30th May 2008
Dear Friends.
People here in the UK often ask me why Mugabe and Zanu PF continue to hold elections when they have absolutely no intention of abiding by the results. It's a question Zimbabweans ask themselves too. The answer seems to be that Mugabe feels a compulsion to convince the world that he is a democrat despite all the signs to the contrary.
This week alone we have enough evidence to show Africa and the world - if they care to see - that Mugabe and Zanu PF are prepared to use every possible weapon in their considerable armoury to silence dissenting voices. 50 dead MDC activists are testimony to that. A truck full of newspapers critical of his regime is burned to ashes, journalists are arrested and imprisoned, the violence against the opposition continues with increasing ferocity, soldiers openly fire at innocent citizens going about their business at a shopping centre, five elected opposition MP's languish in gaol, churches are invaded by mobs of gun-toting police and a theatre performance is stopped because, say the police, you must have our permission for dramatic performances. If there is no law prohibiting it then the police will simply make one up, that's how it works in Zimbabwe under Zanu PF. The will of the people means nothing to a government that is determined to stay in power at all costs.
It was none other than the First Lady herself who said as much this week at one of the Zanu PF campaign rallies. Speaking to her husband's supporters in Shamva on Thursday she said, ' Even if people vote for MDC Morgan Tsvangirai will never set foot inside State House...Even if Baba loses he will only leave State House for someone inside Zanu PF' Interesting that Grace Mugabe has suddenly become so politically vocal.
It was surely no coincidence either that on the same day, Simba Makoni who came third in the recent poll with 7% of the vote was saying that the situation in Zimbabwe was too violent to hold the so-called run-off on June 29th. 'It bodes ill for a free and fair election' he said. Makoni is calling for a Government of National Unity in which he no doubt hopes for a position, Prime Minister Makoni, perhaps? It is noticeable that Makoni refuses to endorse either Tsvangirai or Mugabe. Waiting for the winner before he declares his allegiance? Once again we see not the will of the Zimbabwean people prevailing, but naked ambition and self-interest.
In their desperation to cling on to power, Zanu PF resort to bribery and downright lies, their contempt for the Zimbabwean people is revealed in their every crazed utterance. Samuel Mumbengwegwi announced on May 28th - one month before the Presidential run-off - that there would be free education, free health care, free social welfare, free bus fares and free maize seed and fertilizer. This at a time when the government itself admits to inflation of 1.7 million %! Mumbengwegwi carefully omits to say how long this period of government magnanimity will last or how it will be paid for or, even more to the point, who the recipients will be. Not anyone voting for the opposition, you can be sure of that. The Herald dutifully reports Mumbengwegwi's remarks and adds that it is all intended 'to cushion its citizens from illegal sanctions-induced hardships.....It is all part of the government's relentless efforts to safeguard its citizens from hunger, poverty and disease.'
Not content with blaming the MDC for the violence, Zanu PF apologists blame the 'British Backed' opposition for sanctions and the collapse of the economy. With mind-boggling hypocrisy, Mugabe declares 'We want to warn the MDC that they should stop immediately this barbaric campaign of burning and destroying people's homes.' Just one glance at the gang of Zanu thugs who accompanied Mugabe to the Shamva rally is enough to show any sane observer who are the real perpetrators of the barbarous attacks. It seems Mr Mugabe has lost touch with reality; he lives in his own world and believes his own propaganda.
The Bright One, none other than the Deputy Minister for (mis) Information goes one better. He blames the MDC for the xenophobic attacks in South Africa too. 'I am talking from an informed position,' he claims, ' the MDC is recruiting thugs to target Zimbabweans to force them to return home and vote for Morgan Tsvangirai.' So now we know; the Third Force that Mbeki is always blaming for the attacks is none other than the MDC! If that's the case then we can neatly pin the blame on the UK and the US who, according to Mugabe are funding the opposition. That all fits in very nicely with the anti-imperialist rhetoric so beloved of Mbeki and Mugabe but it does nothing to allay the suffering of the ordinary people in either country. Constant talk of imperialist plots to undermine 'his' revolution does not fill empty stomachs or give the Zimbabwean people the change they voted for a month ago. Whether these are the death throes of the old regime or the birth pangs of a new order is the question no one can answer.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle. PH.
