the heavy burden of the twin fuel and forex shortages and electricity outgages. Good leaders are discerning and read the writing on the wall and then do the needful,’ the newspaper added.

Defiantly,

Malawi

passed a ‘zero deficit’ budget in June which proposes to finance all public recurrent expenditure using its own domestic resources without any recourse to either domestic or foreign borrowing or cuts in public service delivery. The jury is still out on just how Mutharika intends to plug the foreign aid gap in his coffers.

Serving his last term, which expires in 2014, Mutharika is not in danger of being ousted from office. Spirited though the riots were, it is not likely that a resurgence of popular anger will drive him out of power before his due date. The country’s civil society activists have been shaken by the state’s violent response to their protests, with some of their leaders having gone into hiding after Mutharika’s seething accusations of treason against them.

The Institute of Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa, says Malawi’s opposition parties have not been able to garner significant national support to effectively challenge the government. ‘While they may be able to boost their positions relative to the ruling party by forming coalitions, many opposition leaders are unwilling to accept an inferior position in an opposition,’ the Institute said, adding that there was also an overall sense of disenchantment with the all parties in the political arena, who are perceived as being distant and unresponsive to the concerns of voters, beset by a lack of accountability and transparency and lacking democratic credentials between and within parties’ internal structures and practices.

The Vice President, Joyce Banda, who Mutharika fired from the DPP last year but remains in her government job owing to Malawi’s constitution, has just formed a new party called the People’s Party with the support of DPP defectors. She had previously been touted as a possible successor to the 77-year old president and it remains to be seen what impact she will have on voters in the coming months.

Frontline Club discussion on Zimbabwe in 2011

2011-02-24T14:07:00.001Z

Zimbabwe's leaders have been locked in a shaky power sharing coalition since opposition leader Morgan Tsvangiraiwas sworn in as Prime Minister in January 2009. This agreement followed a period of violence and turmoil after the 2008 elections, which Robert Mugabe is widely believed to have stolen.

President Mugabe is now pressing for fresh elections in 2011, despite MDC leader Tsvangirai saying that they could not take place without reforms and constitutional review.

Analysts fear that Zimbabwe could be marred by violence in a repeat of 2008, when Mugabe lost the popular vote, but forced a win in a runoff election. With the military, police and state apparatus on his side there is little chance thatMugabe would allow a remotely free or fair election would likely ensure his removal from power.

Join us at the Frontline Club with a panel of experts to discuss what the coming year holds for Zimbabwe - could there be a fair election, or will violence and intimidation again escalate?

Chaired by Gerry Jackson, founder of SW Radio Africa - the independent Zimbabwean radio station that broadcasts to Zimbabwe on shortwave and worldwide via the internet. She has been reporting on Zimbabwe for over 25 years.

With:

Geoff Hill, bureau chief in Johannesburg for The Washington Times and author of The Battle for Zimbabwe and What Happens After Mugabe?;

Chofamba Innocent Sithole, Zimbabwean journalist and community organiser;

Blessing-Miles Tendi, author of Making History in Mugabe's Zimbabwe: Politics, Intellectuals and the Media;

George Shire, cultural theorist, political analyst and reviews editor for "Soundings", a journal of politics and culture

National heroes: history is more stubborn than ZANU PF thinks

2011-02-15T20:09:00.001Z

Veteran nationalist, Cabinet Minister and gender equality activist Thenjiwe Lesabe, will be buried this Saturday.

If there was any lingering doubt in the minds of the most ardent Zanu PF zealots that their party had utterly lost the plot on the conferment of national hero status and reduced the special honour to a mere party spectacle, Didymus Mutasa will have conclusively cleared that today. The Zanu PF secretary for administration was quoted by the Herald giving the lamest excuse for his party's refusal to recognise Thenjiwe Lesabe, who died a few days ago, as a national heroine.

Asked why the veteran nationalist and gender equality crusader Lesabe had not been recognised as a national heroine, Mutasa had this to say:

“We could not confer her the national heroine status, which was her rightful status because she was not consistent when she joined Zapu led by Dabengwa,” said Mutasa, referring to Lesabe's withdrawal from Zanu PF to relaunch the country's oldest national liberation party PF Zapu along with Dumiso Dabengwa.

“When you become a member of Zanu PF, a revolutionary party, you need to be consistent and by joining Zapu, that was deemed not to be consistent. Zapu members are still part and parcel of Zanu PF because of the agreement that we signed and nobody should go against that agreement” said Mutasa. “Ndabaningi Sithole was treated the same way even though he was at the core of setting up Zanu, so if we treat others differently, we would also fail to be consistent ourselves as the party.”

His argument seems to be no more than a defence of Zanu PF's original cock-up in monopolising the conferment of national hero status and reducing the criteria to party activism rather than national service. In short, what Mutasa is saying is that since Zanu PF decided to make national hero status a party affair, doing the right thing and making the process truly national would undermine Mugabe and Zanu PF's parochialism!

Mutasa has also inadvertently passed a verdict on the hero status of all the surviving nationalists who have since left Zanu PF, such as Dabengwa himself and Edgar Tekere, who left Zanu PF to form ZUM in the late 1980s. Of course, the most significant point out of all this is the total discrediting of the institution of national hero status. At this rate, it is not unthinkable that the families of those heroes who were buried at the national shrine but had in their lifetime come to loathe the corruption and personalisation of the institution of hero status by Mugabe and his Politburo, will claim the remains of their loved ones to rebury them elsewhere and avoid the infamy with which the National Heroes Acre is now seen by ordinary Zimbabweans.

Most profoundly, many Zimbabweans have now come to recognise heroism apart from Zanu PF pronouncements, and whatever Mugabe says of those with whom he does not agree politically, if people see them as heroes, then heroes they will forever be.

Of all the women who lie buried at the national shrine, none had independent political profiles apart from their husbands: Mugabe's first wife Sally, Edson Zvobgo's wife Julia, and Joshua Nkomo's wife Mama Mafuyana. Lesabe joined the struggle out of her own individual convictions and went on to lead an illustrious political career both during and after the struggle for independence.

Amos Ngwenya has written an epitah for Lesabe detailing her long political involvement in the leadership of the nationalist movement. She is a woman of many pioneering achievements, and her unwavering commitment to freedom and national development stayed with her till the end. She refused to remain a part of Mugabe's destructive ambition to hang on to power for life at the expense of national freedom and progress and decided to join other former PF Zapu cadres to revive Zimbabwe's oldest national liberation party.

It's pitiful that Mutasa, in dismissing her eligibility for national hero status, mentions without a hint of irony that Zanu PF is a revolutionary party, as if to suggest that Zapu, in contrast, is a counter-revolutionary one. Luckily, no one with at least half a brain is vulnerable to Zanu PF's attempts to re-write history to the tastes of Mugabe and his Zanu PF Politburo.

The struggle has many surviving witnesses. Some of their stories have since been committed to print, and many more will record their experiences and provide, for the benefit of anyone who cares to inquire, a wide source of information to feed the nation's historical memory. There is nothing that Mugabe and his Politburo can do to foist their version of history on the national consciousness. In fact, they are writing themselves into history as hapless control freaks who mistakenly thought that they had the power to create history by dint of official pronouncements.

Fortunately we live in the information society now, and there's no Brother big enough to stop the truth of Lesabe's heroism and that of many others from reaching the eager ears of posterity!

Wikileaks boosts ZANU PF's sanctions campaign message

2011-01-14T02:58:00.000Z

Wikileaked: Disparaging cables from the US Embassy in Harare claimed Zimbabwe's Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai supported the maintenance of US economic sanctions against his country.

Zimbabwe

’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is one man who is certainly not amused by the daring exploits of Wikileaks and its swashbuckling founder, Julian Assange. Cables from the American embassy in Harare portray him as a flawed leader in hock to western allies.

Tsvangirai is ruthlessly assessed as lacking in executive capabilities and projected as a potential albatross to the country’s economic recovery should he deliver a new government and stay on as its leader. The MDC is unflatteringly described as lacking executive experience and leadership talent and ‘will require massive hand holding and assistance should they ever come to power’.

