Tuesday, 31st August 2010

Howzit

"Zimbabwe's long-time ruler, President Robert Mugabe on Sunday stunned black farmers as he questioned their agricultural skills saying the current new crop of farmers would not restore the country's status as a bread basket.

The 86-year-old President Robert Mugabe says black Zimbabwean farmers are of mediocre quality."

Mugabe loves to lay the blame for many of Zimbabwe's problems at the feet of anyone but his own and his divisive and destructive government.

Had Mugabe stopped long enough to think about the land grab before it started in early 2000, he would have ensured that those black people chosen to be commercial farmers would have had the correct education and hands-on skills to be able to take over from the experienced and productive white commercial farmers.

But Mugabe's temper and his zeal in throwing the whites off the land know no bounds and whilst he achieved his lifelong ambition of taking the land from the whites, the farmers that took heir place knew little or nothing about crops and harvesting.

Couple this together with the fact that the best land was parcelled out to his loyalists , many of which know nothing whatsoever about farming, leaving the lesser standard land for those who were prepared to farm, and farm conscientiously.

And then to lay into the farmers for their failings, I find it insulting.

If Mugabe had just slowed down and carried out the land grab with a little bit of organising, a little bit of aplomb and a little bit of decency, then Zimbabwe might not be in the problems that it finds itself today.

Why he cannot accept any blame for the shortcomings, I will never know.

"As we celebrate 100 years of exhibition excellence in our 30th year of independence, we should ask ourselves whether we have produced the quality of farmers that we desire."

"The supply of agriculture remains a major challenge. We need to overcome the perennial programme of failing to provide inputs on time as we also need to seriously address the credit lines from banks and agro industry plus the high cost of borrowing."

If Mugabe has carried out the land grab in a more honest manner, then the farmers would not have had to borrow all the time - but deciding the give the best land to his loyalists who are not working the land, was a recipe for disaster.

-o00o-

And we thought that common sense had finally come home to Malema. Within a day of stating that Mugabe should stand down, he is calling for the youth in South Africca to seize white-owned farms in that country.

The only result I see, will be more of the same with South Africa not being able to feed the people and the West being called upon to feed the starving millions.

Once again, Malema shows the world that, like Mugabe, he hasn't thought things through at all.

"The ANC Youth league’s members cheered and encouraged ZANU PF’s Youth League’s speakers at their general council this weekend as they urged them to take Mugabe’s example and grab land from the white minority and nationalize mines "now or never".

It was amazing to see that the ANC Youth League was obviously thinking that it was listening to the best advise ever, despite Zimbabwe’s economic crisis.

After the very same land grabs, there was shortage of food, the shops shelves were empty and the Zimbabwean dollar was left useless. Zimbabweans are forced to use the South African rand and the US dollar if they can find any. Many Zimbabweans are living in South Africa for fear of starving to death in their own country.

The ANC Youth league which is obviously the pool from which many of the future leaders of South Africa will come from burst into applause when told by one of the leaders to ignore criticism and carry on to "right the wrongs of history".

The Youth league was urged to take the land from the white minority and to nationalize the mines in order to correct the past imbalance as well as nationalizing all the mines and natural resources, because "imperialists have a tendency to undermine Africans and Africans should say NO to them"."

I am disgusted that Malema should even entertain such thoughts when a neighbouring country is in such a mess following the land grab in that country.

I am not at all sure that the free world has the ability to feed a country like South Africa without scrimping on the needs of the countries that produce the food!

"Zimbabwe is sanctioned by countries around the world, millions of Zimbabweans are scattered around the continent, more especially in South Africa. Many Zimbabweans are forced to flee the country for the fear of their lives, more especially journalists who dare to report news that exposes dictatorship and cruelty of the ruling party.

It is frightening to see where the future of South Africa is heading to. ANC Youth League has been preaching the nationalizing of mines since its president’s controversial visit to Zimbabwe."

-o00o-

Staying with agriculture, do we really think that this money will be used for improving agriculture in Zimbabwe? There may be an MDC man in the finance ministry, but Mugabe has all manner of means in which he will ensure that the money is used elsewhere - probably to bolster the flagging ZANU PF camp...

"Zimbabwe has secured a 50-million-dollar (39.3-million-euro) loan facility from the Africa Export Import Bank to revive its agriculture and manufacturing industries, the bank said Monday.

"The purpose of the revival fund is to resuscitate a broad range of firms in the productive sector especially in agriculture and manufacturing by providing medium-term funding," Gift Simwaka, an official of the bank, said.

In addition the Zimbabwe government will also contribute 20 million dollars to the joint loan facility which will be disbursed through banks to small and medium scale companies.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said the loan will help the country revive its economy."

