Inside Mugabe's new horror...

LINK

....

The destruction of the homes, part of a clean-up campaign called "Operation Drive Out Filth", has displaced more than a million people.

They have been moved to strictly controlled transit camps with few facilities. Others have simply set up homes on roadsides and river banks.

Actually, few are in the camps...

There are fears of disease epidemics in the camps and the informal settlements....

Even good camps have problems with disease...and the "camps" were not set up prior to the "slum clearance", so one doubts they have hot and cold running water, latrines, and clean food kitchens...

With political bickering and local red tape hindering relief efforts, the plight of the displaced people is set to worsen.

The humanitarian disaster comes at a time when all Zimbabweans are suffering. A six-year economic recession has been marked by commodity shortages, rampant inflation and rising unemployment.

At least 200 000 shantytown homes have been destroyed, leaving a million people homeless, according to human rights groups. More than 40 000 people have been arrested.

However, the Zimbabwe government says the number of people made homeless is only 120 000....

Oh, ONLY 120,000 people homeless.

Speaking at the Vatican, Ncube alleged that Zimbabwe's government planned to drive disaffected urban voters back to the famine-hit countryside for political re-education, as the Pol Pot regime did in Cambodia in the 1970s, Reuters reports.

Ncube accused African leaders of standing idly by.

Note to archbishop: They aren't idly standing by. They are preventing western governments from "interfering"....

Ministers of the G8 rich nations called on Zimbabwe to "abide by the rule of law and respect human rights" at a meeting in London.

Yup. Abide by rule of law, or we will send you a letter saying we are wery wery angwy....

The Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, an international human rights organisation, said the destruction of homes was a crime against humanity.

South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki said he had discussed the matter on Friday with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who had appointed a special envoy to investigate. The envoy would prepare a report "and then we'll act on that", the President said.

You are cold, hungry, homeless, and no food? It's okay...in six months we will write up a report saying Mugabe was a bad boy...

Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said yesterday that South Africa was not ignoring events in Zimbabwe, but was at a loss as to what to do.....

HINT to South Africa...Remember a fellow named Idi Amin? The Tanzanian army threw him out...after he killed half a million of his own people....

Yes, I know: Unprovoked war is a no-no. You have to wait for a million people to die of starvation and disease, then the UN will send a letter saying they are angry...

On the other hand, despite all the talk of Mugabe's "war hardened" army, remember, I suspect they have never fought a professional soldier...only "soldiers" who were used to terrorizing civilians...

Think of it this way, bubbah: It might be cheaper to send in a some "peacekeepers" now than to have a half million sick and starving refugees at Beitbridge...

And then came...

CHOLERA

Rural famine

The Hatfield krystalnacht cleanup has gotten the most publicity, but newspapers are now noticing the problem in the rural areas...which are "known" but not reported because no reporters are allowed in rural areas, and the mail/email are censored...
LINK

Brunapeg is typical of the drought-ravaged areas into which Mr Mugabe is driving the urban poor. The hospital and school rise out of the low scrub, the only buildings of any kind for miles around. Rusting petrol pumps stand idle at the filling station, there hasn't been a fuel delivery in Brunapeg for years.

"Now that people are being forced to come out here what's here for them? Nothing," says the Spanish doctor.

"There are so many people here who have never been into town. The only thing they know is to eat and to survive and now they can't even do that."

With the rural famine gaining lethal momentum, the gap between the political rhetoric of Mr Mugabe, in the capital, Harare, and the situation on the ground has reached surreal proportions....

The state now exercises total control over media and movement inside Zimbabwe. The last two dissenting voices, SW Radio Africa and the Daily News, have been forced to close. A recent headline in The Chronicle, a government mouthpiece, told its readers that Britain was following Zimbabwe's lead and demolishing up to 400,000 homes in a similar clean-up campaign.....

And then there is this report:
LINK
Army grabs five tonnes of staple maize-meal
Tue 28 June 2005




KAROI – Residents of this small farming town about 210 kilometres north-west of Harare were at the weekend left without maize-meal after soldiers of the army's 23 Infantry Battalion grabbed five tonnes of the staple meant for distribution in the town.

The maize-meal, a staple for more than 90 percent of Zimbabweans but in short supply in the country, had been delivered at the Karoi depot of the state-run Grain Marketing Board (GMB) and was the week’s allocation for the town.

But local retailers, who were at the depot to collect supplies for resell to residents, were left dumbfounded as a huge army truck pulled up at the depot and GMB managers ordered workers to load all the maize onto the truck.

"The allocation was meant for the town but we were told to load all the maize-meal onto the army truck much to our surprise," said a worker at the depot, who did not want to be named for fear of victimisation.

The maize was taken to Magunje barracks, 35 km west of Karoi.