Staggered by the politically damaging leaks from the whistle-blowing website over the last few weeks, Tsvangirai and his MDC party went into the festive season in restive spirits. The new year is not expected to assuage the former opposition party’s fears, for Wikileaks still has in its vaults a batch of more than a thousand unreleased secret and classified documents originating from the US mission in Harare. The absence of a coherent response from Tsvangirai or his party suggests that they have been strategically unmoored by the leaks.

In the most politically costly revelation for the MDC so far, the US ambassador in Harare Charles Ray Harare suggested that Tsvangirai was duplicitously calling for the lifting of western sanctions on Zimbabwe whilst privately urging the Americans to keep them in force.

US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Charles Ray

Writing to Washington on 24 December, 2009, Ray said that Tsvangirai had ‘acknowledged that his public statements calling for easing of sanctions versus his private conversations saying they must be kept in place have caused problems’.

The cable claims that according to Tsvangirai, ZANU PF was demanding the removal of sanctions before they could appoint MDC officials to public office. Tsvangirai was worried that the ‘lack of any flexibility on the issue of sanctions’ by western governments posed a problem for him and his party. He asked the west to give ‘modest rewards’ for the ‘modest’ political reforms which the inclusive government had implemented.

When they signed the power-sharing agreement in September 2008, ZANU PF and the two MDC formations also pledged to work together to re-engage the international community and get sanctions against the country revoked. Apart from the European Union’s sanctions on some government parastatals, and an asset freeze and travel restrictions targeted at Mugabe and his coterie, the most damaging raft of measures relate to US-imposed sanctions.

The enactment of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act by the US Congress in 2001 outlawed Zimbabwe's right to access credit from International Financial Institutions in which the US Government is represented or has a stake. Zimbabwe has had its voting and related rights as well as balance of payment support from the International Monetary Fund suspended. It is also barred from accessing grants and infrastructural development support from the World Bank.

But for nearly a decade now, western governments and media have consistently maintained that the only sanctions in force are those targeted at Mugabe and scores of his lieutenants.

The revelations of the MDC’s double-speak on the removal of sanctions will have disappointed Southern African leaders and compromised Tsvangirai’s marginally improved standing in their eyes. In a region dominated by governments led by former national liberation movements whose default approach to international relations is deeply influenced by anti-imperialism, Tsvangirai’s close relationship with western powers has not been exactly popular with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders.

As the key guarantors of the power-sharing agreement, the regional leaders resolved to help lobby for the removal of western sanctions on Zimbabwe. In recent months they have stepped up their denunciation of the restrictions as inimical to their efforts in facilitating Zimbabwe’s democratic recovery.

South African President Jacob Zuma, who is also the chief mediator in the Zimbabwe crisis, said recently: “We should call upon the globe to lift sanctions. We believe that the lifting of sanctions will be very helpful. The maintenance of sanctions is no longer adding any positive thing in Zimbabwe. It is in a sense inhibiting our progress in terms of what we want to achieve.”

South African President, Jacob Zuma

Even Botswana’s President Ian Khama, who has persistently spoken out against the Mugabe regime’s intransigent attitude to reform, has joined the regional chorus for the removal of western sanctions, if only to rob ZANU PF of its specious excuse for holding out on the full implementation of the power-sharing agreement.

Both the EU and the US are in agreement on the removal of sanctions and insist that they are needed to keep pressure on Mugabe to live up to his commitments on political and economic reform. However, in response to Tsvangirai’s request for ‘modest rewards’ for the reforms undertaken by the inclusive government so far, the US embassy informed Washington that while it was sceptical of Mugabe’s motives, it needed to respond positively in order to nudge the status quo forward.

“We think it might be in USG (US Government) interests to consider some form of incremental easing of non-personal sanctions, provided we see actual implementation of some of these reforms. Post would appreciate Washington's view on what would be acceptable benchmarks, and possible moves on our part. We also request guidance on what to tell Tsvangirai at our next meeting …,” wrote Ray in the December 2009 cable.

This treasure trove could not have come at a more auspicious time for ZANU PF, which is apparently riven by factional fighting. Buoyed by what it regarded as incontrovertible evidence of Tsvangirai’s quisling nature and the MDC’s unreadiness to govern, ZANU PF went to its annual conference on December 17 in bullish mood. Mugabe’s party did not seem bothered by the fact that the same Wikileaks cables that had supplied so much grist for its propaganda mill had also alleged massive looting of diamond wealth by Mugabe’s avaricious wife Grace and his military top brass.

Addressing hundreds of loyalists at the conference in the eastern city of Mutare who also endorsed him as ZANU PF’s presidential candidate for this year’s elections, Mugabe sought to double Tsvangirai’s woes by calling for the prosecution for treason of people who invited sanctions against the country.

Mugabe: "I do not have three cheeks. I turned the other cheek already and now I fight!"

I do not have three cheeks. I turned the other cheek already and now I fight.I do not have three cheeks. I turned the other cheek already and now I fight.

"It should be treasonous to do so; treasonous to call for sanctions on the people and anyone doing so is inviting punishment . . . we want to have laws to deal with this," Mugabe said. He also threatened ‘meddling’ ambassadors, saying he had given his enemies the biblical “other chick” long enough.

“I do not have three cheeks. I turned the other cheek already and now I fight. Those who have a third cheek can turn it,” he said.

And fight he has begun. Johannes Tomana, the attorney-general whom Mugabe controversially appointed without the agreement of his power-sharing partners, has announced the imminent establishment of a ‘Wikileaks’ commission to investigate the ‘treasonous collusion between local Zimbabweans and the aggressive international world, particularly the United States.”

Ahead of the 2002 presidential elections, Mugabe’s government charged Tsvangirai with treason and made sure to drag out the trial long enough for it to exasperate and exhaust Tsvangirai and bog down his campaign. It was Mugabe’s former mouthpiece, Jonathan Moyo, who first cried ‘treason’ against Tsvangirai when the

cables were leaked, and he appears to be the brains behind Mugabe’s pursuit of the treason strategy against Tsvangirai ahead of the proposed general elections.

Mugabe's Machiavelli: Jonathan Moyo

Referring to Tsvangirai in a press interview given much earlier than Mugabe’s conference speech, Moyo said: “There are only two things that could happen in any civilised democracy, for [Tsvangirai] to resign not just from Government but public life altogether. He must also be prosecuted for a litany of treasonous acts against the State. The only question about those two things is not whether they should happen but when they are going to happen.”

Moyo, who has been readmitted into ZANU PF’s Politburo after spending time in the sin bin following his walkout from the party in 2005, is an indefatigable campaign strategist and a master of the dark political arts.

Tsvangirai’s party has dismissed ZANU PF’s treason talk, saying “there are pressing issues in the country as we prepare for elections. We can’t allow ourselves to chase shadows and shoot at straws.”

Apart from Tsvangirai, the MDC’s deputy treasurer-general and energy minister, Elton Mangoma, could also be targeted for prosecution. In an October 2009 cable sent from the US embassy in Harare by Katherine Dhanani, Mangoma is said to have asked the US to contribute to a ‘trust fund’ to buy off the service chiefs and move them into retirement.

“Reiterating Tsvangirai's views, Mangoma said that a primary obstacle to political progress and reform was the service chiefs. Unlike many ZANU PF insiders who had stolen and invested wisely, these individuals had not become wealthy. They feared economic pressures, as well as prosecution for their misdeeds, should political change result in their being forced from office. Therefore, they were resisting GPA (Global Political Agreement) progress that could ultimately result in fair elections,” Dhanani wrote. She also said Mangoma planned to approach the UK and

Germany

with the same request. But Mangoma denied ever making the request.

There is no doubt that the US cables’ unflattering revelations of the MDC have come as a boon to ZANU PF hardliners. Senior military figures and party elders - among them defence minister Emmerson Mnangagwa and ZANU PF secretary for administration Didymus Mutasa - have been making bellicose statements in recent weeks precluding the transfer of power to Tsvangirai should he win the next election on account of the MDC being a ‘sell-out’ party. The latest leaks will have dangerously boosted their sense of self-righteousness.