Can someone please tell me where the 'unity' government is going to source 20 million dollars from? It in't going to come from the government's share of the diamond sales as that money is already just about spent...

"The facility was established to curtail the challenges of high interest rates, unequal distribution of lines of credit... limited lines of credit and lack of financing within the economy," Tsvangirai said.

"While this facility represents a positive development it alone cannot address economic challenges that face Zimbabwe."

Alas, the money will somehow be channelled into more 'urgent' requirements, and then, of course, there is the question of repayment...

"Finance Minister Tendai Biti said the "lack of capital" has been "one of the major structural bottlenecks bedevilling" the country's economic turn around."

-o00o-

No matter how Mugabe tries, history cannot be rewritten. No matter how many lies he and his followers choose to tell, the truth will always resurface.

"In a rare act of censorship, Zimbabwe's inclusive government has banned artwork by Bulawayo-based artist Owen Maseko that depicts violent political upheavals more than 25 years ago.

A special government order was issued in Harare late Friday banning art works by Owen Maseko, briefly seen by the public last march in the main art gallery in Bulawayo.

The artworks, some of them huge murals, concentrated on political violence in the two Matabeleland provinces in the 1980s aimed at the opposition of the time, the Zimbabwe African People's Union led by the late nationalist Joshua Nkomo."

"Signing The Unity Accord"

During the disturbances, which lasted some six years, an estimate of between twenty and thirty thousand people were slaughtered by the Fifth Brigade. Mugabe has never allowed the Dumbutchena report of the atrocities to be published and refuses to apologise to the Matabele people for the massacres, instead explaining it all away as 'a moment of madness'.

"Maseko's most striking picture is his depiction of a unity accord Nkomo signed with Mr Mugabe in 1987 that ended the violence, but also brought an end to ZAPU, which had fought the war to end white minority rule alongside Mugabe-led forces."

"Flushing The Votes"

The obvious truth suggested in the pictires of events of a quarter of a century ago still plagues Mugabe, and so he seeks to limit the potential damage that the exhibition may cause.

How sad that Mugabe should adopt such a blinkered approach to a chapter in Zimbabwean history that he has found impossible to expunge.

-o00o-

I have a question about this bid. Mugabe signed into law earlier this year that foreign owned companies in Zimbabwe had to cede 51% of their shares to local businessmen. Why would a huge company like Jindal attempt to purchase some 70% shareholding in a Zimbabwean company if they have to cede some 51% shareholding to locals?

Or has Mugabe, in his everpresent hunger for money, decided to give some sort of respite to the Indian company? (If that is the case, then why is the same not offered to other white and foreign owned companies?)

"Jindal Steel and Power plans to re-bid for a controlling stake in Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company, or ZISCO, more than two months after the African company rejected the Delhi-based firm's earlier bid.

"The Zimbabwe government is aiming for better valuations and so has invited fresh bids. They are trying to make the ZISCO deal more attractive to gain higher investor interest," said the persons cited earlier. As per the new tender, bids from interested parties need to be submitted by September 24. A Jindal Steel spokesman declined to comment whether his company had submitted the bid."

It will be rather interesting to see how Mugabe's regulations are rearranged to suit their hunger for money...

-o00o-

Laws and regulations - even those put in place by his own administration - mean nothing to Mugabe and his band of outlaws.

The foreign owned companies were to tender their plans for local ownership to the government and they would look at them to give them a rubber stamp.

But this looks to be circumvented insofar as Mugabe has encouraged a local businessman to seize control of Miekles...

"President Mugabe on Saturday incited Nigel Chanakira to apply the controversial indigenisation law in order to end the shareholding dispute he is having with John Moxon over Meikles Africa.

The Indigenisation Act gives locals a 51% shareholding to foreign owed business.

"I do not see the problem. We have the Indigenisation Act which is simple and straight forward on business shareholding ownership. Who is the owner of Meikles? If it is owned by South Africans let them take it, but if it’s ours, why cannot we use the Act? In fact the Indigenisation Act is very lenient because it gives something to foreigners," President Mugabe said before he left for Swaziland on Saturday.

Whenever there is an election Mugabe incites his supporters to engage in either violence or grab foreign owned properties. Since 2000, he has authorised war veterans to grab white owned farms and a few months before the 2008 elections had already drafted the controversial indigenisation Act."

Mugabe has no concern about using political clout, physical violence and racial differences to bend the laws to suit him and his subservient followers.

But why circumvent laws which his administration put in place just a few months ago?

We have already experienced the destructive farm grab - well, this is the firm grab...

Standby for a complete implosion of what little is left of the economy.

-o00o-

Take care.

