Mugabe faces dilemma

Mugabe faces dilemma
Author: Brian Raftopoulos
Category: Zimbabwe
Date: 2/24/2007
Source: The Zimbabwe Independent.
Source Website: http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com

Summary & Comment: The Zimbabwean crisis has reached the point where a
number of factors are combining to introduce a new political dynamic into
the current situation. These include the confluence of drastic economic
decline, growing internal dissent within the ruling party, a renewed wave
of labour and civic activism, and the continued isolation of the regime by
Western countries.

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Mugabe faces dilemma

http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/viewinfo.cfm?linkid=21&id=10068&siteid=1

The Zimbabwean crisis has reached the point where a number of factors are
combining to introduce a new political dynamic into the current situation.
These include:
- the confluence of drastic economic decline,
- growing internal dissent within the ruling party,
- a renewed wave of labour and civic activism, and
- the continued isolation of the regime by Western countries.

In the face of these growing challenges, the response of President Robert
Mugabe has been to seek an extension of his presidential mandate until 2010
in order to seek more time to deal with the destructive succession debate
in the ruling Zanu PF party, ensure his own immunity from possible
prosecution and create more frustration for the divided opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC).

The economic challenges facing the Mugabe regime are immense

In a statement responding to the monetary policy statement by the Reserve
Bank governor, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) painted a
gloomy picture of the indicators of economic decline. These included
hyperinflation of 1 600% as at December 2006, a cumulative economic decline
of about 50% over the past seven years, an unsustainable budget deficit of
43% of GDP, chronic shortage of foreign currency, sporadic availability of
fuel, skills shortages, and mass unemployment and the collapse of real
earnings of workers.

In this regard there is anecdotal evidence of numbers of workers preferring
not to continue working in the formal sector because of the high cost of
staying in employment, preferring instead to engage in various informal
sector activities. The ZCTU and both factions of the MDC agree in
characterising the contemporary Zimbabwean economy as based on
"rent-seeking" and speculative behaviour. Distortions created by
developments such as price controls and foreign exchange controls create
rents.

As Zimbabwean economist Rob Davies writes, this "creates an incentive for
people to devote resources capturing rents, rather then using them for
productive purposes". Tendai Biti, the economic spokesperson of the
Tsvangirai MDC, observes that at the core of the crisis is the crippled
supply side of the economy. "The scenario of non-existent supply," notes
Biti, "creates fertile ground for middlemen and the rule of rent-seeking
activities." Evidence of this rent-seeking behaviour abounds in the
Zimbabwean economy. The Grain Marketing Board (GMB) was, until last week,
buying maize at $52 000 per tonne and selling it to select millers at $600
per tonne. Politically connected individuals were able to buy the
subsidised maize from the GMB, get it milled at commercial millers and then
sell it at exorbitant prices.

Similar speculative activities take place in the fuel and fertiliser
sectors where the new farmers who have benefited from the land occupations
are receiving subsidised inputs from the state and selling them rather than
using them for productive activities. As Arthur Mutambara, leader of the
other MDC faction, states: "The distortions in our economy create
opportunities for arbitrage."

In such an economy the emphasis of many of the emerging business
individuals is on fast-track accumulation through such speculative
activities, exploiting the breakdown of the rule of law and the corruption
of the state to accumulate vast profits through unproductive activities.
This is a key constituency that has been created by the authoritarian
politics of the Mugabe regime, and the indigenisation of economic
activities has largely been carried out through this means. Moreover, an
important part of the battle for succession within ZANU PF has been fought
over access to various such rent-seeking activities, and the fortunes that
then become available for further political consolidation within the party.

In the midst of these activities there are no doubt businesspersons who
continue to think about the longer-term need to maintain and build up
productive activities both in the industrial and agricultural sectors. The
problem, however, is that this parasitic accumulation model is taking place
within a broader context of endemic poverty and a steady decrease in the
percentage share of wages in the gross domestic income. The standard of
living of workers has reached desperately low levels, fuelled by a general
ruling party antipathy to urban workers, and epitomised by the massive
human rights violations of the "urban clean up" Operation Murambatsvina in
mid-2005. The result has been a renewed wave of labour, student and civic
protests since the beginning of the year.

In the field of labour protests, public sector workers have led the
response to the state. Junior doctors earning $56 000 per month, nurses $35
000 and teachers $84 000 have come out on strike or go-slows. Even unions
that have had less confrontational relations with the state, such as the
Zimbabwe Teachers' Association and the Public Services Association, have
threatened to take industrial action in the next week if their salary
demands are not met. Other protests from the constitutional movement,
women's organisations and students have created additional pressure on the
state.

These protests resemble the labour unrest in the second half of the 1990s,
also triggered by the 1996 public sector strike that was the first
indicator of the force of labour that would play a major part in
challenging the state during this period. There are, however, some
differences with this current period of unrest. In the late 1990s the
structures of the labour movement were much stronger, developed through
strong organisational and educational capacity in the ZCTU.

The effective use of consultative labour forums ensured greater ownership
of collective actions by the union membership. Additionally during this
period the labour movement was able to "speak for the nation" in their
messaging and demands and build effective alliances with other civic
groups. In the current period the structures of the labour movement have
been weakened by a combination of structural changes in the labour force,
state repression, decreased organisational and educational capacity and a
leadership that has placed more emphasis on the ZCTU taking actions on its
own with less emphasis on building broader civic alliances.

Part of the explanation for this more narrow focus of the ZCTU can be found
in the difficult relations that have arisen between the labour movement and
both the MDC and the civics. The labour leadership perhaps feels that it
has been used and marginalised within the broader political processes in
the opposition. However, this recoil from coalition building is likely to
encounter limits very quickly given the need to develop a broad front
against Zimbabwe's authoritarian state. It is thus unclear whether the
militancy of the present leadership will translate unto a broader
participation by the union membership and the general public in mass actions.

There is little doubt also that the division in the MDC that took place
after October 12 2005 has weakened both sides of the party and created
confusion and demoralisation among its supporters and in the civic
movement. Over the last year there have been attempts to heal the breach in
the opposition and this has led to the signing of a code of conduct between
the two formations, designed to lessen their public hostility and violence.
This has certainly been a step forward for both sides, but urgent efforts
need to be taken to strengthen the strategic and electoral cooperation
between the two groups, whether there is a presidential election in 2008 or
2010.

Both formations at present belong to the Save Zimbabwe Campaign led by
church leaders, and also bringing together all the major civic groups in
the country. The major demand of this campaign is that there should be a
presidential election in 2008 under a new constitution, thus opposing
Mugabe's move to delay this election to 2010. One of the consequences of
both MDC formations working under this umbrella is that one or both
factions may feel less need to pursue the possibility of re-unification,
but instead use the momentum of the campaign to push their separate
agendas. This is likely to be a mistake in the longer term as closer
cooperation between the two MDCs is essential to confront Zanu PF.

It is against this background that the recent monetary statement by Reserve
Bank governor Gideon Gono needs to be understood. In many ways the
statement is an admission of a policy dead-end and recognition that the
primary problem in the country is the political blockage being created by
Mugabe's actions. In the statement, Gono desperately called for the
establishment of a social contract between the government, business and
labour, seeking to use this vehicle to attempt to achieve what the
political leadership is unwilling to attempt. Clearly in the present
political conditions the call for a social contract is unrealistic, given
the unwillingness of the state to confront the political challenges around
democratisation, which would be essential to a workable agreement between
the three legs of a tripartite arrangement.

Gono's call for a social contract in Zimbabwe is not new, as the ZCTU
proposed it, under different circumstances, in its 1996 document "Beyond
Esap". Instead the government set up the National Economic Consultative
Forum in 1997 and the Tripartite Negotiating Forum in 1998 which, in the
words of the Labour and Economic Development Institute of Zimbabwe, "have
either become talk-shops or their decisions have been largely ignored".

Both Mugabe's attempt to extend his presidency to 2010 and Gono's attempt
to draw other social forces into a social contract should be seen as
Mugabe's attempt to control change in Zimbabwe under his tutelage and that
of his party. The recent cabinet reshuffle confirmed Mugabe's need to
maintain the support of his loyalists as he attempts to get his proposal
for a 2010 extension of the presidential election confirmed by the ZANU PF
politburo. Under this proposal it is likely that Mugabe would appoint a
prime minister who would still be responsible to him, as his position as a
purportedly "ceremonial president" provides him with continued immunity
from possible prosecution for crimes against humanity.

Such a move could then possibly be a precursor to small reforms in the
political and economic arenas, as a prelude to an election in which Mugabe
would hope to defeat the opposition under a new candidate, and prepare the
way for a "normalisation" of his regime. However, Alexis de Tocqueville's
warning that the "most dangerous time for a bad government is when it
starts to reform itself" should be a reminder to Mugabe that once small
reforms are introduced it is often difficult to control the change. Under
the present political conditions Mugabe's government, as with all
authoritarian regimes, must continue to choose between compromise and
repression, or more specifically the particular blend of both. It is likely
that in the short term Mugabe will continue to emphasise state coercion in
dealing with dissent in the country.