24th May 2008
Dear Friends.
During the Middle Ages in Europe there was an outbreak of an unknown infection which became known as the Black Death. It was so called because the sufferers developed horrible boils in the armpit and groin. These boils turned black, hence the name Black Death. If the patient was lucky he/she died within twenty-four hours; if not the sufferer would linger for a week in dreadful agony.
The authorities had to find an explanation for this catastrophe which was killing thousands of citizens from all classes of society. There had to be someone to blame. So the authorities tapped into popular prejudice and blamed the Jews even though the Jews themselves were dying in their thousands. The Pope in Rome, not known for his defence of Jewry, pointed out this anomaly; why would the Jews kill their own people was the Pope's question. There was of course no answer; when propaganda enters through the front door, truth and logic leave by the back.
We had a vivid reminder of this truth in Zimbabwe this week as Mugabe and his coterie of cerebrally challenged ministers sought to provide an explanation for the horrendous violence that has gripped the country. They have to find someone to blame. They can no longer deny that it is happening since the First Lady herself and the Lady Vice-President visit the victims and distribute largesse. Such rank hypocrisy defies all belief but it was left to Nathan Shamuyarira to follow up on the claim Mugabe himself had already made that it was the MDC behind all the violence.
' MDC-T are the ones who have been unleashing the violence on our members,' Shamuyarira claimed, 'so it's not true that Zanu PF is clamping down on opposition members.' Setting aside the question of who exactly is the opposition since Zanu PF lost the elections, Shamuyarira blithely ignores the fact that it is MDC members who are the victims of violence. The question to ask is why would the MDC punish its own supporters? The answer according to Zanu PF's twisted rhetoric would be 'to make Zanu PF look bad' - the same reason white farmers wrecked their own properties, no doubt. When propaganda enters through the front door, truth and logic leave by the back.
The South African Mail and Guardian carried an interview with a Green Bomber this week which shed further light on ZanuPF 'thinking'.The lad had been through the so-called Youth Training Programme, designed we are told to instil patriotism and a knowledge of history. The reporter asked the young man if he was willing to maim and kill to instil patriotism. His answer illustrates perfectly the blind allegiance to outdated 'Liberation credentials' that are driving the vicious onslaught against the forces of democracy. ' Do you think we would have won (the liberation war) if the comrades were soft with people who refused to support the struggle?' adding, 'We never kill. I've attacked only those who attacked me'.
And for this he is paid 1 billion Zim dollars a day and his mother comments that she is just happy he has a job…but unsurprisingly she doesn't want to know what he does to earn his money. The total of slaughtered MDC people has reached 48 and still the regime claims it is MDC spearheading the violence. Yesterday the decomposing body of a young MDC activist was found with his tongue torn out and his lips cut off. In a village I know well a six months pregnant woman was beaten to death, so badly beaten that she was unrecognisable and in Murehwa an MDC official was abducted in broad daylight by known state agents who inflicted a savage beating and then threw him into the back of a truck. He has still not been found. Witnesses saw the incident and recorded the vehicle's registration number. One way or another, these killers will pay the price for their inhumanity.
And meanwhile Zimbabweans in South Africa are in the forefront of horrific attacks on immigrants. Three million people have fled across the border from the economic and political collapse in Mugabe's Zimbabwe. (Inflation has this week surpassed1 million percent) The undeniable truth is that those three million people would never have been forced to flee their homeland if Thabo Mbeki had acted decisively to bring his influence to bear on Mugabe. Instead, Mbeki has protected him from all attempts by the international community to restore order in Zimbabwe and prevent the economic collapse that has driven four million Zimbabweans to seek refuge all over the world. In his blind support for Mugabe's Liberation credentials Thabo Mbeki has betrayed the people of Zimbabwe; he too has the blood of innocent Africans on his hands. His brother, Moeletsi Mbeki, interviewed on Channel Four this week spelled it out. The current wave of violence in South Africa was inevitable, he said. We have warned him repeatedly. 'It was bound to happen'.