'debvhu

Monday, 30th August 2010

Howzit

Foreign currency mid-rates updated.

-o00o-

Today is the August bank holiday in England. The weather isn't bad, although there is a chilly breeze blowing. I am unsure whether the holiday has anything to do with the decided lack of any news on Zimbabwe on the internet, but we'll have a go nonetheless.

-o00o-

Yesterday, despite the rejection of appeals for him to be declared a national hero, Gibson Sibanda of the MDC was laid to rest in Filabusi in a State-assisted funeral. There is quite a bit of disappointment within the MDC at the refusal by Mugabe to even consider Sibanda for the honour.

Mugabe has managed to add to the huge rift between his ZANU PF party and the MDC by refusing to consider Sibanda as a hero, whilst at the same time giving hero status to his own wife's brother...

"Hundreds of Zimbabweans from all walks of life yesterday thronged Filabusi’s Silalatshani to bury the co-founder of the Movement for Democratic Change Gibson Sibanda.

Mr Sibanda died last week after succumbing to cancer at Mater Dei Hospital here.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai described Mr Sibanda, who was accorded a State-assisted funeral, as a man of principles.

He said he was the first to form MDC, but appointed him (Tsvangirai) to lead the party, which he said many people could not do.

He said Mr Sibanda was a "national hero", whose works speak for themselves.

Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara, who is also MDC president, said the late Mr Sibanda was a leader who created other leaders and not followers.

He said he did not count the number of people who were following him, but was there to mould other leaders and went on to cite himself, VP Nkomo, PM Tsvangirai, Dr Lovemore Madhuku, Wellington Chibebe as some of the leaders who were moulded by Mr Sibanda to be respectable leaders."

Why would Mutambara be listed as "MDC President"? Of his own faction maybe, but certainly not the MDC as a whole...

I was also a little surprised to read that ZANU PF's John Nkomo was at the funeral and was given the floor. ZANU PF decided not to confer the late Gibson Sibanda with the national hero status, but they send a senior emissary? Smacks of hypocrisy, I think.

"Vice President John Nkomo described Mr Sibanda as a gift to the nation "who wanted people of this country to live in peace and tranquillity".

"His sentence was always if you look for peace it should start with me, then you and all of us. He always said if it was going to be an eye for an eye Zimbabwe would be blind. Gibson was a gift to his family and the nation as a whole," said VP Nkomo.

He said people should carry on Mr Sibanda’s legacy.

"He was committed to national healing. When in Government we brainstormed together with him and (Mrs) Sekai Holland and all of us agreed that for national healing to be there, we should first build one big bridge of working together. Gibson’s word was never again in the life of Zimbabwe that we find ourselves fighting each other," he said."

-o00o-

Mugabe is only comfortable when he is surrounded by military types. He did the same during the chimurenga, and has increasingly done the same in the thirty years that he has 'led' Zimbabwe.

Much of the threat behind Mugabe's rule has been a relected threat of the people who back him and hold influential positions in the 'unity' government.

"The appointment of serving and retired soldiers to various committees to oversee implementation of Zimbabwe’s controversial company ownership law has once again exposed President Robert Mugabe’s determination to establish a de facto military state amid fears that the indigenisation scheme is another facade to enrich ZANU PF cronies.

Top military officials and other Mugabe allies dominated committees recently announced by Indigenisation Minister Saviour Kasukuwere to help the government set percentages of shareholding foreign-owned companies in different sectors of the economy must transfer to locals. The decision to set varying empowerment thresholds for each sector was adopted about two months ago, in a major shift from an earlier requirement that foreign firms cede 51 percent shareholding to local blacks."

It has got to the stage in Zimbabwean politics where, if you looked up the words 'indigenous empowerment' in the dictionary, you would probably find a ZANU PF emblem next to the definition.

Mugabe is not looking at empowering the local blacks - but he is only interested in 'empowering' the violent and unruly ZANU PF members and their supporters.

Mugabe believes that this is their entitlement for 'liberating' Zimbabwe through the barrel of a gun, swiftly supported by international interference in the political 'settlement'.

The problem, for Mugabe, is that the legacy he leaves is one of destruction, violence, intimidation - and almost a 'scorched earth' policy. Zimbabwe has much, much less to offer its people today than it did at independence over thirty years ago. Mugabe may deny responsibility for the situation, but we know what has caused it, what sustains it, and what future it holds for a people who are now tired of the bickering, the arguing, the back biting and stabbing...