However, the continued availability of this option will depend among other
factors on the capacity of the opposition and civic forces to mount more
effective popular resistance to the regime, the continued loyalty of the
police and army in the face of deteriorating economic conditions for the
armed forces, Mugabe's capacity to contain and resolve the succession
debate in his party and the ongoing pressure and isolation from the West.
Mugabe is likely to be acutely aware of the transition dangers that befell
the authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe after 1989 and the lessons of
his Chinese friends at Tiananmen Square.

All the indications are that 2007 will be a crucial year marking the
Zimbabwean crisis. If Mugabe continues to deploy authoritarian strategies
in response to the political opposition, both the economic and the
political conditions will deteriorate further, and the international
isolation of the regime is likely to continue. On the other hand if Mugabe
attempts a controlled reform process, the new political spaces opened are
likely to provide additional momentum for the political and civic
opposition, and the internal threat to ZANU PF will intensify. Caught
between an unproductive confrontational strategy that he would prefer and a
reform strategy whose consequences he is unlikely to be able to control,
Mugabe is faced with a very difficult political dilemma.

On the other hand ZANU PF's capacity to re-invent itself in part should not
be dismissed, especially if the opposition forces facilitate this option by
further strategic blunders. It would not be the first time that
authoritarian regimes have carried out a semblance of reform while
retaining the core of the former government. There are several such
examples in both Africa and Eastern Europe. Such an outcome would not be
unfavourable for a South African government that has always been more
concerned with the "stability" of its neighbour than with a more profound
democratic transition.

*Brian Raftopoulos is head of the Africa programme at the Institute for
Justice
and Reconciliation in Cape Town, South Africa.

Zimbabwe: Teachers End Strike After Pay Deal
New York Times Fri, 23 Feb 2007 7:50 PM PST
Teachers ended a three-week strike after President Robert G. Mugabe?s government partly met their demands for a 400 percent pay increase, raising basic salaries to more than $100 a month, still below the poverty line for a family of five. Because Zimbabwe struggles with rampant inflation, now at an annual rate of nearly 1,600 percent, it was unclear how long the new salaries would satisfy union ...

Anger mounts in Zimbabwe as crisis nears
AP via Yahoo! News Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:01 AM PST
Zimbabwe is reaching the end game, witnessing the last, desperate throes of a regime that has destroyed one of Africa's few successful economies, plunged millions of people into grinding poverty and led to the deaths of tens of thousands from malnutrition and lack of medical care.

Zimbabwe, once a breadbasket, now a basket case under Mugabe
Seattle Times Sat, 24 Feb 2007 0:21 AM PST
Zimbabwe is reaching the end game, witnessing the last, desperate throes of a regime that has destroyed one of Africa's few successful economies...

Zimbabwe's Mugabe Curbs Political Activity
NPR Fri, 23 Feb 2007 4:03 PM PST
Zimbabwe sees political unrest, as President Robert Mugabe attempts to postpone the country's presidential election. Meanwhile, thousands of protesters take to the streets after Mugabe refuses to let an opposition party host a public rally. Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks with Farai Chideya.

Zimbabwe's economic crisis a 'deep concern'
News Interactive Sat, 24 Feb 2007 2:00 AM PST
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has held his 83rd birthday party for thousands of supporters shortly after the IMF expressed deep concern over Zimbabwe's deteriorating social and economic conditions.

Zimbabwe: Students Must Not Let Country Down
AllAfrica.com Sat, 24 Feb 2007 1:24 AM PST
DESPITE the country's current economic challenges, Zimbabwe continues to prioritise the education of its citizens with thousands of students being enrolled every year in universities at home and abroad.

Zimbabwe: Zim Escapes Serious Damage From Cyclone
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ZIMBABWE has escaped major damage from the first major cyclone to hit the country in four years.

Mugabe makes life a misery in Zimbabwe

Source The Australian

Mugabe makes life a misery in Zimbabwe

January 08, 2007

A country is being destroyed by avarice and ambition
ENEMIES of liberty who argue that democracy is not suited to all societies and that US President George W. Bush was wrong in principle as well as in practice in fighting to allow Iraqis to choose their rulers should read RW Johnson's report on Zimbabwe in The Australian today. The story shows what happens when fair elections and open government, as well as the other pillars of a just society, free enterprise and equal access to justice, do not exist. Johnson reports on how a once prosperous African nation is reduced to a wreck, where starvation and brutality are the norm and the state treats ordinary people as its enemy. Millions have fled Zimbabwe, or died from hunger, disease and violence. Life expectancy is barely half what it was 15 years ago, and the economy has shrunk by 40 per cent this century. And it is all the work of dictator Robert Mugabe and his henchmen, who have entrenched their political power and economic authority by beggaring and beating, starving and killing their own people.
As with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Mugabe's Zimbabwe is a warning to the world of what happens when a state is run as a family or factional fiefdom. As in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union, in Zimbabwe the state and the dictator's political party are all but amalgamated. Such regimes are not only immoral, they are incompetent in governing for the people, because the needs of the vast mass of ordinary citizens are always ignored. As in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, Mugabe has tried to drive the urban poor into the country by bulldozing their shanty towns. Every dictator understands the dangers of large concentrations of desperate people in cities. Like the old Soviet Union under Stalin, Mugabe has taken farmland from ostensible enemies of the regime, in this case white farmers, and handed it over to party loyalists. In the process, as was the Soviet experience, he has all but destroyed the country's rural economy. Not long ago, Zimbabwe was the bread basket of southern Africa. Now its citizens stay and starve or seek bread in South Africa. Similar to Mao's China, Mugabe is big on state control of everything, with plans that destroy the economy. And, as with all states where democracy is blighted and official corruption flourishes, Mugabe ensures he will not be called to account for his evil incompetence. He allows his henchmen to ransack the state. And his regime rorts elections and intimidates opponents. There is yet another dictatorship Mugabe's Zimbabwe is coming to resemble -- Kim Jong-il's starving police state in North Korea.
That Mugabe's dictatorship would be ended by fair elections seems assured. But there is no way he will readily submit to such. Nor is it likely that the UN would ever act in the interests of the Zimbabwean people and remove him. Mugabe enjoys the diplomatic protection of South African President Thabo Mbeki, presumably on the principal that African leaders should stick together. China is happy to fill the aid and investment vacuum left by Western nations. And the prospect of the West removing Mugabe by military action is unlikely given the US debacle in Iraq following the removal of Saddam. Zimbabwe's best hope is that the 82-year-old Mugabe's regime will die with him, or collapse earlier under the weight of its own incompetence. Neither are morally acceptable solutions -- but Zimbabwe's tragedy is being played out at a time when appeasing or ignoring evil is politically popular in many of the countries that have the economic and military power to do something about it.

Ashdod - No longer a backwater town

(with quotes from former Zimbabwean - Judy Jacobsen)

No longer a backwater town

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DAVID E. KAPLAN, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 6, 2006

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For most Israelis, Ashdod is hardly on their road map. It's a signpost for others to turn off at - and "turn-off" has been the perception this coastal city has endured for half a century. Yet modern Ashdod is a growing city that boasts state-of-the-art architecture, a burgeoning nightlife scene and successful coexistence among its disparate communities.

In November, Ashdod began year-long celebrations of its jubilee, showcasing a model city that does Israel proud and belies common preconceptions.

Part of Israelis' historical ambivalence was poignantly captured in Amos Oz's 1983 book In the Land of Israel, where it was not the nation's capital but the unlikely city of Ashdod that the author dreamt of paving the way to a peaceful future. A modest dream, devoid of biblical longings and a desire to be at the center stage of history, "humble Ashdod, Israel at its best," recognized Oz. While not quite the "grandiose fulfillment of the Prophets," he wrote, Ashdod is "a city on a human scale… and from her we shall see what will flower."

Twenty-three years later, Oz's insights are all too evident. Ask any local from the mayor to port worker "What makes the Ashdod of today special?" and the answer is invariably "The people!"

"It's a city of tolerance hardly found anywhere else in Israel. Something quite unique," explains Arieh Azoulai, mayor of the city during the 1980s and, until recently, chairman of the Jewish Agency's Immigration and Absorption Committee. Azoulai, who speaks Hebrew, Spanish, French, English and Arabic, exudes the cosmopolitan ambience of his town.

Sitting in Caf Monart outside the magnificent new cultural center, Azoulai, who was born in Fez, Morocco, becomes quite poetic in describing this phenomenon. "At first glance, it's the beach that makes this place special - some 10 kilometers of white majestic coastline."

But for Azoulai, the sea is but a metaphor. "While it pounds the beach with each successive wave, it has really been the wave after wave of immigration that has enriched this place. We have here some 35 communities, and the place gels as a homogeneous living organism."

He points out that Ashdod has the third largest haredi community in Israel, after Jerusalem and Bnei Brak - a fact few people are aware of. "However, they don't high-profile their presence by imposing their beliefs as happens elsewhere in Israel," he notes.

Azoulai graphically portrays the cultural amalgam by listing the types of cuisine available in Ashdod. "There are Indian, Moroccan, French and South American restaurants, but I see them all as simply Ashdod restaurants. We are different, but we are one."

The degree of tolerance expounded by Azoulai was confirmed by Yigal Mizrachi, a Jerusalemite brought in a year ago by Mayor Zvi Zilker to organize the jubilee celebrations. "Can you believe it? In a city with so many haredim, there are over 10 shops where you can buy pork. Now, you may approve or disapprove of this, but the fact is that nobody publicly complains, and people just get on with their lives, respectful and mindful of others. This is not the case with my beloved Jerusalem. This city [Ashdod] is truly an example of cross-cultural coexistence."