It remains to be seen whether these terrified victims of violence in South Africa will return to the motherland to face the Green Bombers and other merchants of death over the border. It is an agonising decision. Like Morgan Tsvangirai himself as he returns tomorrow, thousands of ordinary Zimbabweans face a very uncertain future. No need to look elsewhere for the cause of Zimbabwe's suffering. Zimbabweans know exactly where the blame lies. Robert Mugabe - with more than a little help from his friend Thabo Mbeki - is the source of the infection that is killing our people.
Yours in the continuing) struggle. PH
16th May 2008
Dear Friends.
It seems that the world's media has largely taken its collective eye off the situation in Zimbabwe. No one can deny that the natural disasters that have hit Burma and China are catastrophic in terms of human tragedy and massive loss of life but that hardly explains why there has been so little coverage of the politically inspired tornado of violence that is sweeping across Zimbabwe. The excuse, regularly trotted out by the BBC and other broadcasters, that they are not allowed to broadcast from Zimbabwe simply does not stand up to scrutiny. Neither are foreign journalists exactly encouraged to operate in Burma but that has not stopped them from getting film footage and reports out on a daily even hourly basis. The whole world has seen and heard what is happening in Burma and China. In the chaos that follows natural upheavals; the pictures speak for themselves. Words are not even needed as we watch images of devastated cities and collapsed school buildings burying hundreds of school children and their teachers, of people living out in the open without fresh water or food, with no electricity and no shelter.
Without the excuse of a natural disaster the Zimbabwean government has unleashed the dogs of war on its own people. Added to the physical misery caused by a collapsing economy: little food, no clean water, no power and
constant shortages of cash, the Zimbabwean government has, since it lost the March elections, introduced another element in Zimbabwe's relentless decline: sheer, naked terror. 'Political re-education' is how it's described by Mugabe's thugs as they systematically beat, rape, mutilate and murder their own people. And the world's media for the most part remains silent. People in the know tell me that there is a whole lot of talking going on behind the scenes to resolve the crisis, that now is not the time to give way to despair but from where I am the situation looks unbearably bleak. Daily I read of schools and villages that I know well where teachers, many of whom I helped to train, and even children have been hideously beaten and burned out of their homes. One teacher commented the other day that kids whom he had himself taught a few years ago were now part of the dreaded Youth Militia that is inflicting hideous punishment on anyone who 'voted the wrong way' What is happening in Zimbabwe is a low-grade civil war and while the world looks the other way a cruel and vindictive regime kills and tortures its own people. But it is more than vindictive, it is a calculated attempt to rig the result of the runoff; by driving people out of their homes and making it impossible for them to vote in their own wards, they are denied the chance to confirm what they have already told Mugabe: 'It's time to go. We no longer want you or your rotten government.'
There has been much discussion in the press here this week about what the international community can do when Burma refuses to allow foreign aid into the country. The convention is that the world cannot intervene in countries like Burma - or Zimbabwe - without the request of the government in power. Robert Mugabe is of course well aware of this, hence his constantly repeated claim that Zimbabwe is a sovereign nation. Thabo Mbeki reinforces Mugabe's view. It is up to Zimbabweans to solve their own problems, he says and blocks any discussion of the Zimbabwean situation at the UN. while blandly announcing that there is no crisis in the
country and it does not constitute a threat to world or regional peace. In 2006 the UN Security Council imposed a responsibility on the international community ' to protect people whose governments failed to do so'. Can anyone deny that Robert Mugabe's government falls into that category? Not only does it not protect the people, it actively seeks to eradicate all dissenting voices through violence and starvation. Mugabe could stop the violence right now if he wanted to but he will not; he has degrees in violence, remember. There is overwhelming evidence that he has personally ordered the purge of the opposition supporters using his hated CIO, so-called war veterans, Youth Militia and police all under the control of army officers loyal to the regime.