"In a move that has become all too familiar in Zimbabwe since 2000, Mugabe appointed retired army officers Gibson Mashingaidze and Mike Karakadzai to sit on some of the committees that will determine how much foreign shareholders will be required to transfer to locals. Other pro-Mugabe supporters appointed to the committees included the acerbuc presidential spokesman George Chiramba, Affirmative Action Group President Supa Mandiwanzira and controversial Zimbabwe Tourism Authority boss Karikoga Kaseke.

But it is the appointment of the retired army officers that raised eyebrows. Both men - together with another retired army officer Brigadier-General Douglas Nyaikaramba - appear to feature prominently in Mugabe's militarisation scheme.

Mashingaidze is the current head of the Zimbabwe Sports and Recreation Commission and sits on the board of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation."

Tell me what a career soldier knows about indigenisation, sports, recreation or broadcasting? This is Mugabe loading the commissions with people that he knows will protect his and his party's interests. The need for him to fill these positions with former soldiers is his way of ensuring that any resistance to the move will result in serious consequences, laced with the obligatory threats from former security personnel.

Mugabe no longer even bothers to do this sort of thing behind closed doors or under cover of darkness. His duplicity is as public as it is arrogant..

More worryingly, he even has former armed personnel heading up the food distribution programme, ensuring that pro-ZANU PF people will get food, whilst those that support or are members of any other party are left the fend for themselves.

This is not the work of a world leader, but a bitter and twisted despot.

-o00o-

Mugabe is a master of applying pressure wherever he wishes - and he has no want or need for a constitution that serves the people better than it serves him and his party. So he states this openly, knowing that there isn't a lot the MDC or any other body can do about it.

For the MDC to threaten a 'no vote' stance will only encourage Mugabe to follow through.

Who is going to come to the rescue of the Zimbabwean people? SADC? The AU? The UN?

What a joke!

"MDC-T has threatened a "No Vote" campaign if the proposed constitution does not reflect the will of the people.

The party also blamed SADC for not being tough on ZANU PF in addressing outstanding issues in the implementation of the Global Political Agreement.

Party spokesperson Nelson Chamisa told hundreds of party supporters at a rally in Chitungwiza Sunday that MDC-T was not happy with the ongoing process, citing intimidation and violence against villagers in most parts of the country.

Chamisa said the Constitution Select Committee (COPAC)’s handling of information dissemination and the state media’s treatment of the constitution-making process were a cause for concern.

"We are not happy with COPAC's information dissemination and the public media’s blackout of this important process," Chamisa said."

It would be a carbon copy of the effect of the second round of the Presidential election in 2008 if the MDC-T were to fold at the intimidation by ZANU PF. They don't vote and Mugabe has his own way...

Tried and tested. Done and dusted.

"Elections have to come after the necessary reform processes that include the drafting of a new constitution. We are expecting a constitution, but we are not happy with the way things are being handled. If the new constitution does not reflect the will of the people, we will reject it. We will only accept constitutions that reflect the will of the people."

"There are things we agreed on with ZANU PF that are not being implemented. There are issues we are not in agreement with at all that include Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono and Attorney General Johannes Tomana. We are not against them as individuals but how they were imposed on those positions without consultations in the inclusive government," Chamisa said.

“There is also the issue of the swearing-in of Roy Bennett as Deputy Minister of Agriculture and the continuation of unilateral decisions by ZANU PF in appointing public figures."

Mugabe lives by the maxim that 'resistance is futile' and will standby whatever is best for his party - not for the people of Zimbabwe.

"MDC-T has joined other groups that have threatened a "No Vote" campaign. The National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) and the Zimbabwe National Students Union have already concluded that the process was flawed and have threatened to lead a "No Vote" campaign against an outcome that does reflect people's wishes."

-o00o-

"Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has said President Robert Mugabe is lying that principals have agreed to only get MDC governors sworn in only after western sanctions are removed.

Mugabe told his ZANU PF party central committee in the capital Harare last week that Prime Minister Tsvangirai must call for the removal of a western travel ban and asset freeze of the 86-year-old leader and his inner circle, only then can five MDC governors be sworn in in line with the global political agreement. Tsvangirai told party supporters at the launch of of a new MDC card Friday that the principals in the GNU had agreed to a formula for the allocation of the governors based on the results of the election.

"It is for this reasons that the MDC was awarded five governors as a reflection of our mandate from the people," Tsvangirai."

Mugabe loves to dangle the carrot and as soon as his quarry takes the bait he is happy to beat them with the proverbial stick.

Very little in the cross-party negotiations by ZANU PF is genuine, honest or without duplicity.

For Mugabe, possession is 90% of the law - accordingly to ZANU PF thing at any rate...

-o00o-

As was the case yesterday, much of the news on the internet is either repetitive or of no real importance. That being the case, I will wind up this posting here.

Take care.

'debvhu