Long-time resident Judy Jacobsen, originally from Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), recounts that when she arrived with her husband Rolf from Bulawayo in 1963, "There were only 13,000 residents. There was just sand, sand and more sand. You had to ensure that you always had enough petrol in your tank to drive to Yavne, the nearest gas station to Ashdod. One hardly heard any Hebrew - it was mainly French and Arabic, as the immigrants who preceded us came from Morocco and Egypt. You had to go to Rehovot to feel you were in Israel. When my daughter was in first grade, I asked her teacher if it was apparent that she came from a home where Hebrew was not spoken. The teacher laughed, saying that there was not a single pupil in the class whose parents spoke Hebrew."

Jacobsen says that only when ELTA (a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries) established a plant in Ashdod did native-born Israelis start arriving in Ashdod in significant numbers. "Their infusion into the cultural mix of Ashdod had a huge impact on transforming an essentially immigrant town into an Israeli city."

The vision of Amos Oz was taking shape.

The rate of population growth is one of the highest in Israel. The city that started with 22 immigrant Moroccan families in 1956 is fast approaching the 230,000 mark. About 38% of the current population arrived within the last decade, primarily from the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia, Latin America and France.

While Oz played down the nexus between the ancient past of Ashdod and its future, hardly a patch of habitable land in Israel today is not biblically bound. Ruins found at Tel Ashdod reveal that Ashdod was built during the 17th century BCE as a Canaanite fortified city. After its destruction, the Philistines settled there and made it one of the five main cities of their kingdom. During the Israel reign, Ashdod became part of the territory of the Judas tribe and is first mentioned in the Bible in the Book of Joshua.

At the beginning of the fourth century BCE, Ashdod fell to Alexander the Great. It typically passed from one set of conquerors to another until the Romans destroyed the city. It took some 2,000 years for Jews to return and rebuild Ashdod, and they arrived in the middle of the night.

Yuval Beaton, assistant curator of the Ashdod Museum of Art, explains: "It was a common tactic in the early days when establishing settlements in desolate areas. They learned from bitter experience that if settlers arrived during the day, they would refuse to disembark from the buses or trucks, so horrified with what they saw. Who could blame them! It was much safer to bring them at night. And this is precisely how 22 Moroccan families came directly from the ship that brought them to Israel to be deposited here on a cold, wintry November night in 1956."

Born and bred in Ashdod, Beaton attended university in New York, where he studied fine art. "I lived in Brooklyn and had a great time, but returned. I love this place," he says.

Members of all 22 original families were present at the opening of the festivities on November 26. It was an emotional occasion as they unveiled for the public one of the original, windowless tin shacks that had served as Ashdod's first dwellings. With no internal divisions, these primitive structures served as a home often for up to eight members of a family. Yet despite the hardships, all 22 families stuck it out, providing the bedrock for the waves of immigrants that were to follow.

Perched on the modern city's central piazza, surrounded and dwarfed by the towering futuresque architecture of the new municipal complex and cultural center, the tiny tin shack conveys a powerful narrative of a journey from primitive past to prosperous future.

Standing at the door of the shack, Mayor Zilker - a city engineer by profession - gazes up at the tall buildings casting giant shadows over the piazza, finally settles his eyes on the humble dwelling and stretches out his arms. "See how far we have come. We started from nothing, on sand dunes! I remember the early council meetings when, arriving at work, I would empty my shoes of sand at the entrance."

Having first served as mayor in 1969, it's been a long time since Zilker has had to empty his shoes. It's been more a case of trying to fill up the town's coffers to meet the growing demands of a burgeoning population. This in the main has been achieved by establishing Ashdod as one of Israel's major industrial cities. "Employment opportunities are not lacking," says Zilker. "The city is home to major companies in the sectors of electronics, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, plastics, metals, paper, wood and furniture."

Other important industries include the Eshkol electrical power station, an oil refinery (one of two in the country) and a coal terminal. Also located in Ashdod is ELTA, where radar equipment, electronic warfare systems, and electronic signals intelligence (ELINT) is now developed.

Ashdod's port is again the biggest in the country, boosted by the completion of the first stage of a major addition: Jubilee Port, renamed Eitan Port after Rafael Eitan, the former IDF chief of staff and government minister who drowned, having been swept off the pier he had helped build. A fighter all his life, Eitan went down "battling the sea and its waves," said former prime minister Ariel Sharon at the inauguration ceremony last year in paying tribute to his comrade who, having left politics, dedicated his time and energy to upgrading Ashdod's port.

"Eitan Port is the first computerized harbor in Israel and will offer a level of technology and service unprecedented in Israel," said Sharon.

The port operates one of the most advanced systems in the world - the terminal operation systems (TOS) that can reduce a ship's waiting time by 70%. "It is a wonderful gift to the city of Ashdod during its jubilee year," said the former prime minister, adding that he was delighted to see "a woman, Iris Stark, today heading the company as chairperson of the directorate of the Ashdod Port Company. It signals a new era."

That Stark holds such a high position traditionally occupied by a male is no less pleasing to Ettie Attias, advisor to the mayor on women's issues. While the Knesset recently mandated that all municipalities must create this position, Mayor Zilker was way ahead of the pack. Attias had been the mayor's advisor on women's issues for a number of years prior to the legislation. "We aspire for our city to be progressive and have legislated that following the next election, all municipal bodies must have a minimum of 30% women on their directorates," says Zilker.

A former chairperson of WIZO Ashdod, as well as serving on the organization's national executive, Attias is out "to empower women.

I want to bring them out of themselves and instill confidence. They have to strive for top positions in the running of our city. If women are to have an impact, they need to be where the decisions are made."

Rather than sitting idly by waiting for this to happen, Attias has been running leadership courses for women. "At the moment we have only three women on a council of 25. Next elections, this will change," she asserts. "I am hoping we will have as many as 10 to 15 woman candidates."

Expected or unexpected, another candidate in the next election will be the indefatigable mayor, who has held the reins of municipal power for a total of 30 years. If some thought that he might step aside, that's not going to happen. "The past is past, I am the future," he says, sending a clear message to his rivals that he is on the campaign trail for reelection next year.

Zilker is in high gear. "Our main objectives are education, public health and tourism. All three issues represent gaping holes - no university, no hospital, nor a proper tourist infrastructure. This will be the agenda in the years ahead."

While more than 30% of the municipal budget is allocated to education, indicating its high priority on the council's agenda, "we are determined within the near future to establish a university," says Zilker.

On the question of public health, while there are medical centers and clinics all over the city, residents requiring hospital services have to travel to neighboring Ashkelon. Again, Zilker is confident that "in the near future, Ashdod will have its first hospital."

Most residents agree that the reason Ashdod does not enjoy a thriving tourist industry is its proximity to Tel Aviv, only 32 kilometers to the north. "It's hard to compete," says long-time resident Jacobsen.

Nevertheless, maintains Zilker, "with our seafront promenade, restaurants, pubs, discotheques, summer festivities, the Mediterranean festival, nautical sports, as well as historical sites and natural reserves, we can become a premier tourist location. No longer do our youth trek to Tel Aviv for nightlife and action. It's all happening here in Ashdod."

Ashdod has more beaches - 10 kilometers of coast - than any other city in Israel. The recent completion of a 550-berth marina and the city's first major hotel is only the first stage in an ambitious plan to make Ashdod a major Mediterranean tourist destination.

Currently on display in the Ashdod Museum of Art is a photographic exhibition entitled "The Making of a City." The selection of photos spanning 50 years depicts a city that evolved and crystallized upon barren sand dunes to became home to various diasporas uprooted from their past. Each group, with its heritage, culture, language and customs, is "living side by side with other groups in harmony, tolerance and cooperation, proud of being Ashdodian. It's a city with its face to the future," says

One wonders what Oz is doing living in Arad.

A Francophile domain
Sharing Mayor Zvi Zilker's optimism for the future of Ashdod is the Jewish community of France. If the 1990s in Ashdod was the "Russian era," then the new millennium is the French era.

"The French are coming," says Arieh Azoulai who, as chairman of the Jewish Agency's immigration and absorption committee, had been instrumental in recent years in promoting and facilitating immigration to Israel from France.

"It's not only a question of anti-Semitism in France. Existentially, the real threat to French Jewry is not anti-Semitism but assimilation, so young French Jews who want to ensure Jewish continuity have set their sights on Israel. So why Ashdod? Well, the French love the sea and will always choose to live along or near the coast. That is why they are flocking mainly to Netanya and Ashdod and, to a lesser extent, Eilat."

While the number of French restaurants in the city testifies to Azoulai's analysis, the most emblematic visual pronouncement of this new phenomenon is the monumental glass pyramid at the entrance to the Ashdod Museum of Art. It is reminiscent of a similar structure at the entrance to the Louvre in Paris. Under the bold Hebrew lettering appears not English but "Centre d'arts Monart."

"I expect that as much as 40% of the city's residents can speak French," says Azoulai, "a factor that will continue to attract Jews from France to Ashdod."