Despite the almost complete absence of media coverage in the world's press, an incident occurred this last week which may signal hope for Zimbabwe. The US Ambassador and several chiefs of missions including the UK. the EU and Japan together with officials from the Netherlands and Tanzania drove out from Harare in a convoy of vehicles, presumably clearly marked with their CD number plates, to the rural areas to see for themselves the evidence of organized violence. At a roadblock they were stopped and asked by a security agent what they had been doing. 'Looking at people who have been beaten' replied an American official to which a security agent shamelessly retorted 'We are going to beat you thoroughly too' Undeterred, Ambassador McGee snapped away with his camera as the agents tried to hide their faces and afterwards the outspoken American commented, 'We are eager to continue this type of thing, to show the world what is happening here in Zimbabwe. It is absolutely urgent that the entire world sees what is going on. The violence has to stop.'
Without the help of brave local and foreign journalists – like Peter Osborne in yesterday's Daily Mail and Jan Raath in The Times - prepared to risk imprisonment and even death the world will never see the real horror that is happening in Zimbabwe today. With the announcement of the date for the presidential runoff that becomes even more urgent; Zimbabwe needs witnesses now.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle. PH.
9th May 2008
Dear Friends.
The sixteenth century Venetian philosopher Nicolo Machiavelli may seem an inappropriate reference when discussing a present day African dicatator but much of what Machiavelli wrote in The Prince seems entirely applicable to what Robert Mugabe is doing to fill the dreadful hiatus since he lost the election. Machiavelli's work is a guide book on what the Prince or Ruler must do to gain and retain power. Machiavelli advocates the use of force, though never excessive or prolonged, as a justifiable means to an end and that end is to stay in power. I have heard that Mugabe is not unfamiliar with this work; maybe it is bedtime reading for him but whatever the source of his idealogy, whether it is Marxist political philosophy or simply the ravings of a half-mad meglomaniac he certainly seems to be following the Machiavellian dictum that to rule, 'It is better to be both feared and loved but if you can't be both it is better to be feared'
Having lost the love of his people, Mugabe has gone for the Machiavellian option: fear; for Mugabe the means justify the end. And the end is to stay in power at all costs. The violent onslaught on opposition supporters that we are seeing all over the country is being directed from the highest level and with the compliance of the Zimbabwe Republic Police who for the most part do nothing to stop this further descent into barbarous anarchy. The evidence is now so visible and widespread that even Zanu PF loyalists can no longer deny it but they can and do attempt to justify it. Speaking this last week, Didymus Mutasa said that the violence only occurs when the loyal Zanu party activists are provoked. 'They are being beaten ( the people who voted the wrong way) because they are provoking people. People don't cease to be human because of an election. They still get irritated by an act of provocation and beat they will if they are angry'!
Such one-sided and nonsensical statements have become the norm as government officials seek to defend the indefensible. Images of tiny children, their eyes huge with fear, their faces swollen, their mothers beaten, sometimes raped by men who have surrendered their own humanity in a desperate attempt to keep one man in power defies all belief. For anyone who lived through the violence of the Third Chimurenga as Mugabe called the farm invasions when they began eight years ago, it is all horribly familiar. The same ludicrous excuses were used then by the ruling party propagandists. The white farmers in Chinoyi were alleged to have deliberately trashed their own properties and caused mayhem to bring shame on the country's international image. This week the government made the claim again; it is the MDC which has carried out all the political violence in order to tarnish Mugabe's name the argument goes. With complete disregard for common sense or truth the propagandists trot out the same tired old nonsense - and no one believes a word of it.