Liesl Louw-Vaudran of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), headquartered in Pretoria, South Africa, said the revelations by WikiLeaks had the potential to destabilise Zimbabwe and the region in the coming few months.

“We are sitting with a very tense situation, very delicate, where we’ve got a dictator now for the last 25 years here in Africa, absolutely insistent that any opposition to him is being instigated by the West. And now he has that on paper, and that is dangerous,” says Louw-Vaudran.

Come and experience Zim’s wonders, Mzembi tells British tourists

2010-11-12T15:42:00.000Z

Zimbabwe's Tourism and Hospitality Minister Engineer Walter Mzembi launches his Ministry's new marketing strategy "Zimbabwe: A World of Wonders" at Zimbabwe House on Wednesday at the Zimbabwe Embassy in London.

Zimbabwe

’s Tourism and Hospitality Minister Engineer Walter Mzembi launched an ambitious campaign to woo British and western tourists back to the country, saying that tourism should remain as the key bridge maintaining people to people contact even when governments fall out.

Launching the country’s rebranding strategy “Zimbabwe: A World of Wonders” at Zimbabwe House in London on Wednesday, Mzembi said the danger of the international community turning its back on any country “is that you push people to design rules of engagement that have no reference to international best practice.”

Earlier in the day, Mzembi had attended a discussion forum at an influential international affairs thinktank alongside the UK’s Foreign Minister for Africa Henry Bellingham and the UK’s Zimbabwe Ambassador Mark Canning on the question of whether it was now time to promote British tourism to Zimbabwe.

“Both gentlemen gave positive reviews on the state of affairs in Zimbabwe, including the economic progress we’ve achieved under the Inclusive Government. Economically, they acknowledged that we’re looking at upwards of 7-8% economic growth this year. They applauded our engagement with multilateral financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank,” Mzembi said.

The UK government representatives also hailed the Zimbabwe government’s economic stabilisation programmes, the shedding of quasi-fiscal activities by the Reserve Bank of

Zimbabwe

, as well as progress made on social delivery programmes, Mzembi told guests at Zimbabwe House.

The positive reviews by the British government mark a thaw in relations between the usually antagonistic countries, and Mzembi was quick to acknowledge this as a sign that the British were now ready to engage constructively with their Zimbabwean counterparts.

“They want engagement, there’s no doubt about it. They want to be less critical of Zanu PF and President Mugabe because they cannot endear themselves to (Prime Minister Morgan) Tsvangirai only who is subordinate in the current arrangement to a President in a coalition government,” Mzembi told Newzimbabwe.com in an exclusive interview at Zimbabwe House.

Zimbabwean pop duo BKay 'n' Kazz perform at the launch ceremony.

The Zanu PF Young Turk inferred that there was now a new thinking in Britain’s Zimbabwe policy following the fall of New Labour in this year’s UK elections which ushered in the Conservatives-Liberal Democrats coalition government.

“It is not just me who noticed a difference; even the Chinese government noticed a difference in Prime Minister David Cameron’s approach, which is more constructive, very refreshing and contemporary. I have no doubt in my mind that they find a generational connection with some of us and we must leverage that to advance our own interests,” he added.

Mzembi underscored the significance of British tourism to Zimbabwe, saying that if his country could secure just 30% of the 400,000 British visitors to South Africa annually,

Zimbabwe

would have done tremendously well.

“British tourism is important as a signal to other traffic in the world and in Europe – if the British come to Zimbabwe it means others will follow. They have 120 years of colonial investment in the country, which they can’t wish away. We have deep, binding ties, as shown in the common nomenclature of our streets and localities.

But nothing illustrates these ties more than the presence of the Zimbabwean Diaspora which is composed mainly of skilled professionals currently serving variously in the British system,” he said.

Relations between Zimbabwe and Britain took a drastic turn when Tony Blair’s New Labour party swept to power in a landslide election in May 1997. Pursuing what it called an ‘ethical foreign policy’ with human rights at its core, the New Labour government took umbrage at President Mugabe’s controversial ‘Fast-Track’ land reform programme in which prime farmland was seized from a minority of just over 4,000 white farmers for redistribution to landless blacks.

Violence and human rights abuses against perceived opposition supporters in general elections since 2000 also stoked British resentment against the Zanu PF government, leading to the imposition of targeted sanctions by the European Union (EU) against members of President Mugabe’s regime as well as several state-owned companies.

Mzembi addressed the EU sanctions saying their removal would help even the playing field between the political players in Zimbabwe and advance relations between the country and the West. He underplayed the prospect of violence erupting around the constitutional referendum and fresh general elections provisionally pencilled for next year.

“We have a responsibility to package our own elections in a manner that does not impinge on the national programmes that are currently running. But if we want to play to the international gallery it will obviously take centre stage, unnecessarily so,” he said.

However, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party is incensed by Zanu PF’s refusal to honour the powersharing agreement signed between them to establish the current inclusive government. Last month he wrote to the UN and to European governments to complain of a constitutional crisis in Zimbabwe, urging those authorities not to recognise unilateral government appointments made by President Mugabe.

Of late, media reports in Zimbabwe have quoted both senior Zanu PF ministers and military generals suggesting that they would not transfer power to the MDC even if it won next year’s elections, calling it a ‘sell-out’ party. The MDC has also expressed strong reservations with the lethargic pace of security sector reform, and human rights activists have decried the presence of the military in Zimbabwe’s diamond industry, particularly in the newfound Marange diamond fields in eastern Zimbabwe.

Mzembi denied that the military threatened the integrity of the electoral process by playing an overtly partisan role in support of Zanu PF, defending their role in national politics as legitimate.

“I don’t find anything unique in the military also advancing their own interests in securing national security. They are an intrinsic part of Zanu PF because they’re ex-liberation fighters and a lot of them actually had commissariat roles during the war. So why should they turn their backs on the party when they’re an intrinsic part of it?” he queried.

After nearly two years of powersharing, the MDC and Zanu PF look set to part ways after Mugabe and Tsvangirai both expressed readiness to hold fresh elections next year and revert governance of the country to a single democratically elected party. A constitutional reform exercise billed as a precursor to fresh elections ran into controversy amidst allegations of violence after the political parties jostled to control its outcome during the public outreach phase. Lately, Tsvangirai has suggested a negotiated draft constitution saying the current process is now marred by illegitimacy.

Zimbabwean tourism players exhibiting at the World Travel Market in London this week expressed reservations on the proposal to hold new elections next year citing the high prospects of political violence erupting once more. They feared that the negative international publicity whipped up by the new elections could destabilise the country’s fledgling economic recovery and set the economy reeling backwards yet again.

Zimbabwe must be allowed to sell its diamonds

2010-11-10T02:07:00.000Z

Diamond mining at Marange.

The opposition to Zimbabwe’s right to sell its diamonds is deeply troubling and must be exposed for what it really is without pussyfooting or beating about the bush. It is instructive to note that the opposition to approving Zimbabwe’s sale of its diamonds stockpile, consisting of some 4.5 million stones valued at around $2 billion, is led by the US, Canada and Australia.

Ancillary to this western states-led opposition is a network of human rights organisations based in the west or deriving their funding from the west, which effectively makes them one and the same. In August, the U.S.-based Rapaport Diamond Trading Network, an industry diamond price and information provider, vowed to expel any member who knowingly traded gems from Zimbabwe’s Marange fields — where it alleges that labourers have been killed and children enslaved. Curiously, this was after KP monitor Abbey Chikane had certified their sale.

Human Rights Watch, which previously charged Zimbabwean troops with killing more than 200 people, raping women and forcing children to search for the gems in Marange, says the Zimbabwe government still has not kept its word to withdraw soldiers completely from the Marange fields. The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition is also in agreement with these organisations in characterising the Marange stones as ‘blood diamonds’ and calling for a ban if mining is done in the context of human rights abuses.

I do not want to pretend that I’m interested in the convoluted arguments being presented by these organisations. From the outset, anyone not possessed with the inclination to be deliberately dishonest will agree that the definition of ‘blood diamonds’ has been creatively embellished in order for it to cover Zimbabwe’s diamond industry. The anti-Zimbabwe diamonds lobby has deployed a disingenuous moral relativism trading on the much abused human rights agenda that in all honesty is lacking in their approach to the global trade of a vast range of primary products and manufactures by a host of other countries.