Adding further credence to his hypotheses, Azoulai notes that during the jubilee celebrations, Ashdod was twinned with the city of Bordeaux. High profiling this event, Alain Juppe, the former French premier and mayor of Bordeaux, arrived in Ashdod with the French cultural attach , paving the way to establishing a French Institute to "strengthen the French language and culture," says Azoulai.


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Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/

VOA News - New Zimbabwe Law Allows for Eviction of Remaining White Farmers

New Zimbabwe Law Allows for Eviction of Remaining White Farmers
By Peta Thornycroft
Johannesburg
07 October 2006

Thornycroft report - Download 372k
Listen to Thornycroft report


Zimbabwe's parliament has passed a new land law that allows eviction of remaining white farmers. This is the latest chapter in a six-year controversial land-redistribution program.

Only a few hundred of more than 4,000 white farmers remain on their land in Zimbabwe. Under the land redistribution program announced by President Robert Mugabe in 2000, commercial farms were seized, ostensibly for the resettlement of landless blacks.

For six years, hundreds of white Zimbabwean farmers have been to court to try to avoid losing their farms, the businesses on their land and their homes.

Under a 2005 constitutional amendment, ownership of all white-owned land reverted to the state. However, the government did not have the power to evict farmers from state land they occupied, without lengthy legal battles.

Now, under the new law, white farmers have 90 days from the date President Mugabe rubber stamps the law to leave their homes and businesses, without recourse to the courts.

However, not all in the ruling ZANU-PF administration want the last white farmers to leave. The governor of the central bank, Gideon Gono, has been lending those still on their land money to grow crops.

The two vice presidents, Joyce Mujuru and Joseph Msika, have repeatedly said recently that they want productive white farmers to remain.

However, Lands Minister Didymus Mutasa told VOA last week that only he controls what happens to land, and he has made it clear to western diplomats in recent months he wants all white farmers off Zimbabwe's land.

Before the land-reform program, Zimbabwe was not only able to feed itself, but was a net exporter of food to the region, and commercial agriculture was the largest foreign currency earner and the largest employer.

Now, Zimbabwe is bankrupt. It depends on food imports, and, last week, the United Nations World Food Program said it had run out of money to continue to feed hundreds-of-thousands of people in need.

Chaos in a small country

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Chaos in a small country
By Arnold Beichman
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published October 3, 2006

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"We envision an Africa where peace is known by all, where freedom is shared by all, where opportunity is expanding for all, and most importantly, where responsibility is embraced by all. Because we stand together with Africa, America today is helping more people across the continent to build lives of hope and dignity than ever before in history."
These are the words of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaking Sept. 27 at a meeting of the Africa Society. What she envisions will never come to pass in Africa while dictators like the 82-year-old Robert Mugabe hold the reins of power in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe is a country in southern Africa, in area slightly larger than Montana. Its people are brutalized by one of the worst dictatorships in Africa, if not in the world. Mr. Mugabe has been in power more than a quarter-century, thanks to rigged elections. In other words, there is no rule of law in Zimbabwe.
Because it is a small country, Zimbabwe falls below the international community's radar screen. And because it is small, it receives little attention in the media and in international forums even though it suffers an annual inflation rate of 1,200 percent, which spells misery for its population of 12.7 million. Next year will be even worse, says the International Monetary Fund, predicting an inflation rate of 4,000 percent. Equally telling, Canada's Fraser Institute has created an Economic Freedom of the World Index, which measures how a country's policies support property rights, competition and personal choice. The lowest on the list of 130 countries (Hong Kong, Singapore and Chile head the list) is -- right -- Zimbabwe.
The Human Rights Forum in Zimbabwe has bravely spoken up: "Torture in Zimbabwe is both widespread and systemic, demanding both a national and international response." Mr. Mugabe's response to these accusations has been to accuse the U.S. and Britain of plotting to overthrow him.
As is inevitable in a dictatorship that has produced an economic disaster, public protest is not tolerated. According to on-the-scene reports, police and soldiers battered trade unionists during a protest march Sept. 13 in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. The brutal treatment got worse when the marchers were herded into a Harare police station.
"We were told to get into cells in pairs," said Wellington Chibebe, secretary-general of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Trade Unions (CZTU), speaking from a hospital bed, thanks to beatings by Mr. Mugabe's police. "They started beating us up all over the body with batons and a knobkerrie. [A short club with one knobbed end.]"
Mr. Mugabe has set up his own web page -- http://mugabe.netfirms.com/main.htm -- with this opening statement deriding democratic elections:
"Here I am on Election Day (yawn). I mean, what's the point? Just to keep up pretenses for the foreign observers?
I think not. The next election is going to be ONLY Zanu-PF. No MDC, no foreigners and no boring rallys.[sic]"
The Mugabe regime has paid no attention to widespread international protests -- the British Trades Union Congress, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the Congress of South African Unions, among others. And why should Mr. Mugabe care what anybody says? As in the fable of the timorous mice, who's going to bell the imperious cat?

Arnold Beichman, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is a columnist for The Washington Times.




Copyright © 2006 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Zimbabweans Bear Brunt of Economic Meltdown

more of the same miserable story from Zim....

Zimbabweans Bear Brunt of Economic Meltdown

Institute for War & Peace Reporting (London)
COLUMN
June 9, 2006
Posted to the web June 13, 2006

By Benedict Unendoro
Harare

If an uprising begins in Zimbabwe any time soon it might well be dubbed "the Lemonist Revolution".

So important has the lemon now become that it is a part of every family's shopping basket. People visiting neighbouring South Africa return with plastic bags loaded with the yellow-skinned citrus.

Fresh milk, when available, has become unaffordable for most. The same goes for sugar. At breakfast, to enhance the taste of their morning cup of tea, locals now use lemon instead of milk and sugar. They need it in their porridge too, for the same reason.

"Tea tastes good with lemon," said Margaret Gweshe, a housewife living in Chitungwiza, 28 kilometres from Harare. "But that's not why we have lemon tea every day. We would prefer the old days when we had milk we could afford."

Prices of essential commodities have shot up, with inflation reaching 1043 per cent in May. "People now only have money for the very basics," said Gweshe as she cradles a two-year-old child showing the early signs of malnutrition. "Maize meal is our staple, so all the money has to be directed towards it before we can think of buying anything else."

For breakfast she gives the baby maize porridge with lemon in it while she makes do with a cup of tea and a sweet potato from her garden. To preserve maize rations there is no midday lunch. "Maputi is all we will have in the afternoon," she said. Maputi are popped maize, very different from popcorn familiar to film-goers. The latter is made from special corn, while the former are just ordinary maize kernels roasted until they pop.

"For supper we always have sadza [a thick maize porridge] with vegetables boiled in salt. There is no cooking oil. We can't afford tomatoes and onions. Having supper is an ordeal rather than a pleasure," she said.

Zimbabwe's economic meltdown is now virtually complete and ordinary Zimbabweans are bearing the brunt of it.

The price of a litre of petrol increased from 200,000 to 300,000 Zimbabwe dollars at the end of the first week of June. Obviously no foreigner can comprehend, at a glance, what that means.

So bear with me for a short seminar on a country holding two world records - the highest inflation rate in the world and the fastest shrinking economy.

The real value of one US dollar at the black market rate in a country where the formal economy has collapsed is 310,000 Zimbabwe dollars.

President Robert Mugabe's has pegged the official exchange rate at 102,000 Zimbabwe dollars to one US dollar, but US greenbacks are exchanged at this rate only in exceptional, unavoidable circumstances.

To illustrate how far we have fallen, one Zimbabwe dollar was worth more than one American dollar at independence in 1980.

Eighty per cent of all Zimbabweans now live in abject poverty on the equivalent of less than one US dollar a day.

Every rise in the price of fuel has an immediate effect on everything else. Commuter bus fares rise as soon as the price of fuel rises. The prices of basic commodities also rise because grocers have to pay more to bring the commodities to their shops.

Zimbabwe is the only country in the world whose highest denomination bank note cannot buy a loaf of bread. Less than a week after the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe introduced a new 100,000 Zimbabwe dollar bank note at the beginning of June, the price of a loaf of bread shot up from 85,000 to 132,000 Zimbabwe dollars. Last Christmas, we were paying "only" 45,000 a loaf.

A lot of things have become so ridiculous in Zimbabwe that they would be hilariously funny if they were not so deadly serious and causing so many of us to die unnaturally early. Another world record we hold is for the lowest life expectancy for our women. According to the World Health Organisation, the average Zimbabwean woman does not live now beyond the age of 34 compared with 60 years at independence.

The word "trillion" has been added to our basic vocabulary, because that is the monetary figure government departments and businesses work in.

But a recent snap survey showed that only one in ten professionals know how many zeros there are in a trillion.

The Reserve Bank has introduced "bearer cheques" because it has run out of foreign exchange to import the kind of high quality paper necessary for printing standard bank notes. The bearer cheques are printed on ordinary low quality paper, with no security features, and they expire after a given period. The last "quality" bank note printed in this country was for 1,000 Zimbabwe dollars, which these days does not buy you even a single matchstick.

For a single purchase of twenty litres of petrol, one needs 6 million Zimbabwe dollars or 300 twenty thousand dollar bearer cheques. Petrol attendants use money counters for this and as the cheques purr in the machine the poor quality paper sends lots of dust into the attendant's face. They have to wear masks because the dust causes terrible coughing.