It's all Bush's fault.

Well, according to the Beeb, who blames Bush for all climate change since 10,000 BC (when global warming destroyed the 200 foot glaciers that used to cover my old home in Minnesota)...
So now the cause of the starvation in Zimbabwe is.....(TA DA) BUSH.

LINK

or maybe it's Tony Blair... (hmm...thought he signed Kyoto)....

The Herald said climate change has been artificially induced "in a bid to arm-twist the region to capitulate to the whims of the world's superpowers".

It said weather was being manipulated for political gain using unspecified "unconventional" chemical weapons.

It is widely seen as a mouthpiece for President Robert Mugabe's government, correspondents say.

It said recent droughts, which defied predictions by the Zimbabwean government and the Southern African Development Community's Drought Monitoring Centre, pointed to the possibility of the weather being manipulated for political purposes.

Guess Mugabe doesn't listen to Art Bell (the conspiracy radio show in the USA)...doesn't he know it's due to HAARP?

But then, what about the severe famine in the 1950's? Or in the 1960's? Or in the 1970's? Or in the 1990's?
Ah, but for those droughts we had a government willing to import food...

The dirty little secret is that Zimbabwe is a dry country with periodic famines...sort of like Kansas...ah, but in Kansas they irrigate...and if they irrigate in Zimbabwe, they'd have two harvests a year...

cricket more important than civil rights

LINK
New Zealand's cricket team will play Zimbabwe...can't have public pressure stop the games...

Zimbabwe Cricket yesterday continued to insist the tour should go ahead.

Chairman Peter Chingoka told Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon programme all cricketing countries had obligations to ensure tours went ahead. He said the ICC had not stepped in to stop other tours.

Mr Chingoka refused to answer questions about the human rights abuses in Zimbabwe and the bulldozing of homes which has left more than 200,000 homeless.

Hey: I have a great idea...why don't the players leave their hotel and visit Sister Patricia's now destroyed HIV clinic, and give her a BIG CHECK....naah...can't have politics in the game...

He said he was a cricket administrator, not an expert on such things.

UN envoy fails to halt bulldozer

Unlike Rachel Corey, the martyr who lost her life standing in front of an Israeli bulldozer trying to flatten the home of a Palestinian suicide bomber, the UN envoy plans to visit the sites and later issue a report on the devestation...and if we are lucky, after discussing things for a couple of months, maybe, just maybe, the UN will issue a letter saying they are wery wery angwy...
LINK
UN envoy fails to halt bulldozer assault on Zimbabwe's poorest
From Jan Raath in Harare

THE arrival in Zimbabwe of a United Nations special envoy to investigate the State’s demolition of the “illegal” homes of up to a million people did little to interrupt President Mugabe’s bulldozers.

Around the time that Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, the executive director of Habitat, the UN’s agency for shelter, landed in Harare on Sunday, government machines were wrecking the home of Goodrich Chimbaira, the MP of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, in a large township constituency just south of the capital.

Charity officials reported that riot police, crews of demolition workers and bulldozers were active in other parts of Harare, as the operation entered its sixth week.

Mrs Tibaijuka said that the UN wanted to “see the impact of the operation called Murambatsvina (clear out the rubbish) and how we can assist the affected”.

Mr Mugabe, more in the habit of telling international figures to “go to hell”, welcomed Mrs Tibaijuka, asserting that he wanted the UN “to understand and appreciate what we are trying to do for our people, who deserve much better than the shacks that are now being romanticised as fitting habitats for them”.

He says that the campaign is to clear slums that have become havens for criminals. Witnesses say that the operation was launched with almost no warning and no provision of shelter or sustenance, and has forced tens of thousands to sleep out in the open in midwinter.

Mrs Tibaijuka’s visit has assumed critical international importance. Tony Blair said yesterday that he hoped her report on the crisis in Zimbabwe would be strong enough to bring the issue to the UN Security Council to censure Mr Mugabe formally.

Brits will continue to deport asylum seekers

LINK
Those fleeing Zimbabwe to the UK will have to have hearings to let them stay...
if they aren't in danger, they will be sent back.

And a new source, Science Daily, reports how HIV and starvation cause 4000 deaths a day in that country.
LINK

The Independent reported the figure Monday, as U.N. Special Envoy Anna Tibaijuka of Tanzania arrived in Zimbabwe late Sunday to assess the quality of life. However, the newspaper said her government-orchestrated tour will not take her to the famine-stricken countryside, where Spanish physician Pedro Porrino said most people he sees have AIDS, but die of starvation first.

"Ninety percent of the people I see are HIV-infected," said Porrino. "I am seeing men of 25 and 35 weighing 45 kilograms (100 pounds) and it's because they have AIDS but it's also because they don't eat at all."