There’s no global ban on the trade of Congolese coltan by the mobile phone and computing industry despite the deaths of millions of civilians and the systematic rape of tens of thousands of women in the Congo. No one’s raised any issues with the presence of international oil companies in

Nigeria

’s Niger Delta despite ongoing armed conflict and the environmental disaster being wrought on local communities by the same big fish in their search for super profits.

Likewise, western companies are deep in business with oil-rich countries with unflattering human right records in the Middle East. And did we see any opposition to the parcelling of lucrative oil contracts to western companies in

Iraq

amidst a raging storm of bombs and bluster?

In his critically acclaimed novel ‘Sea of Poppies’, leading Indian writer Amitav Ghosh, a trained anthropologist and historian with a doctorate from Oxford University, reveals that under the British Raj, an enormous amount of opium was being exported out of India until the 1920s. Of this curious trade Ghosh says, “I had no idea that opium was essentially the commodity which financed the British Raj in India.” Presently, hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of Afghanistan’s opium is finding its way into Britain. Of course, Chancellor George Osborne will not stand at the Dispatch Box in the Commons to announce Britain’s net gains from this clandestine trade!

We are not stupid, and Rapaport, Crisis in Zimbabwe, Human Rights Watch and these western countries must not underestimate our intelligence on the workings of the real world.

I accept that the abuses that occurred in the process of the Zimbabwean army’s takeover of the diamond fields from gangs of illegal panners and international smuggling syndicates must be thoroughly investigated by the Inclusive Government and the perpetrators brought to book. But I do not accept what I believe to be spectacularly specious allegations that there are ongoing mass killings at Chiadzwa, or egregious human rights abuses warranting the attachment of the tag ‘blood diamonds’, thereby placing Zimbabwe in league with such violently riven countries as Sierra Leone during that country’s dark episode of resource-fuelled civil conflict.

Such a characterisation belongs to a politically driven syntagm whose main import is to deny Zimbabwe any chance of economic recovery on terms other than those approved by those that govern our globe. To be blunt, which I fully intend to be without as much as a whiff of apology, this whole charade over compliance with the Kimberley Process is no more than a strategy to hamstring Zimbabwe’s trek from the economic woods in order to keep it beholden to the hope of securing a frustratingly conditional sip from the poisoned chalice of international financial institutions.

The Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, has already admitted that hoping for international financial assistance to revive our economy is akin to waiting for Beckett’s Godot: hapana chichauya (we will get nothing from them). This business of hiding behind a purported love for the well-being of ordinary Zimbabweans whilst promoting a disingenuous human rights agenda whose sole purpose is the furtherance of western foreign policy interests in our part of the globe must be resisted and openly repudiated.

I note with disappointment that the MDC party is actively contributing to this trickery through its deafening silence on this important matter. I have some simple advice for them: the west will not change its foreign policy interests simply because there’s a different government in Zimbabwe. As they have been rudely awakened on the sanctions issue, the well of western conditionalities runs deep, too deep, and it will not run dry if or when the MDC comes to power.

Just as Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai welcomed the KP’s certification of trade in August and officially opened the resultant auction, so too must he speak out against the ban on the sale of our diamonds. Further, as government’s key representative in Parliament, he must lead calls for Parliament to be given direct oversight on the mining activity at Chiadzwa. This nonsense of barring Parliamentary inspection of Chiadzwa, as we’ve witnessed before, must be challenged, but in

Zimbabwe

and by the Zimbabwean Parliament as well as genuinely Zimbabwean civil society groups.

I’m speaking my mind as a citizen, and what I would like to see is a focus on building transparency in our diamond industry. Barring trade drives the industry deeper into the arms of the military, and there is no chance of ever building openness if this highly lucrative industry is forced to continue operating clandestinely. Besides, it nurtures a corporate interest in our security sector and any hope of ever establishing democratic politics in which the military is not a decisive player will forever remain illusive.

Lastly, if the lobbyists succeed in frustrating our diamond sales, I’m all for doing away with the Kimberley Process altogether and taking our diamonds straight to the market. In the UK, Tony Blair justified the payment of a staggering £1bn bribe to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia in order to secure the £43 bn Al-Yamamah arms deal. The UK’s Attorney General Lord Goldsmith halted investigations by the Serious Fraud Office saying the deal was in the national interest. Likewise, selling Zimbabwe’s diamonds regardless of KP objections is in the national interest and anyone who doesn’t think so needs their head examined!

Tony Blair’s controversial journey

2010-09-27T02:27:00.002+01:00

Tony Blair’s recently published memoir, A Journey, thrust the former British Prime Minister (left) back into familiar territory –the vortex of controversy. Pelted with eggs and shoes at a book signing in Dublin earlier this month, the man with the infamous grin thought better than to face off angry anti-war protesters and proceeded to cancel his book launch party at the Tate Modern in London.

Like Marmite - an extremely salty and savoury British dark brown spread of sticky consistency, with a distinctive, powerful flavour – people either love or hate Blair. As angry anti-war protesters vented their spleen outside Waterstones bookshops, inside hordes of avid readers snapped up more copies of the former premier’s book on the first day of its release than fellow New Labour architect Peter Mandelson’s memoirs sold in three weeks.

The attention directed at Blair is warranted. The middle England magician’s ‘big tent’ strategy – which positioned New Labour on the centre-ground to draw support from both left and right-leaning voters – dispensed with ideology and transformed British electoral politics. As a result, the erstwhile toxic Labour Party coasted to an unprecedented three terms in government after 18 corrosive years in the wilderness of opposition politics.

Adept at navigating the media-saturated landscape of 21^st century British politics, with its 24-hour news cycle, Blair’s savvy presentation has spawned ardent disciples among the leading political protagonists in this country, including Tory leader and current coalition government Prime Minister David Cameron and his Lib Dems deputy, Nick Clegg.

On the opposite end, Blair’s deeply hostile, shoe-throwing critics are a harvest of his own specious argument for taking

Britain

to war in

Iraq

. The thinking behind both argument and action was of course several years old by the time Blair got to railroad the House of Commons into endorsing Britain’s co-star role in the American-led ‘shock and awe’ of Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad in 2003.

In his memoirs, Blair reveals how the Kosovo crisis of the late 1990’s came to shape the moral crusade that saw him commit

Britain

to four wars and totter on the verge of declaring one against Robert Mugabe’s regime in

Zimbabwe

. In April 1999, he set out his ‘doctrine of the international community’ in a speech in Chicago in which he argued the case for military intervention on humanitarian grounds.

But as the Oxford Research Group observed, Kosovo was a flawed expression of the Blair doctrine, whilst

Afghanistan

and

Iraq

were clear violations of it. In the latter case, Blair rode pillion on the American neoconservative doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, which had more to do with taking out perceived American and western security threats before they had materialised than with advancing humanitarian considerations.

An Irish anti-war protester clashes with police at Blair's Dublin book signing event

Quite unsettling with respect to

Zimbabwe

is Blair’s admission that he wanted to whack the Mugabe regime militarily. On getting rid of Mugabe, he says: “I would have loved to; but it wasn’t practical (since in his case, and for reasons I never quite understood, the surrounding African nations maintained a lingering support for him and would have opposed any action strenuously)”.

In reality though, it was his former Chief of Defence Staff, General Charles Guthrie who persuaded Blair from charging into Harare with guns blazing, telling him to ‘hold hard, you’ll make it worse’.

But rather dishearteningly in his voluminous memoir, Blair completely blanks out

Britain

’s colonial relationship with

Zimbabwe

and his discussion of military action against Mugabe is shorn of political context. The two countries’ chequered history – particularly their fallout over land redistribution from the white settler minority to colonially dispossessed blacks after

Zimbabwe

’s independence – is conveniently missing.