The dust pollution is made worse because "some of our customers carry their great wads of bearer cheques in the most unsavoury of containers", one attendant told IWPR at a service station in the Harare suburb of Hatfield.

In the villages, the new money puzzles the elderly. "Why do they give us this new note when it cannot buy anything," asked an old man at funeral vigil in Chivi, 320 km south of Harare. He told IWPR that in his day, "when money was still money", one could buy a pair of shoes using the biggest denomination note. "Now this 100,000 dollar bill buys nothing, but they bring it to us anyway," he said.

The 100,000 Zimbabwe dollar bill has been dubbed the "greenback" by local wits because of its colour. But, unlike a single US dollar, one of these new notes is useless by itself. To buy a single 40-watt lightbulb you need a dozen "greenbacks".

Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono said on the eve of the launch of the 100,000 Zimbabwe dollar bearer cheque, "It will help reduce the annoyance of carrying loads and loads of money around and make shopping easier." Well, Gono, who lives in a palatial home perhaps second in size to President Mugabe's, is way out of touch with reality. We ordinary Zimbabweans no longer use wallets. They are too small. The country's money is devaluing so fast that you have to lug around plastic bags full of "bricks" of notes if you are going to a small grocery shop. To buy anything bigger, you need a suitcase.

For most low-income urban dwellers whose salaries range from a low of five million to an average of ten million Zimbabwe dollars a month, life has simply become unbearable.

Margaret Gweshe's husband earns ten million Zimbabwe dollars and works near the city centre. He needs 200,000 a day to travel to and from work and the total per month is about four million. Rental accommodation in most working class suburbs ranges between 3 million and 3.5million a month for a single room.

The Gweshes' monthly ten million Zimbabwe dollars is gobbled up just by transport and accommodation. They rent two rooms. Therefore there is no money for groceries, school fees and school uniforms, whose prices are soaring in line with runaway inflation. School shoes now cost 3 million a pair at a shoe shop considered to be one of the cheapest.

"A person earning 10 million is not able to come to work, pay school fees and accommodation. That's what it means," said Fadzai Kaseke who lives in the sprawling shantytown of Epworth just outside Harare. "That person cannot afford to get sick. Imagine if a serious illness falls in the family. The person will be in serious trouble."

Most families are surviving on one meal a day. Things that most people used to take for granted, such as milk, margarine, bread, sugar, meat, cooking oil and tea, have become luxuries. Beef, once a staple along with maize, now costs 1 million Zimbabwe dollars a kilogramme in a supermarket.

Zimbabweans joke grimly that they are "poor millionaires". Like Gladys, a domestic worker who earns more than 3 million a month. That is a salary she could only dream of a few years ago when maids' monthly wages were set at 80,000. But these days her millions do not stretch to a regular morsel of meat. So she eats dried grasshoppers.

"We are getting to the point where people can't take anymore," said Lovemore Madhuku, chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly, a major lobby group for political reform."Poverty and suffering are growing by the day. It's just a matter of time before inflation sparks civil disobedience."

Benedict Unendoro is the pseudonym of an IWPR journalist in Zimbabwe.

Listen to John Robertson on inflation in Zimbabwe

World
Worried About Inflation? Try Zimbabwe's 1,000 Percent


All Things Considered, May 17, 2006 · Melissa Block talks with Zimbabwean economist John Robertson about the massive inflation in real prices caused by the devaluation of government currency. Anecdotes in recent news reports put prices for goods such as bread and orange juice at as much as 500,000 Zimbabwe dollars -- or five U.S. dollars.

Click here to listen via NPR

Zimbabwe in black and white

Zimbabwe in black and white

Christina Lamb tells the true story of a white farmer and his black servant before and after Mugabe in her illuminating and flawed House of Stone, says Jason Cowley

Sunday May 14, 2006
The Observer

Buy House of Stone at the Guardian bookshop

House of Stone
Christina Lamb
HarperCollins £14.99, pp290
Rhodesians Worldwide is a website through which old Rhodies communicate, and wonder about the lives they might have lived if Robert Mugabe had not won the war to liberate from white minority rule the country that became Zimbabwe. These dispatches are inevitably nostalgic and Rhodesia is remembered as a kind of Arcadia, when these reluctant exiles were enjoying the time of their lives, unburdened, it seems, by any sense of racial or liberal political conscience. The contributions to the site can be read as an exercise in willed denial; what is missing is any curiosity about the lives of the black Africans among whom they once lived, what they thought, believed or wanted.

Denial is the subject of Christina Lamb's book, which tells the story of a white farmer called Nigel Hough and his black maid, Aquinata, and how they were brought together and changed by the farm invasions that began in 2000 and have since led to the ruin of the agricultural infrastructure of one of the most fertile countries in Africa and to the misery of its people.
Nigel's father, an Englishman, settled in Rhodesia in the late 1940s, attracted there by the ease of the lifestyle, the climate, the landscape, and by the privileges of being white in this part of colonial Africa. What is often forgotten about Rhodesia is how resolutely suburban it was. To visit the capital, Salisbury, was like finding yourself in Tunbridge Wells on a Sunday afternoon; the polite hush and the prejudices were certainly the same. How can this be Africa, you thought?

Nigel grew up certain of his superiority over the black majority: the 'munts', the 'kaffirs'. Later, they would become the 'terrs' - terrorists - as the whites, led by the ferociously stubborn Ian Smith, fought a long, futile and, above all, murderous civil war to prevent the inevitability of black majority rule. He went to one of the best schools in the country, where he excelled at sports and, as war intensified out in the bush, dreamed of becoming a commando, even of serving in the elite Selous Scouts. The Scouts were an SAS-style unit who, operating behind enemy lines, committed some of the worst atrocities of the war.

Growing up in a village, Aqui had her own dreams and aspirations. She wanted to be educated, and she wanted to be a nurse. She believed in the war to liberate her people and she was sure that once the whites were defeated and the blacks controlled their own destiny, there would be equality and the country would flourish.

For a brief period following the free election of Robert Mugabe as president in 1980, there was hope that reconciliation between the black majority and the remaining whites was possible. In his post-election address to the nation, Mugabe spoke of forgiveness and urged whites to stay on to build the new country. The white farmers, despite faltering attempts at reform, were allowed to continue very much as before, working the richest and most fertile land.

Nigel was encouraged; Africa was his home, he was a white African; he wanted to believe, as Aqui did, in the possibility of a harmonious future. He stayed on and, in time, married a local white woman and settled on a farm in the tobacco-growing district of Marondera. It was there that Aqui came to work for him, her life before then, even in liberated Zimbabwe, amounting to a convoy of sorrows: raped as a child by a schoolmaster, a drunken, abusive husband, absolute poverty.

Nigel and Aqui's stories are told in alternating chapters, their own words, rendered in italics, merging with the flow of Lamb's hurried prose. But there is a problem: too often one struggles to differentiate Aqui's voice (her English would surely be Shona-inflected) from Nigel's. In their flatly modulated diction they both sound like Christina Lamb.

Lamb is a courageous and excellent reporter but she can be a careless writer. In her acknowledgements she thanks her editor 'who somehow turned round her manuscript in record time'. But her editor failed to prevent her worst excesses: repetition, overstatement and a serious absence of attribution. One section, on the Selous Scouts, reads as if hastily paraphrased from a website dedicated to the Scouts. If this site was indeed one of her sources, as it must have been, why isn't it cited? Why wasn't she advised to include a bibliography or source notes, in what is, after all, not only reportage but a semi-scholarly history of Zimbabwe?

The final section of the book, the best, sees Lamb back in Zimbabwe, illegally. The farms have been destroyed. The shanty settlements of the blacks in the cities who dared to vote against Mugabe in the last election have been demolished as part of Operation Clean Up the Filth. Most of the whites who can have emigrated, and the prevailing mood is one of menace and fear - a geriatric tyrant holding on to power at any cost. The Houghs remain in the country, though they have lost their farm, and Aqui is still working for them in a subordinate role. Nigel and Aqui now live without dreams, illusions or hope. Yet they have mutual respect - and a greater understanding of what it means to be black, and indeed white, in southern Africa. But, oh, the pain, and the regret.

Zimbabwe Inflation Tops 1,000 Percent

Zimbabwe Inflation Tops 1,000 Percent
(AP) HARARE, Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate has topped 1,000 percent for the first time, underlining the economic collapse of a country crippled by shortages and where people have to carry bags full of cash even for basic purchases.

Moffat Nyoni, director of the Government's Central Statistical Office, said that inflation for the 12 months to April 2006 was 1,042.9 percent, according to a report on state radio Saturday.

In March the figure was 913 percent. Figures released by Nyoni's office showed 21.1 percent inflation for the month of April alone, fueled by a 27 percent increase in the cost of basic foodstuffs, 24.8 percent in rents, 35.1 percent in fuels such as gasoline and kerosene and 48.1 percent in motor vehicle and health insurance.

The economy has been in free fall since President Robert Mugabe started seizing 5,000 formerly white-owned commercial farms in February 2000.

"We are living with the consequences of (the government's) destructive policies of the past," said economist John Robertson. "They cannot raise the necessary taxes from our shrinking economy."