Bright Matonga is the new 'government spokesman' it seems. Every word he utters is regarded by naïve and often not very well-informed foreign journalists as being the official voice of the Zanu PF government. He certainly makes the right kind of idiotic utterances. The Bright One is actually only the Deputy Minister of Information so one is justified in asking: Where is the Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu himself and why is he not the one doing all the talking to the world's press on behalf of the government? Dig a little deeper and you will discover that Matongo's rapid advancement is one consequence of the internal battles going on within the ruling party. Matongo is Mnangagwa's man and Emmerson Mnangagwa is once again Mugabe's choice for successor in State House. Ndlovu has been side-lined; perhaps because he was not a loud enough praise singer for Mugabe?
The trouble for dictators who surround themselves with praise singers and parasites is that they can never be sure that such men have the intelligence to argue the case convincingly before a sceptical world press. After all it does not take very much intelligence to parrot every word the master says including all the hateful racist rhetoric. Despite the fact that Matonga himself has a British wife he spent twenty minutes of an interview with South African Radio 702 this week ranting and sneering at white farmers who he said had rushed back into the country when they heard the MDC had won to 'invade' their former farms. When asked by the interviewer for evidence of this return of white farmers he was of course unable to give any but continued to rant and rail about the inhumanity of the white farmers and how little they had paid their workers and how racist and greedy they were. Not true Zimbabweans at all, said Matongo. The implication being of course that if they were they would support the ruling party!
The President (?) of the CFU was also on the programme but he very soon gave up the struggle to argue with the man. There was no chance of logical argument with this rabid apologist for the ruling party. Logic and common sense were just not in his vocabulary; all he could do was to drone on and on about the evils of the past and the racism of the white people apparently unaware that his own racism was showing very clearly. 'But two wrong don't make a right' observed the interviewer - herself an African by the way - and how can you defend the violence now taking place on the farms'? And in one leap that surpassed logic or morality Matongo answered that the war vets were angry because the so-called returning whites were trying to take away 'their' land. And, he added the war-vets' anger was so great that the government simply cannot stop them!
By that time tears were not far away but whether it was hysteria or sorrow or anger, I cannot say. It was a phone-in programme and the contempt in the people's voices was obvious as one after another they unpicked the Bright One's nonsensical rubbish. There was, however one more gem for the listener to marvel at. Right at the end of the programme Matongo was asked a direct question, 'Are you a racist?' 'I am not' he replied 'I just speak my mind.' Well, so did the apologists for apartheid as they defended their hated philosophy of racial separation or the Nazis as they propagated their concept of racial purity. They all 'spoke their mind' but that didn't make them any less racist. In Zimbabwe, 'Speaking your mind' is a privilege confined to the ruling party; while lawyers and journalists, trade unionists and students are arrested for seeking and speaking the truth men of Bright Matonga's calibre are permitted to speak any racist rubbish that is in their minds.
And all to keep one man in power.
Yours in the (continuing) stuggle. PH
2nd May 2008
Dear Friends.
Zimbabwe's extended electoral process has become a laughing stock. Tune in to any comedy programme in the UK and you'll hear at least one gag about the Zimbabwe elections. An English friend asked me the other day, 'What exactly is going on in Zimbabwe?' The confusion is easy to understand and the conflicting messages coming from the regime's supporters simply add to the confusion. This last week we saw Boniface Chidyasiku, the Zimbabwean ambassador to the UN telling the BBC that whoever is ultimately declared the winner in the presidential poll, 'There is no way anybody can do without the other'. Two days later it was Simba Makoni on ITV saying that Robert Mugabe wanted what was best for the Zimbabwean people! That was a government of national unity, Makoni maintained. The footage of burning houses and brutalised villagers accompanying Makoni's interview was perhaps unintended irony but it served to show that Robert Mugabe's view of what was 'good for the people' means what is good for him. Estimates put the number of dead at twenty with hundreds of innocent men women and children caught up in the violence in the rural areas as gangs of violent Zanu PF fanatics terrorise anyone who 'voted the wrong way'. As always teachers in the rural schools are in the frontline; the government has always used them