Apart from his glib admission of failure to understand the reasons for the lingering African support for Mugabe, readers are left none the wiser about the alternative arguments that Blair was presented with by those African leaders with whom he was engaged in dialogue. For instance, there’s not a whisper on former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s ‘quiet diplomacy’, to which all western – including British -and African diplomatic efforts on Zimbabwe ultimately deferred, resulting in the establishment of a unity government in Harare in February last year.

Blair’s failure – or reluctance - to engage seriously with these African perspectives on

Zimbabwe

explains the lack of traction for British foreign policy towards

Zimbabwe

among the Southern African nations. The most influential of these –

South Africa

Mozambique

Namibia

and

Angola

- are governed by parties that, like ZANU PF, were national liberation movements that had fought white settler colonialism to gain independence.

Crucially, these countries saw New Labour’s blunt refusal to fund land reform in

Zimbabwe

as a betrayal by

Britain

of its colonial obligations whilst simultaneously defending the property rights of white landowners under the guise of promoting human rights.

Sensing the perfect regime survival strategy, a beleaguered Mugabe latched onto his fallout with Britain over land to deploy a crudely edited anti-colonial nationalist narrative – or ‘patriotic history’ - accompanied by much violence, as a buffer against growing domestic opposition led by the MDC.

Adopting an outside-looking in approach, Mugabe and ZANU PF used

Britain

’s shrill criticism to argue that the crisis in

Zimbabwe

had its roots in a bilateral dispute with

Britain

over the seizure of commercial farmland. Unwittingly, Blair and his ministers would on occasion also speak of their support for Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC rather inappropriately, thus providing more grist for Mugabe’s propaganda mill.

More than three years after Blair’s departure from office, the unresolved question of whose responsibility it is to compensate dispossessed white farmers in Zimbabwe continues to cast a dark shadow on relations between Britain and Zimbabwe.

A recent report by the UK Parliament’s Africa All-Party Parliamentary Group (AAPPG) declared that “the narrative that Britain betrayed its promise at Lancaster House has no basis as no agreement was reached on land in 1979”. It urges

Britain

to do more to counter this ‘perception’.

In an as yet unpublished response to the report, a Zimbabwean land expert wrote: “It is clear that the AAPPG report is meant to respond to the Global Political Agreement demand that the UK Government be approached to contribute to paying for the land reform, and that its purpose and conclusion is to reinforce earlier British arguments that the UK has no bi-lateral obligation to pay for the land.”

But according to former Commonwealth secretary-general and key player at the Lancaster House talks in 1979, Sir Shridath Ramphal, ‘solid assurances’ to fund land reform by Britain and the US were indeed recorded in the documents of the conference and notified to all Commonwealth countries, although no sum of money was specified.

Ramphal’s authoritative, contrasting account of what was agreed at Lancaster House burns a huge hole in the AAPPG report and robs

Britain

of the foolproof final word it had hoped to achieve on the land matter. When

Britain

does finally decide to engage the

Zimbabwe

government directly on land issues, it is best advised to do so with more tact than Blair’s government displayed when they took over in 1997.

And as for Blair’s contribution to British foreign policy on

Zimbabwe

, thank God Almighty for General Guthrie’s advice, for military intervention in

Zimbabwe

would certainly have made things worse

No improvement in state of rule of law in Zimbabwe – experts

2010-09-17T17:09:00.000+01:00

The state of the rule of law in

Zimbabwe

has not improved and the culture of impunity on the part of the police and the state security forces remains unchanged since the signing of the Global Political Agreement in 2008, according to a report by international legal experts.

Masterminds of violence: Zimbabwe's notorious security chiefs

The report, "A Place in the Sun", follows an investigative mission to Zimbabwe late last year by the Commonwealth Lawyers' Association, the Bar Council, the Bar Human Rights Committee, and Avocats Sans Frontières. The mission was told by interviewees that the state of the rule of law had actually grown worse.

Incidents of extra-judicial killings, kidnapping, torture and other serious human rights abuses have been pervasive in Zimbabwe for years but assumed epidemic proportions during the Presidential run-off elections of June 2008. Such human rights abuses continue to occur and they also remain un-investigated by the authorities.

The report notes that the culture of impunity among the police and security forces has deteriorated, with the army appearing to have extended its operations to unlawful diamond extraction and trading in the diamond fields of Marange. The Kimberley Process, an international initiative to stem the flow of conflict diamonds, recently allowed Zimbabwe to resume trading its gems from the controversial diamond fields.

In a disconcerting finding, the report notes that “by far the majority of the senior judiciary remains fundamentally compromised by state patronage, grants of land and other gifts given to them by the former government. The present government

has not sought to claw-back such inducements from the senior judiciary nor has there been any policy initiative directed at re-establishing the integrity of the senior judiciary in the eyes of the public.”

Magistrates, who for years have endured threats and intimidation, including arrests and prosecution when they displease the authorities, continue to face the same adversities in the line of duty. In one case cited in the report, a magistrate in Eastern Zimbabwe was himself prosecuted by the authorities as a result of having granted bail to the Deputy Minister designate for Agriculture, Mr Roy Bennett. However, their resilience under such difficult conditions has made them unsung heroes in the eyes of many ordinary Zimbabweans.

The report also detailed how the physical infrastructure for the teaching of law is crumbling, stating that "the mission saw for itself the dilapidated state of the Law Faculty of the University of Zimbabwe." The mission was also "deeply disturbed by accounts it received that the Central Intelligence Organisation had infiltrated the student body in the Law Faculty, with the result that the content of lectures and open debate in seminars was circumscribed by fear of the consequences of candour."

Encouragingly, though, the Law Society of Zimbabwe continues to represent its membership against a background of intimidation and harassment of, in particular, human rights lawyers.

“The Law Society stands out as an organisation prepared vocally and committed actively to oppose measures which are anathema to the rule of law and to support its membership in the discharge of their duties as lawyers,” the report observes.

The mission also found that access to justice for indigent people facing criminal prosecution is virtually non-existent because the legal aid system is ”so starved of funds that the Legal Aid Directorate is itself on the verge of collapse”.

The mission concluded that there has been no improvement and quite possibly a further decline in respect for the rule of law since the signing of the Global Political Agreement.

It recommended the end of the culture of impunity on the part of the police and state security forces; a transparently composed and genuinely independent Judicial Services Commission with the power to appoint all judges, magistrates and the Attorney General; ensuring lawyers can practise without harassment or intimidation; and providing indigent defendants in criminal proceedings with free representation by a properly qualified lawyer.

London Letter: High literacy rate belies declining quality of education

2010-09-15T12:52:00.000+01:00

In the past fortnight British parents and pupils have been celebrating yet another fruitful year of record-breaking passes in the GCSE ‘O’ and ‘A’-level examinations.

Overall, seven out of every 10 GCSE entries were awarded at least a C grade. It is the 23rd year in a row that pass rates have been rising in the UK. The pass rate for A-levels rose for the 28th year in a row, with 97.6 per cent of entries gaining an E or above.

I couldn’t help making comparisons with the state of my own country’s education sector, which is largely modelled on Britain’s.

A recent conference convened in London by the Link Community Development and the Commonwealth Consortium on Education afforded the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Senator David Coltart the chance to brief international development partners on the state of Zimbabwe’s education sector.

Coincidentally, shortly before the conference the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had published a report putting Zimbabwe at the apex of Africa’s literacy tables.

We had leapfrogged Tunisia to land at a whopping 92 per cent literacy rate. Many Zimbabweans at home and abroad felt a deep sense of pride at this new achievement. It confirmed our long-held pride and self-confidence as the continent’s most educated society.

However, upon closer inspection there appears to be quite a few issues to worry about concerning the state of our education sector. For a start, the UNDP’s literacy tables are determined by considering school enrolment and attendance figures – they do not interrogate the quality of the education that pupils receive, including such key aspects as the school curriculum.

Senator Coltart and his Minitry officials came armed with a detailed assessment report of Zimbabwe’s education sector and a draft interim strategy that seeks to respond to and resolve identified challenges.

To put this discussion in context, I should state that Zimbabwe’s education sector continues to tower head and shoulders above most countries in Africa. But outside of that broad comparative context, there is scope to explore our current situation against our own previous standards and in relation to our future projections.