The radio broadcast said the poverty datum line - absolute minimum consumption needs - for an average family of five reached 37 million Zimbabwean dollars (US$366; euro284) per month at the Government's rate of exchange but only US$148 (euro114) on the more realistic and flourishing black market.

The lowest-paid workers in formal employment - domestic gardeners - earn 2.5 million Zimbabwean dollars a month, but 70 percent of the work force lack regular jobs due to waves of bankruptcies.

Most people get paid by the hour for casual work. Church groups have appealed to employers that the hourly rate should at least cover the price of a loaf of bread, currently 100,000 Zimbabwe dollars.

An estimated 4 million Zimbabweans, many of them skilled professionals, are living outside the country.

Most remaining Zimbabweans make ends meet by growing sweet potatoes and maize on roadsides, railway sidings and plots of vacant land.

A package of the cheapest candy costs 57,000 Zimbabwe dollars, but the maximum denomination note is 50,000 Zimbabwe dollars, forcing shoppers to carry a bag full of money.

Since mobile phones went into service in 1996 as fixed phone services crashed, the price of the cheapest range of phones with a line connection has increased 5,000-fold. The price of a single car battery this year could have bought 14 brand new cars 10 years ago.

There is a joke that toilet paper costs so much that it would be cheaper to use 500 dollar notes.

Robertson said the point of "meltdown" had already been reached for pensioners and others living on small fixed incomes.

An entire life's savings, invested before the 1998 start of the Zimbabwean economy's collapse, is now needed to meet a month's living expenses.

Money from charities or from relatives living abroad is the only means of survival for many elderly. The United Nations estimates at least 3 million of the 12 million population are in need of emergency food aid ahead of next month's harvests.

Mugabe last week announced increases of up to 300 percent in salaries for more than 120,000 government employees including soldiers and police.

Robertson said there was "not a hope in hell" of reaching the government's target to reduce inflation to double digits by the end of the year and it would take five to 10 years to restore production on farms, in mining and industry, even if Mugabe reversed current policies.

Robertson predicted shortage-driven inflation might soon reach 2,000 percent as state employees rushed to spend their pay rises while goods were still in stores. There is currently a nationwide shortage of sugar, while supplies of cooking oil, maize meal and bread are erratic.

"People should get angry and start demanding things happen," said Robertson.

Zimbabwe's poverty datum line shoots to Z$41 million

Zimbabwe's poverty datum line shoots to Z$41 million
Fri 5 May 2006

HARARE - Zimbabwe's poverty datum line last month shot to Z$41 million up from the previous month's figure of Z$35 million, according to the latest figures released yesterday by the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ).

"The cost of living as depicted by the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe's low-income urban earner monthly budget for a family of six has risen from $34 995 428.56 in March to $41 096 610.00 reflecting a 17.4 increase percent," said the state-funded consumer rights body.

The CCZ attributed the increase in the cost of living to last month's hike in tuition fees and health costs. The government last month increased school fees by more than 1 000 percent with a basic school uniform now costing about Z$12.3 million.

"This is a cause for concern as many low-income earners may not be able to purchase these basic uniforms for their children," said the CCZ.

Last week, the government also announced new salaries for teachers and soldiers with the lowest paid soldier getting about $27 million while teachers will now earn about $33 million, which is far below the basic consumption line.

Zimbabwe is in its sixth year of a bitter economic recession which has seen inflation hitting 913.6 percent, the highest such rate outside a war zone.

The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change party and major Western governments blame President Robert Mugabe for ruining the country's economy which was one of the strongest at independence from Britain 26 years ago.

But Mugabe denies the charge blaming the crisis on sabotage by his Western enemies after he violently seized land from whites for redistribution to landless blacks. - ZimOnline

Zimbabwe's Prices Rise 900%, Turning Staples Into Luxuries - New York Times

Source: New York Times
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May 2, 2006
Zimbabwe's Prices Rise 900%, Turning Staples Into Luxuries
By MICHAEL WINES
HARARE, Zimbabwe, April 25 — How bad is inflation in Zimbabwe? Well, consider this: at a supermarket near the center of this tatterdemalion capital, toilet paper costs $417.

No, not per roll. Four hundred seventeen Zimbabwean dollars is the value of a single two-ply sheet. A roll costs $145,750 — in American currency, about 69 cents.

The price of toilet paper, like everything else here, soars almost daily, spawning jokes about an impending better use for Zimbabwe's $500 bill, now the smallest in circulation.

But what is happening is no laughing matter. For untold numbers of Zimbabweans, toilet paper — and bread, margarine, meat, even the once ubiquitous morning cup of tea — have become unimaginable luxuries. All are casualties of the hyperinflation that is roaring toward 1,000 percent a year, a rate usually seen only in war zones.

Zimbabwe has been tormented this entire decade by both deep recession and high inflation, but in recent months the economy seems to have abandoned whatever moorings it had left. The national budget for 2006 has already been largely spent. Government services have started to crumble.

The purity of Harare's drinking water, siphoned from a lake downstream of its sewer outfall, has been unreliable for months, and dysentery and cholera swept the city in December and January. The city suffers rolling electrical blackouts. Mounds of uncollected garbage pile up on the streets of the slums.

Zimbabwe's inflation is hardly history's worst — in Weimar Germany in 1923, prices quadrupled each month, compared with doubling about once every three or four months in Zimbabwe. That said, experts agree that Zimbabwe's inflation is currently the world's highest, and has been for some time.

Public-school fees and other ever-rising government surcharges have begun to exceed the monthly incomes of many urban families lucky enough to find work. The jobless — officially 70 percent of Zimbabwe's 4.2 million workers, but widely placed at 80 percent when idle farmers are included — furtively hawk tomatoes and baggies of ground corn from roadside tables, an occupation banned by the police since last May.

Those with spare cash put it not in banks, which pay a paltry 4 to 10 percent annual interest on savings, but in gilt-edged investments like bags of corn meal and sugar, guaranteed not to lose their value.

"There's a surrealism here that's hard to get across to people," Mike Davies, the chairman of a civic-watchdog group called the Combined Harare Residents Association, said in an interview. "If you need something and have cash, you buy it. If you have cash you spend it today, because tomorrow it's going to be worth 5 percent less.

"Normal horizons don't exist here. People live hand to mouth."

President Robert G. Mugabe has responded to the hardship in two ways.

Although there is no credible threat to his 26-year rule, Zimbabwe's political opposition is calling for mass protests against the economic situation. So Mr. Mugabe has tightened his grip on power even further, turning the economy over to a national security council of his closest allies. In addition, he has seeded the government's civilian ministries this year with loyal army and intelligence officers who now control key functions, from food security to tax collection.

At the same time, Mr. Mugabe's government has printed trillions of new Zimbabwean dollars to keep ministries functioning and to shield the salaries of key supporters — and potential enemies — against further erosion. Supplemental spending proposed early in April would increase the 2006 spending limits approved last November by fully 40 percent, and more such emergency spending measures are all but certain before the year ends.

On Friday, the government said it would triple the salaries of 190,000 soldiers and teachers. But even those government workers still badly trail inflation; the best of the raises, to as much as $33 million a month, already are slightly below the latest poverty line for the average family of five.

This will only worsen inflation, for printing too many worthless dollars is in part what got Zimbabwe into this mess to begin with. Zimbabwe fell into hyperinflation after the government began seizing commercial farms in about 2000. Foreign investors fled, manufacturing ground to a halt, goods and foreign currency needed to buy imports fell into short supply and prices shot up.

Inflation, about 400 percent per year last November, edged over 600 percent in January, but began to soar after the government revealed that it had paid the International Monetary Fund $221 million to cover an arrears that threatened Zimbabwe's membership in the organization.

In February, the government admitted that it had printed at least $21 trillion in currency — and probably much more, critics say — to buy the American dollars with which the debt was paid.

By March, inflation had touched 914 percent a year, at which rate prices would rise more than tenfold in 12 months. Experts agree that quadruple-digit inflation is now a certainty.

In the midst of this craziness, some Harare enclaves seem paradoxically normal. North of downtown, where diplomats and aid workers are financed with American dollars, and generators and bottled water are the norm, the cafes still serve cappuccino and the markets sell plump roasting chickens, albeit $1 million chickens.

Everywhere else, the hardship is inescapable.

In Glen Norah, a dense suburb of thousands of tiny homes southwest of the city, 58-year-old Ayina Musoni and her divorced daughter Regai, 26, share their five-room house with Regai's two children and three lodgers. The lodgers, two security guards and a teacher, pay monthly rent totaling $3 million, or about $14.25 in American money.

Ms. Musoni's latest monthly bill for services from the Harare city government was $2.4 million. The refrigerator in her closet-size kitchen is empty except for a few bottles of boiled water. Christmas dinner was sadza, or corn porridge, with hard-boiled eggs. For Easter, there was nothing.

Mother and daughter make as much as $10 in American money each week by selling vegetables, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. But the profits are being consumed by rising costs at the farmers' market where they buy stock. "Like potatoes," Regai said. "I went last week, and it was $500,000 for a packet. And when I went this weekend, it was $700,000.

Millions of Zimbabweans survive these days on the kindness of outsiders — foreigners who donate food or medicine and, more important, family members who have fled the nation for better lives abroad.