as polling officers and this time they are accused of rigging the elections in favour of the opposition. Only yesterday the ZCTU announced that two teachers had been beaten to death in Guruve district. No surprise then that when schools reopened on Tuesday last there were very few teachers and, I suspect, very few children. A friend phoned from home last week to tell me that school fees for his three primary schools children had gone up to over a billion per child per term. And that was for day school children! With 10 kgs of mealie meal costing 300million, two litres of cooking oil at 700 million and a simple bar of washing soap at 180 million ( figures from this week's Zimbabwe Independent) it is hard to understand how Simba Makoni can claim that Mugabe 'wants what is best for the people'
Regardless of truth or logic the Zimbabwean propaganda machine rolls on. The Bright One, Zimbabwe's very own Comical Ali, Bright Matonga, this week claimed that
' we are also sure that the larger international community are getting to understand that our main problems are with the British. They are behind all these moves against us but we will stand our ground.' Well, Zimbabweans are used to that sort of meaningless rubbish, that's nothing new but in the current climate of fear and uncertainty caused by the long delayed election results, people could be forgiven for wanting solutions to at least some of their problems. Is a government of national unity the answer; the UN Ambassador seemed to think so; Simba Makoni added his voice but the Bright One declared on 29.04.08 before this ongoing farcical Verification process that 'there is going to be a runoff. We have got our own results (!)' he said and added ' if there is to be a government of national unity it cannot be with Morgan Tsvangirai because he is a sellout. He is an agent of the British. We can never deal with people who are not principled.'
That word, principle' has been thrown around quite a bit this week by Mugabe loyalists. The Chief of Police Augustine Chihuri used it in a letter he wrote to Tendai Biti, the Secretary general of the MDC.' ' As a matter of principle' Chihuri said he was bound to arrest Biti for revealing the election results before the official announcement by ZEC. Whether the letter was ever sent or received by Tendai Biti is unclear but the claim of 'principles' coming from a man who has demonstrated his total lack of any moral integrity over the past ten years is laughable – if it were not so tragic for the people of Zimbabwe. Augustine Chihuri is personally responsible for the breakdown of law and order in the country. In his blind, fanatical support for Robert Mugabe, he has used what was once a body of principled law enforcers to become no more than a partisan force for the ruling party. Even now as I write police officers are complicit in the ongoing violence against the population and I do not exclude the remaining white farmers who are still suffering violent onslaughts by so-called war veterans while the police decline to be involved in any matter they deem to be 'political'. The mere fact that a man or woman wears the uniform of the ZRP does not make them a policeman. As long ago as late 2004 we all knew in UMP that the so-called cops at the road-blocks were war vets; even then loyalty to Mugabe and the ruling party was the criteria for Chihuri's police. Just the other day a known killer was promoted to Assistant Commissioner and yet Chihuri talks of 'principles'!
I am writing this on the day after local elections here in the UK. The results are already known and accepted by the losers, no need for 'Verification'. But in Zimbabwe it seems the Zanu PF government of Robert Mugabe will hold a runoff. They concede that Morgan Tsvangirai is the winner but, surprise surprise, not by a big enough margin to avoid a runoff. Another month of violent intimidation by the ruling party thugs, another month of uncertainty and fear for ordinary Zimbabweans.
A cartoon in today's UK Independent shows a rabid Mugabe declaiming, 'I categorically deny any sort of vote rigging'…and holding up bunches of ballot papers in both hands he declares... 'I AM the Mayor of London'. Anything's possible with Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF!
Meanwhile, the MDC is faced with one of the most difficult decision in its short history : should they contest the runoff? It's going to take courage and clear thinking to make that decision but first the MDC leaders must go home, they must be there in Zimbabwe to hear what the beaten and bloodied Zimbabwean people have to say. Anything less is a betrayal of the one and a quarter million people who so courageously voted for change. Maybe now is the time to prove to Zimbabwe and the world once and for all that Robert Mugabe and all he stands for is history? One point is crystal clear: if the MDC does participate in a runoff, they must insist as a precondition that international observers go in right now before anymore people are beaten and tortured to death.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle. PH
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