As things stand, our education sector faces a myriad challenges that demand urgent solutions if Zimbabwe is to avoid spawning a generation of ill-equipped and poorly educated young people.

For starters, 10 to 15 per cent of children are not in school at all. According to UNICEF, Grade 7 examination pass rates declined from 53 per cent in 1999 to 33 per cent in 2007. Figures from 2009 showed that almost 50 per cent of Zimbabwe’s children graduating from primary school were not proceeding to secondary school.

Books and learning materials are in short supply and secondary schools in particular have been hit hard by the flight of teachers abroad, especially to neighbouring countries, leading to a severe shortage of teachers in key subjects such as maths, science and technical subjects.

More than one quarter of teaching posts are not filled by a qualified teacher. Moreover, there is a highly distorted distribution of qualified teachers, with some provinces having over 45 per cent of posts ‘vacant’. To cap it all off, the Ministry describes its curriculum as having ‘lost credibility’.

But it is the remuneration of teachers that poses the greatest challenge to the quality of education in Zimbabwe. Beginning teachers are paid a measly $176, with head teachers taking home $212. The physical infrastructure of schools, including water and sanitation provision, is in poor shape.

The Ministry’s top priority in the short term is to improve the status and morale of teachers, through raising their basic remuneration and improving housing and sanitation conditions for rural teachers.

The UNICEF-managed Education Transition Fund (ETF), through which donors are channelling funds for the provision of textbooks and basic learning facilities, is a useful interim measure. But it does not extend to the provision of recurrent expenditure, such as the improved salaries without which the professional status of teachers cannot be restored.

As Senator Coltart explained at the London conference, donors do not trust his government sufficiently to give it direct budgetary support. As long as the government is seen as corrupt and lacking transparency and accountability, there will not be any direct financial support from donors and other international partners.

This, of course, is only half of the real issue at hand.

The crux of the matter is that the inclusive government, with its enduring melodrama of conflict over unfulfilled promises, is seen internationally as a capricious creature whose character is defined largely by the previous order under ZANU PF. That order is discredited does not command confidence among donors and international lenders.

For Zimbabwe’s education sector to be fully restored and improved, therefore, the inclusive government would have to cut a clear trajectory towards unbridled governance reform in order to attract much needed international support.

Otherwise, the country will have to look to its own resources to plough into the education sector to ensure that Zimbabwe remains not only the most literate nation in Africa, but also one with the best quality education on the continent.

London Letter: Dual citizenship is key to engaging the Diaspora

2010-09-15T12:25:00.000+01:00

The ongoing constitutional reform exercise comes at a time when there's been a marked transformation in the spatial distribution of the Zimbabwean nation. Estimates vary, but there's a general consensus that up to a quarter of Zimbabwe’s population – over three million people - now live in exile.

The Zimbabwean Diaspora is scattered across four continents, but with discernible concentrations in South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Driven by the country’s protracted economic and political crisis to seek opportunities and refuge elsewhere, Zimbabweans in exile have nonetheless remained connected with their homeland.

The majority lead parallel lives in which they exert themselves emotionally and materially to sustain livelihoods both in their countries of domicile as well as in Zimbabwe.

These binding ties mean that the Diaspora, quite rightly, considers himself an intrinsic and indispensable member of the Zimbabwean family and not merely a disparate person who traces his or her origins to Zimbabwe.

The inclusive Government’s draft Migration Management and Diaspora Policy acknowledges that Zimbabwe has in the past decade suffered its worst brain drain since independence in 1980.

It cites a study undertaken by the Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre (SIRDC) in 2004 on the causes and effects of the brain drain in Zimbabwe which concluded that the level and trend of the brain drain in the country has reached unacceptable and unsustainable heights.

For instance, between 2000 and 2002 Zimbabwe was the UK’s fourth largest supplier of health workers after the Philippines, India and South Africa.

These figures are old and the reality today lies far beyond this.

According to the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture’s draft interim strategy, at least 24 per cent of teaching posts lie vacant, especially in science, maths and technical subjects, and the education sector is way under-supervised with 40 per cent of District Education Officer posts, covering 29 districts, unfilled.

Relatively recently, a discourse has emerged on migration and international development concerning states who manage emigration by reaching out to and engaging with their nationals abroad.

These diaspora engagement policies consist of a diversity of measures aimed at producing and reproducing citizen-sovereign relationships with expatriates. Current discussions revolve around how sending countries can engage diaspora populations in order to maximise remittance and impact development in their homelands. Evidence shows that both foreign direct investment and international development aid is significantly lower than remittances from diaspora communities to their homelands.

For example, the Chinese and Indian diasporas have fuelled development in their countries via both cash remittances and their direct engagement associated with the remittances. Many sending countries have sought to develop policies to maximise the amounts of remittances sent back and to stimulate investments by migrants.

Over the past decade, many sending states have embarked upon more inclusive diaspora engagement policies through extending special political and economic rights to emigrants and allowing dual citizenship.

This extension of rights to and extraction of obligations from non-residents has allowed states to exercise transnational power through fostering ties with migrants and their descendants, improving banking systems and improving competition on remittance markets.

The Moroccan state, for example, has been rather successful in stimulating remittances through a combination of diaspora engagement policies, the creation of a network of banks abroad as well as macro-economic, fiscal measures favouring migrants to remit money.

The inclusive government’s draft migration policy also notes that the key benefits of migration for countries of origin if properly managed include knowledge and skills-transfer when migrants return home on a temporary or permanent basis, relief from unemployment and underemployment, and increased levels of indigenous entrepreneurship through new opportunities in the private sector by those in the diaspora.

A significant key to unlocking benefits from the Diaspora is the extension of dual citizenship. Evidence from elsewhere on the continent bears this out. Remittances from the Nigerian diaspora averaged at $800m per annum from 1990 to 2001 but increased considerably on attaining dual citizenship in 1999 to $5.4bn at the end of 2006. Nigeria has developed advanced remittance tracking mechanisms, which are able to disaggregate consumption remittances from investment.

Zimbabwe has also started addressing the loss of human skills, particularly through the Taskforce on Human Skills Identification, Deployment, and Retention, which was established following the adoption of the National Economic Development Priority. The Institute of Continuing Health Education (ICHE) at the University of Zimbabwe College of Health Sciences also has an initiative whereby some doctors in the diaspora are returning to Zimbabwe at their own expense to lecture, moderate examinations and provide clinical services.

But the haemorrhaging of Zimbabwe’s skills base continues, and there’s a danger that these skills may become permanently lost over time. For instance, over the last two years alone, the number of Zimbabweans getting UK citizenship rose by 35 per cent in 2009 to 7,705, and the country’s nationals are consistently in the top ten nationalities acquiring British citizenship.

The constitutional reform exercise presents Zimbabwe with an invaluable opportunity to engage its scattered population across the globe through a new social contract that recognises the spatial distribution of its people and acknowledges them as an intrinsic part of the Zimbabwean nation. Globalisation has made it easier for people to traverse the globe in search of opportunities, and it requires imagination to keep a leash on our national resources to ensure that Zimbabwe continues to benefit from them, wherever they might be.

Professor Arthur Mutambara, addressing an infrastructure and investment conference hosted by Zimbabwean engineers in London recently, pointed to the need for Zimbabwean professionals to return home to contribute to national development, but also to stay put in their new domiciles and, through their presence, leverage opportunities and professional networks for the benefit of their country.

The challenge of developing Zimbabwe in the 21st century is not confined to the territorially resident population. Rather, it falls on all hearts that beat to the rhythm of Zimbabwe to invest their creativity, resources and networks for the building of a robust nation that is capable of holding its own in the topsy-turvy and highly competitive global era where sovereignty is no longer defined in the narrow sense of a state exercising its jurisdiction over a bounded community.

Zimbabwe police to mine diamonds

2010-04-30T13:00:00.000+01:00

Diamonds are forever: Zimbabwe Republic Police Commissioner-General, Augustine Chihuri.

As I indicated in the piece below, Zimbabwe's security chiefs have made further moves to secure their corporate interests in the vast alluvial diamond fields of Chiadzwa in the country's southeastern district of Chimanimani. Curiously, the Zimbabwe Republic Police has set up a mining company and applied for a licence to begin operations there.