As many as three million Zimbabweans now live elsewhere, usually in Britain, South Africa or the United States. An economist here, John Robertson, estimates that they remit as much as $50 million a month to their families — the equivalent of one sixth of the gross domestic product.

Ms. Musoni's is not a hard-luck story; in Harare, most people now live this way, or worse. Indeed, life for many may be better in the nation's impoverished rural areas, where subsistence farming is the only industry and millions of people are guaranteed free monthly rations from the United Nations and other donors. In the cities, little is free.

Unity Motize, 64, lives with her 65-year-old husband, Simeon, in Highfield, a middle-class suburb turned slum not far south of town. The couple occupies one room of their three-room house. The second sleeps two sons, their wives and their two infants, all left homeless last May after riot police bulldozed the homes of hundreds of thousands of slum-dwellers. A 23-year-old son and an unemployed daughter sleep in the living room.

Hyperinflation is a cradle-to-grave experience here. The government recently announced that the price of childbirth, now $7 million, would rise 463 percent by October. Funeral costs are to double over the same period.

In rural areas, said one official of a foreign-based charity who declined to be named, fearing consequences from the government, even the barest funeral costs at least $6 million, or about $28.50 — well beyond most families' means. The dead are buried in open fields at night, she said. Recently, she watched one family dismantle their home's cupboard to construct a makeshift coffin.

"I'll never forget that," she said. "The incredible sadness of it all."

Critics say that Zimbabwe's rulers are oblivious to such suffering — last year, Mr. Mugabe completed his own 25-bedroom mansion in a gated suburb north of town, close by the mansions of top ministers and military allies.

But the government says it has a plan to revive the economy. That plan, the latest of perhaps seven in 10 years, would quickly raise billions of American dollars to end a chronic foreign currency shortage, cut the inflation rate to double digits by year's end and an end to the recession that has gripped Zimbabwe, halving its economic output, since 1999.

Mr. Robertson, the economist, says that is unlikely. Zimbabweans can and probably will endure greater hardship, he says. As a whole, the nation has only now sunk to standards common elsewhere in Africa. But the government may have reached the limit of its ability to do anything about it. Cutting spending seems impossible, and raising taxes further is unthinkable.

That leaves one option: "much more inflation," he said. "Because this government is always going to be printing its way out of its current difficulty."

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RBZ Relaxes Exchange Regulations

RBZ Relaxes Exchange Regulations

The Herald (Harare)
NEWS
May 1, 2006
Posted to the web May 1, 2006

By Jeffrey Gogo
Harare

EXPORTERS can now liquidate 100 percent of their foreign earnings at the ruling interbank exchange rate after the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) last week relaxed exchange control regulations.

The central bank has, with immediate effect, abolished the sale of the 30 percent export receipts threshold at the official $30 000 against the United States dollar. Exporters can now sell that portion at the ruling interbank rate of $100 193 versus the greenback. This means that exporting firms can liquidate 100 percent of their foreign earnings using the interbank rate.

In a statement released to exporters last week, RBZ noted: "In order to further consolidate and support growth in the export sector, RBZ is pleased to advise the market that from 28th April 2006, the whole 30 percent portion currently being sold to the (central) bank shall be at the going interbank exchange rate. "Under the circumstances, this means that as per standing arrangements, exporters will continue to retain 70 percent in their FCAs, in line with existing exchange control rules and sell 30 percent at the going interbank exchange rate. "All exporters, therefore, now enjoy 100 percent conversion of th eir export receipts at the ruling interbank exchange rate." Previously, exporters were required to sell only 70 percent of their foreign earnings at the interbank rate while the remainder was disposed using the auction rate. Analysts say the new policy would greatly enhance exporter viability.

Exporters have persistently decried that exchange rate distortions had caused havoc in their businesses, as input costs failed to meet revenue. But the stability of the Zimbabwe dollar versus key foreign currencies over the last few months has worked in the interests of importers and holders of foreign currency-denominated debt. Financial analysts expect the dollar to remain stable against major currencies in the short term, although foreign currency shortages are likely to persist. However, what the new RBZ measure has done is to submerge exporter calls for devaluation, as well as addressing, to some extent, the disparities between input and output costs.

Zimbabwe continues to face fo reign currency challenges due to a combination of successive droughts, a declining export base and lack of balance of payments support from multilateral lending institutions. However, RBZ governor Dr Gideon Gono recently announced that the country would receive US$2,5 billion in cash and investments within the next three months.. This is one of the major targets under the New Economic Development Priority Programme (NEDPP) launched two weeks ago. Various efforts are also being pursued to ensure exporters bring in the much-needed hard currency.

Scotsman.com News - International - Zimbabwe announces 3,000% rise in hospital charges

Scotsman.com News - International - Zimbabwe announces 3,000% rise in hospital charges: "Zimbabwe announces 3,000% rise in hospital charges
ANGUS SHAW IN HARARE

ZIMBABWEANS, already reeling from the effects of rampant inflation, received another shock yesterday when health authorities announced up to 30-fold increases in state hospital fees.
Edwin Maguti, the deputy health minister, said consultation fees in accident and emergency departments in the main government hospitals would increase 3,000 per cent to nearly one million Zimbabwe dollars with immediate effect, state radio reported.

Surgery will cost the equivalent of about 55p a minute, more than the average Zimbabwean earns in a day. District hospitals and clinics will charge about 15 times more.

Special fees for the elderly, impoverished and other vulnerable groups remain unchanged, along with immunisation programmes, Mr Maguti said, adding that patients trying to cheat the system by claiming this status would be fined.

Mr Maguti said the increases were necessary to shore up crumbling public health services and ease overcrowding"

Zimbabwe 'asks farmers to return'

Zimbabwe 'asks farmers to return'
Zimbabwe's white farmers say they have been invited to apply for land - in an apparent U-turn by the government which has seized their land.
All but 300 of the 4,000 white farmers have been forced off their land since President Robert Mugabe started his "fast-track" land reform in 2000.

A farmers' leader says some 200 applications have already been made and more are coming in.

Critics say the reforms have devastated the economy and led to massive hunger.

Foreign currency

Much of the formerly white-owned land is no longer being productively used - either because the beneficiaries have no experience of farming or they lack finance and tools.

Many farms were wrecked when they were invaded by government supporters.


The government has admitted that the exercise has been beset by corruption.
But Mr Mugabe blames Zimbabwe's economic problems on a plot by Western countries to topple him.

"There is an understanding that our members want to play a significant role in agriculture production, food security and generation of foreign currency for the country," Trevor Gifford, Commercial Farmers' Union vice-president told Reuters news agency.

"It is within this context that we were invited to submit the applications and I do know that instructions have been given to provincial land committees to process the applications and we are now awaiting responses," he said.

'No going back'

Didymus Mutasa, the minister in charge of land reform, could not be reached for comment.

But on Wednesday he said: "There is definitely no going back on our policy on land."

He also said that 99-year leases for commercial farms would be distributed by June, which he hoped would lead to higher agricultural output.

Earlier this year, Agriculture Minister Joseph Made told the BBC News website that any Zimbabwean was free to apply for land, whether white or black, as long as they used it.

Under colonial rule, the best agricultural land was reserved for whites - a policy which Mr Mugabe says he is trying to reverse.

But many white-owned farms were highly mechanised, productive businesses which formed the backbone of the economy.

The opposition says Mr Mugabe is using the land to buy votes.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/4932060.stm

Published: 2006/04/21 16:53:56 GMT

© BBC MMVI

More woes as Zimbabwe health costs double

IOL - April 11 2006 at 12:09PM

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More woes as Zimbabwe health costs double

Harare - Zimbabwe has lifted a freeze on private health care charges, the official Herald newspaper said on Tuesday, allowing fees to double in a move likely to add to the woes of Zimbabweans grappling with soaring inflation.

From April 1, general practitioners' consultation fees have gone up by 100 percent to $58 (about R360), the paper said, adding that specialist physician fees have also been doubled.

Zimbabwe's health sector is among those hardest hit by a deepening economic crisis widely blamed on President Robert Mugabe's mismanagement, and showing itself in perennial shortages of foreign currency, food and fuel as well as constant water and electricity cuts.

"I do not want to kill the private sector. I want it to thrive so that it can complement the public health sector," Herald quoted Health Minister David Parirenyatwa as saying in justifying the price hike.

It follows a raft of basic commodity price hikes over the weekend in response to a sharp jump in inflation, now the highest in the world.

Parirenyatwa was not immediately available for comment.

Official figures released last week showed inflation vaulted to 913,6 percent in the year to March, triggering a 60 percent jump in the cost of bread for struggling urban dwellers whose salaries have failed to keep up with soaring costs.

The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe says an average family of five requires at least 35-million Zimbabwe dollars every month but an average middle class citizen earns just 15 million.

Political and economic analysts say many urban Zimbabweans have so far survived the country's long-running economic crisis through wheeling and dealing and through subsidies from relatives abroad who send money for groceries.

Private hospitals and doctors, who still offer far better service than the country's run-down government hospitals which are chronically short of drugs and trained staff, had wanted to hike fees by up to 240 percent.

Government doctors and nurses have staged a number of strikes over the last seven years to press for better pay, while thousands others have moved to neighbouring countries and further abroad in search of greener pastures.

Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, rejects charges he has misruled Zimbabwe and blames its economic woes largely on sabotage by his opponents in retaliation for controversial land reforms that has seen white-owned farmland forcibly redistributed among blacks.



Published on the Web by IOL on 2006-04-11 11:59:45



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© Independent Online 2005. All rights reserved. IOL publishes this article in good faith but is not liable for any loss or damage caused by reliance on the information it contains.

Leizer Abrahamson celebrates his 107th birthday

In a country that has just been declared as having the lowest life expectancy in the world one unique man is celebrating his 107th birthday.

Leizer Abrahamson - a resident of the Savyon Lodge Jewish Old Age Home in Bulawayo - celebrated his birthday on the 2nd April with some 100 friends, family and fellow residents around him.

Rabbi Nathan Asmoucha of the Bulawayo Hebrew Congregation reported a very special party took place for Leizer. Valda Cohen said, " it is hard for anyone to imagine all the difficulties when Leizers family put on such an amazing function at Savyon - most of everything came with the family."

For full story on the birthday plus latest picture of Leizer and also pictures of his 105th birthday click here

In the true Jewish tradition - may we wish Leizer - "ad 120" ...until 120 years !

To read about Zimbabwe's life expectancy - click here

Zimbabwe has world's lowest life expectancy

Bloomberg Printer-Friendly Page: "Zimbabwe Has World's Lowest Life Expectancy of 36 (Update1)
April 7 (Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe, which has the world's fourth- worst AIDS epidemic, overtook Swaziland as the country with the world's lowest life expectancy, data released today by the World Health organization showed.
In 2004, Zimbabweans could expect to live to the age of 36, with life expectancy for men at 37 and women at 34, the WHO said in its 2006 annual report released on its Web site. That compared with overall life expectancy of 37 in 2003. Life expectancy in Swaziland, where a greater proportion of the people are infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, rose to 37 from 35.
As of the end of 2003, the United Nations AIDS agency estimated that 1.8 million people in Zimbabwe carried the HIV virus. The country's infection rate was exceeded only by Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland. In 2003, Zimbabwe had a population of 12.9 million people, according to the Geneva-based WHO.
The country's economy shrank every year for the last six and its annual inflation rate of 914 percent is the world's highest.
People in Japan, where life expectancy is 82, live the longest, the WHO said.


To contact the reporter on this story:
Antony Sguazzin in Johannesburg asguazzin@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: April 7, 2006 09:59 EDT "

FT.com / World / Middle East & Africa - Zimbabwe's economy spirals downward

Zimbabwe's economy spirals downward

By Tony Hawkins in Harare
Published: April 7 2006 03:00 | Last updated: April 7 2006 03:00

The warning by Christopher Dell, US ambassador to Harare, last week that Zimbabwe has "passed the point of no return" and will need substantial international assistance to achieve a recovery, echoes what Zimbabwean businesspeople are saying privately.

Some industrialists say their volumes have fallen by as much as 30 per cent in the first quarter of 2006 - and this after a five-year period in which industrial production has halved nationally. The Zimbabwe Tobacco Association estimates that production of tobacco, once Zimbabwe's chief export, will fall to 50m kilogrammes this year from a peak of more than 230m kgs in 2000.

Although this year's rains have been excellent, a number of quasi-official harvest forecasts suggest that the maize harvest will be no more than 700,000 tonnes, possibly less, against annual consumption of 1.8m tonnes.

In a remarkable climbdown from its previous "We can go it alone" stance, President Robert Mugabe's government has launched a $277m (€185m, £129.7m) appeal for humanitarian assistance. Food supplies worth $111m top the bill followed by requests for assistance for shelter, drugs and agriculture. The appeal estimates that at least 3m people, or a quarter of the population, will need food aid this year, but donor agencies say the figure is closer to 4m.

The business community is reluctant to speak out about Zimbabwe's worsening economic prospects and its political crisis. But privately its members say that there has been a strong fall in output in recent months that is not yet reflected in published statistics.

The business mood has been further soured by the government's threat to nationalise 51 per cent of foreign-owned mining companies. In response, mining groups and the Chamber of Mines, which represents the industry, have warned that the consequences would be "catastrophic" especially as the plan is to take 25 per cent of the companies' shares as "free carry", paying only for the balance of 26 per cent over the next seven years.

Fearing that such a move would put an end to any chances of attracting foreign investment in the industry, the government is seeking a compromise that would give it a 30 per cent stake, most of which it would pay for.

This week the government sought to mollify some of its mining industry critics by doubling the Zimbabwe dollar price it pays for gold - now the country's largest export. While this is tantamount to a 40 per cent devaluation of the official exchange rate (Z$99,200 to the US dollar), it is unlikely to have much impact on parallel market gold sales by small-scale producers, who are able to sell their bullion illegally to the black market at vastly preferable exchange rates.

The gold price move has led to calls from other exporters for similar treatment. They say that the pegging of the exchange rate for the last two months is eroding their profitability at a time when inflation is 782 per cent and forecast to reach 1,100 per cent by mid-year. In a belated effort to curb inflation, the central bank has tightened monetary policy and raised interest rates in recent weeks, but in so doing it has created a potential crisis in the banking sector.

Money market dealers are warning that if the daily "shortage" in the market gets to Z$10 trillion there could be casualties. "If the Reserve Bank goes on like this, you are going to see bank casualties," one dealer warns.

According to the International Monetary Fund, Zimbabwe is likely to run a public sector (budget) deficit of close to 50 per cent of its GDP this year. Financing this, economists say, at a time of sliding output, stagnant exports, increased food imports and maturing short-term offshore loans, will be hugely inflationary.

There are as yet few signs of any change of heart on the part of Mr Mugabe and his top advisers. "They are," says one businessman, "in bunker mode, convinced that someone or something is coming to rescue."

Print Page

Readiness to embrace democracy still a challenge
http://www.thestandard.co.zw

IT is my opinion that we have a very serious crisis in Zimbabwe. And I think its therefore necessary for us to try and determine what has led us to the situation we find ourselves in and hopefully try to see what we can do as individuals as well as collectively to get ourselves out of this crisis.

Over 30 years ago Ian Smith, was asked at a Press conference why he was not conceding to the demands of the nationalists who were then waging a war of liberation when what was then known as qualified or limited franchise was accorded some black people. He answered: "You people from Europe, romanticise the black people. You do not know them; we live with them and we know them better. Democracy as an institution, is foreign to the Africans. It came here with the white people and we are still in the process of educating the blacks on its merits. And it is a process which will take some time.

"What they know, that is the majority of the them, is that a chief is a chief, he does not have to be voted in or out of power. Now it is not good to give these people something they do not understand because it can quite easily be abused by the unscrupulous few at the expense of the vast majority."

He said something to that effect and I recall feeling indignant and coming to the conclusion that Smith was saying that simply as an excuse to justify his desire to cling onto power and protectthe privileged position whites occupied in Rhodesia.

I was convinced his observations were typical of a racist who believed his race superior and blacks inferior. I never tried to examine what he had said objectively.

I guess then and perhaps even today, Smith’s observations only confirmed what we had been telling each other, that he despised black people and therefore was an enemy of the blacks who must be fought.

It never occurred to me that his view deserved a sober assessment to see whether there was any truth in it. He was an enemy and everything an enemy says must be false and by extension everything those who were fighting against Smith said must be true.

It was against that background that I too threw in my lot and joined the swelling ranks of the forces that were fighting against the Smith regime. Little did I know that time would come when I would be forced to recall Smith’s observations and examine them in the light of events unfolding in the Zimbabwe which is claiming to be celebrating its Silver Jubilee "25 years of Independence and Democracy".

To what extent has Smith been proved wrong or correct by Zimbabwe’s experience for the past 26 years. That is the challenge I feel needs to be addressed by all of us in the wake of the MDC split.

In my opinion the split was over the question of democracy. The question was or is:

* To what extent is Morgan Tsvangirai democratic?

* To what extent is the general membership of MDC democratic?

* To what extent are Zimbabweans in general democratic?

That is the essence of issues at the heart of our crisis in Zimbabwe

It is my opinion that the question of whether or not Smith has been proved right or wrong in his observation 30 years ago about Africans not being ready to embrace democracy is still challenging us today just as it did then.

In my opinion, one of the fundamental aspects of a democratic culture is to accept that different views must be given a fair chance to be heard and where it is not clear which view has been embraced by the majority of the people concerned, then the vote is used to ascertain that.

The outcome of that vote must be respected and accepted as the view of the majority whether one likes it or not. The moment one feels that majority vote on any issue to which instrument of the vote has had to be resorted to is against the interests of be it a party or a country or a club is the wrong one and therefore must be rejected or overturned, unless if objections are being raised with regard to the unfairness of the process, one must know that he or she is violating one of the fundamental aspects of democracy.

What does all, this suggest? In my opinion it clearly demonstrates that we have not yet cultivated in our social and political outlook sufficiently high levels of a democratic culture to enable us to immediately sense the danger whenever anyone among us violates one of the fundamental principles of democracy. We still have the feudal mentality of generally being afraid to criticise a leader which mentality autocrats, thrive on.

We have not yet developed a love for justice, fair play and a love for certain ideas to a point where we are prepared to die fighting for ideas. We still ask who has said what and not why he/she has said what has been said and ask even further whether what has been said is not a violation of an idea we hold dear.


David Chikombera

Mutoko