Read the full story.

What's Zanu PF's game plan?

2010-04-26T16:27:00.002+01:00

Iranian President Ahmadinejad, pictured here with President Mugabe, officially opened Zimbabwe's international trade fair in Bulawayo last week.

The announcement by the Zimbabwean Government to target mining companies first in the indigenisation process appears to point to a plan by President Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF party to strip western companies of control of these resources and place them in the hands of favoured Eastern allies. This was followed by news of a uranium deal signed between Zimbabwe and Iran last week following President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Harare last week. The Russians have already been given prospecting rights to the new diamond fields in Chimanimani and Chipinge, and one can already see the same happening to other mineral concerns.

I do not see Zanu PF relinquishing power to the MDC in any election - fair or foul; their interests in mineral resources will become more and more entrenched, and the Joint Operations Command (JOC) in particular will pull out all the stops to make sure that its corporate interests will not slip from out of its grip.
Undermining South Africa is an important strategic manoeuvre in this grand plan - and it will be pushed through the prism of indigenisation of natural resources for the benefit of the 'indigenous' people. Mugabe has already virtually recruited the South African ruling ANC party's youth leader Julius Malema to preach this gospel. After having railroaded the land seizures through Zanu PF will seek, as it guns for control of all mineral resources, to project itself as a more progressive liberation movement than the 'dithering' ANC, which will increasingly be portrayed as having failed to move satisfactorily even on land reform for its people, especially as South Africa's target to hand over 30% of farmland to blacks by 2014 looks way off the radar.

The overriding message from Zanu PF will be that the southern Africa region is locked in a resource war with the 'imperialist' West: this securitisation strategy will ensure the adoption of extraordinary measures to secure the 'sovereign rights' of 'our people', and any regional government that sets itself in opposition to this Zanu PF agenda will be portrayed - by use of such agents as Malema - as having sold out its people to placate imperialism. They might even try to rope in the Mozambicans as well with the message to guard their oil resource jealously.

Zanu PF has used this same argument with respect to land to bludgeon the region into inaction over its repressive regime survival agenda. The next election in Zimbabwe will be another bare-knuckle affair. It does not help that as we draw closer to it, Zuma and the ANC will be locked in mortal combat over control of the ANC at their congress in 2012. The timing is ominous - Zimbabwe will most likely go to election in 2013.

Julius Malema's infamous rant at BBC journalist

2010-04-09T12:30:00.000+01:00

Watch the unhinged ANC Youth League president's performance at a press conference following his return from Zimbabwe:

Battle lines drawn in Zimbabwe’s indigenisation crusade

2010-04-07T15:53:00.003+01:00

ZIMBABWE’s central bank has issued a withering attack on President Robert Mugabe’s economic indigenisation programme, calling it a ‘reckless’ initiative championed by ‘vultures’. Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor, Gideon Gono (pictured, left) believes that the “indigenisation crusade is being championed by a number of senior and well-connected personalities who are already positioning themselves to muscle into certain mining, manufacturing, banking and other entities that are currently performing well.”

Gono’s uncharacteristically harsh verdict on a policy that Mugabe sees as his swan song has exposed the festering conflicts within the octogenarian leader’s Zanu PF party over the controversial regulations. The programme is being driven by Youth Development and Indigenisation Minister Saviour Kasukuwere, a rising star in Mugabe’s party who built his sprawling business empire as a black empowerment crusader in the 1990s. Kasukuwere’s gung-ho style has stoked sharp disputes with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC colleagues in the unity government.

Kasukuwere (left) bypassed both cabinet and the Prime Minister’s policy formulation unit – the Council of Ministers - when he gazetted the regulations, and also ignored the complaints of Industry and International Trade Minister Welshman Ncube. He has been quick to jab right back following Gono’s scathing attack on the ‘content’ and ‘style’ of the indigenisation programme.

“We have seen the criticism from the Reserve Bank governor this week again and will only take note of (him) when the governor stops his megaphone criticism,” Kasukuwere told the press recently. "We remain determined to empower our people and we will not accept such criticism from individuals seeking relevance,” he added dismissively.

Gono first made his intervention on the indigenisation policy through a mid-term monetary statement in October 2007. He called on the government to ensure that the empowerment drive does not end up as an orgy of self-enrichment by a few, well-connected elites as had happened with land reform and other earlier empowerment programmes. The central bank suggested a gradual indigenisation structure that envisages foreign companies worth in excess of US$500m to achieve 20% local ownership in 5 years, moving to majority local ownership by the 15th year.

In sabre-rattling fashion, Gono threw down the gauntlet in response to Kasukuwere’s sneer: "I stand by what I said in October 2007 and what I also said last week. I see no reason to shift positions. I repeat: There should not be and will not be farm-type jambanja (gang violence) this time around as we indigenise and empower our people. We are all witnesses to what can inadvertently happen when that is allowed to take place and we cannot be a people who do not learn from yesterday's implementation shortcomings."

Gono, who is also Mugabe’s personal banker and family friend, claims to enjoy the support of both Mugabe and Tsvangirai and says that his concerns have been fully acknowledged by the leaders of the inclusive government. "Fortunately, all players who have the country at heart, including my principals, are all seized with the matter and assured the governor that there will be no such thing."

To buttress Gono’s claims, Kasukuwere has been forced to yield to Tsvangirai’s demand for a thorough revision of key provisions of the indigenisation regulations and to have cabinet debate them fully before they can be implemented. According to press reports in Harare, the revisions will be structured along the lines of South Africa’s Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE), which was gazetted in 2007 following complaints that the initial Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) scheme had only enriched a few blacks.

Analysts said that it remains to be seen how far the empowerment regulations will be revised as Tsvangirai has not wielded much power in the shaky coalition. In recent weeks, Mugabe stripped several MDC ministers of their powers and handed them to his own ministers.

The Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act was passed by a then-Zanu PF dominated parliament in 2007 but only came into force in January this year with the gazetting of regulations by Kasukuwere. The regulations apply to all businesses in Zimbabwe with an asset value of or above US $500 000, although it does not specify whether this refers to net assets or share capital, issued or nominal.

The regulations empower the Minister to establish a database of people who want indigenous Zimbabweans to acquire an interest in their businesses, and of indigenous Zimbabweans who wish to “partner” those people. The new regulations treat white Zimbabweans as foreign, and they too will be compelled to cede 51% of their businesses to ‘indigenous’ Zimbabweans. Failure to fulfil these legal requirements will invite a fine of US $2 000 or five years’ imprisonment, or both.

The new legislation reserves key sectors of the economy for indigenous ownership including the production of food and cash crops, transportation, bakeries, retail and wholesale trade, and estate agents. The Affirmative Action Group (AAG), a militant pro-indigenisation lobby with organic links to Zanu PF, has come out in full support of the new regulations. The group said it will use force to eject all Nigerians running businesses in the country’s cities and towns to create space for black Zimbabweans. Nigerians and Asians have been among the most active investors in the sectors now proscribed by the new law and had battled on through the worst phase of the country’s hyperinflationary crisis.

Kasukuwere has dismissed allegations of discrimination, insisting that the programme was an inclusive one. The youthful politician belongs to a crop of Zanu PF Young Turks that include Mugabe’s nephew Patrick Zhuwawo and former Mashonaland East Governor Ray Kaukonde. Kasukuwere struck it rich whilst still an officer in Mugabe’s dreaded Central Intelligence Organisation.

Along with other young Zanu PF-aligned treasure hunters such as the flamboyant and wealthy Phillip Chiyangwa (another Mugabe nephew), Kasukuwere forcefully pushed the indigenisation agenda through the AAG, amassing an empire stretching from farms to oil procurement and distribution. He has had to consistently bat away accusations that he is representing the interests of greedy Zanu PF barons who are keen to get rich without breaking sweat.

However, the economic fallout from the land seizures has persuaded others within and around Zanu PF to come out in defence of Gono’s criticism of the indigenisation crusade. Jonathan Kadzura, a Harare businessman and respected economic commentator with close links to Zanu PF, strongly condemned the idea of empowerment through expropriating private capital and called on people to start their own businesses.

“Essentially, in business you have to be original if your business is to succeed. It becomes extremely difficult to do well in a business whose vision you never created,” he said. Kadzura echoed popularly held fears that the indigenisation programme may only enrich a few individuals who have also benefited from other affirmative action programmes instituted by the government in recent years.

In his 2007 statement, Gono expressed particular concern over “any attempts to forcibly push the envelope of indigenisation into the delicate area of banking and finance.” He invited those who wanted to go into banking to apply for licences to start their own banks. Ironically, Gono shut down several black-owned banks after he became governor in 2003, accusing them of speculative behaviour and undermining the national economy.

Standard Chartered, Stanbic, MBCA and Barclays are the major foreign-owned banks still operating in Zimbabwe. Kasukuwere has ordered them to start lending to locals, ‘or ship out’.

The negative impact of the new regulations has already begun to register on the economy.

“Last month we raked in about US$5 million while months before that we were raking in more than US$20 million a month. Since the regulations were gazetted we have seen a negative impact on trade. Last year our market was driven by foreigners, making up to about 45 -50 percent of the total turnover of about US$200 million on the ZSE,” chief executive of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange Emmanuel Munyukwi said.

Zimbabwean companies need re-capitalisation because they do not have working capital and the ZSE was beginning to see a number of transactions where foreigners were coming in to rescue these companies, Munyukwi explained. “Whether these transactions will proceed we do not know because they were coming in to under-write some of the transactions,” he added.

Two leading German bodies - the Hamburg-based German African Business Association and the German-Southern African Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Johannesburg - have called off a proposed investment mission to Zimbabwe. Andreas Wenzel, Southern African manager of the Hamburg GmbH association, was quoted as saying: 'Under the current circumstances Zimbabwe is a no-go area for foreign investment.'

South African platinum mining giant, Impala Platinum has approved a US$500 million expansion programme for its Zimbabwe operation, Zimplats, but says implementation depends on clarification of the country’s indigenisation laws and settlement of a US$34 million debt owed by RBZ.

Some of the foreign-owned companies that have deserted Zimbabwe in recent years include Mobil, Coca-Cola, Lever Brothers and Heinz. Nestle was recently threatened with expropriation after it had stopped buying milk from the Mugabe family’s farms.

Following the government’s total disregard of his 2007 warning, a wistful Gono told the press recently: “My heart is heavy that this advice was not listened to, as over two years down the road the controversies around this issue are deepening as opposed to abating.”

Julius Malema's trip to Harare

2010-04-06T20:11:00.001+01:00

ZANU PF must have felt a deep sense of smugness over Julius Malema's visit to Harare last week. The delinquent leader of South Africa's ruling ANC party addressed several rallies with Zanu PF officials before meeting with President Robert Mugabe. For the octogenarian leader, Malema's endorsement of his empowerment policies, the latest of which is a grab of the majority stake in all foreign-owned companies and those owned by local whites in Zimbabwe that are worth half a million US dollars and upwards, must have come as much-craved validation of his self-professed role as Southern Africa's foremost liberation leader. Apparently Malema is in Zimbabwe to study Mugabe's nationalisation and empowerment policies.

That Malema, a rabble-rousing youth leader who has divided opinion both in his own party and the country at large, should have been accorded the attention of a visiting head of state is illustrative of how crude populism, for Mugbe and Zanu, is a life-sustaining staple. Any morsel of solidarity is gobbled up with much relish.

More significantly, Malema's dismissal of the MDC as an irrelevant imperialist party speaks more to the delusion in which most of Southern Africa's liberation movements view post-nationalist parties in the region. The MDC is an organic social movement whose mass following was proved in the March 2008 elections.

Malema's failure to recognise the decay of Zanu PF as a progressive nationalist party on the one hand, and the rise of the MDC as a fixture on Zimbabwe's political landscape in which majority support reposes on the other, is indicative of the sense of entitlement with which Southern African liberation movements view their presence at the helm of the post-colonial/apartheid state. It is a serious contradiction in which is embedded huge potential for conflict and instability as all legitimate democratic contestations for state power are subverted in the name of preserving 'the people's revolution'.

Zuma's intervention in Zimbabwe will be futile

2009-08-17T14:37:00.002+01:00

South African President and current chair of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Jacob Zuma heads to Zimbabwe at the end of this month to resolve outstanding issues in the Global Political Agreement that underpins the Inclusive Government between Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF and the two MDC factions.

The outcome of this diplomatic effort is so painfully obvious as to make its undertaking an empty ritual meant only to furnish perceptions that 'something' is being done by the regional group. Mugabe has already dug in, accusing the MDC in the past week of failing to live up to part of their bargain - meaning the removal of western sanctions on Mugabe and his top lieutenants.

It is ludicrous to suggest that the MDC, or any foreign entity for that matter, has the responsibility, let alone the power, to make American or European foreign policy.

Because Zanu PF has sought to monopolise Zimbabwean nationalism and projected itself as its sole and perpetual vanguard, it has come to believe its own propaganda that the MDC is not of itself but a mere spawn of the 'white', 'imperialist' West. Thus, by demanding that the MDC gets European and American sanctions lifted, Mugabe and Zanu PF are effectively pushing the MDC to accept the derogatory, alienating identity that they have sought to pin on it from the day of its inception.

Zuma will hardly throw himself into this task to the point of dismissing Zanu PF's ludicrous demands. Indeed, that the original mediator, Thabo Mbeki, even allowed them to be included in the signed agreement in the first place speaks volumes about the thinking that informs many of our regional leaders and their approach to the crisis in Zimbabwe. So while Zuma might lean a bit less softly on Mugabe on account of Hilary Clinton's recent visit to Pretoria and, perhaps, in deference to the position of his tripartite allies in the ANC - Cosatu and the SA Communist Party, who were both appalled by Mbeki's 'quiet diplomacy' policy - the likeliest outcome is that Zuma's visit will not leave Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF on the ropes.

In fact, in order to milk Zuma's visit to their advantage, Zanu PF and Mugabe have contrived to project the South African leader's trip as a state visit by making him the guest of honour at the country's once-popular Harare Agricultural show. In this way, Mugabe will be seen palling around with Zuma infront of thousands of his compatriots and international media cameras. Any notion in the public mind of him being ostracised by the region's most powerful country for his intransigence with respect to fulfilling his obligations in the GPA will thus wither away.

It does not inspire much confidence, too, that Zuma's successor as chair of SADC in the coming weeks is none other than DRC President Joseph Kabila, who has much to be grateful to Mugabe for and, as he openly admits, regards the Zimbabwean octogenarian strongman as 'my father'.

Mugabe passes on UN trip, sends Mujuru

2009-06-23T10:16:00.001+01:00

VICE-President Joice Mujuru is in New York where she will attend the United Nations summit of world leaders on the global financial and economic crisis and its impact on development. I think Mugabe's decision to pass over this meeting has to do with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's trip to Western Europe and the US.

Despite its failure to unlock the vaults of western treasuries, the PM's trip has made one thing resoundingly clear: Morgan Tsvangirai has arrived on the global stage. For whatever he did not get materially, Tsvangirai received recognition across Europe and the US. He was received warmly and in many respects, as a head of state. Mugabe must have calculated that it was not tactically astute to venture onto the global stage and be eclipsed by Tsvangirai's towering shadow which still projects across the western world as we speak.

The symbolism would have been to stark for anyone to miss: yesterday's man now consumed in the shadow of the upstart Tsvangirai, enjoying the warmth of welcome that Mugabe used to bask in only a mere decade or so earlier. Secondly, and in deference to the objective of Tsvangirai's trip, it may spoil any chances of getting financial support should Mugabe choose to demonstrate that he is still very much the head of state and the central man by coming out to the UN as western leaders are still trying to get themselves to warm to Tsvangirai's optimism about Zimbabwe being now poised towards irreversible change.

So better to send a nonentity in international relations, someone who will go out and offer token representation for the country whilst remaining unmolested by the western media. Meanwhile back home, this can be spun as Mugabe having sent yet another of his juniors on an errand on his behalf.