And now for the good news...Mugabe finally agreed to let NGO's help those devastated by his "cleanup"...
LINK
BULAWAYO, 27 June (IRIN) - The Zimbabwean government has agreed to allow aid groups to offer humanitarian assistance to the hundreds of thousands of people being displaced in its controversial urban clean-up drive.

Authorities previously said the government had ample resources to cater to the needs of evicted families, but Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo has now announced that the government had resolved to allow donors to provide assistance, mainly in the capital, Harare, and Zimbabwe's second city, Bulawayo. However, Chombo stressed that the NGOs would have to adhere to certain regulations. "Anyone with genuine intent and concern is allowed to assist, but there are rules to be followed....

we made the mess, but you have to ask pretty please with sugar on it to help us clean the mess up...and follow our rules ....the people were displaced from poor but adequate shelters, and now have nothing, and so the government is starting to build camps for them...three weeks later...

NGOs confirmed reaching an agreement with the government to provide food, blankets, medicines and sanitation facilities in the camps.......

UNICEF has established access to most 'clean-up' sites across the country and, in cooperation with various government ministries and a range of NGOs, has been distributing aid to affected women and children. "There is a lot of work we are doing throughout the country that includes disbursing blankets, putting up sanitary facilities, [providing] sleeping tents and [addressing the needs] of children," Elder said. UNICEF has appealed for more than $2.7 million to continue its existing activities, as well as to expand healthcare, deliver urgently needed non-food items, provide HIV prevention and care, and place social workers in key areas of the country as it steps up support to the thousands of children evicted from their homes.

"Many children are now without shelter during winter, others have been separated from their parents and caregivers, schooling has been widely disrupted, access to water is difficult, and respiratory infections and diarrhoeal diseases are a real threat," said Dr. Festo Kavishe, UNICEF's representative in Zimbabwe.

A government official, Ephraim Masawi, told state radio on Thursday that more holding camps would be set up across the country and a brigade of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) had been formed to begin constructing houses for displaced families.

According to the police, families would only be accommodated in the holding camps for a month while they either searched for proper accommodation in the townships or returned to their rural homes.

Ah yes, "returned to their rural homes"...where there is no food due to drought...but where reporters won't be able to see them die of famine related diseases....

Videoblogging

Gateway Pundit has photos and videos of operation throw your enemies out with the trash...
LINK
(headsup from Instapundit)

Naah....no democide here, move along...

NORMBLOG
covers an interview with Archbishop Ncube

[Jon Snow suggests that comparison with Pol Pot is 'pretty extreme'.] It's not extreme. I mean here is a man who is not giving any warning to people, pushing them out, something like one and a half million people. This is extremely cruel, very much like Pol Pot, and this will lead to people starving. People are already starving in the country because Mugabe didn't call for aid, at least not in time, and he's politicizing food in certain areas. So now these people are being forced to go to the country where there's nothing. The rain didn't come down... So, what will happen to these people? They're going to starve...

African Union: Mugabe only helping his people

LINK

The African Union rallied to an African leader, saying it would not intervene in a Zimbabwean campaign of evictions and arrests that has been described as cruelly anti-poor because Robert Mugabe might be trying to help his people in the long term.

"I do not think it is proper for the AU Commission to start running the internal affairs of members states," Desmond Orjiako, spokesman for the 53-member union, said Friday.

Ah, who is my brother's keeper?

He acknowledged: "It is painful that the poor people in Zimbabwe are being displaced."

"But if it is in the interests to prevent crime, or improve sanitation or ensure the health of the people or ensure Harare does not turn into a slum, I do not see how the AU should take over the internal legislation for action the government says they have taken to improve the livelihoods of their people," Orjiako said.

But bubba, it's not merely the displacement, which in other countries is carried out SLOWLY after a court has okayed it and plans made for those displaced. As the earlier posted Christian Science Monitor editorial pointed out, they are throwing out people so they will resettle in rural areas...and that those rural areas are in the midst of a famine, but Mugabe also has refused food aid until a few weeks ago, even though I knew that there would be a bad harvest last January...so they will be in isolated villages with no food, and of course reporters won't be allowed there to report what is happening...

...... The opposition, which has its support base among the urban poor, says the campaign is aimed at punishing those who voted against Mugabe's party in recent parliamentary elections.

Zimbabwean clerics, lawyers and human rights groups have condemned Operation Murambatsvina. They have been joined by international human rights groups and Western leaders.

African leaders, though, have been largely silent about the actions of a fellow African. South Africa, the regional heavyweight to whom many are looking for leadership on Zimbabwe, has pursued what it calls a policy of "quiet diplomacy," arguing it would be counterproductive to push Mugabe too hard or cut off discussion with him....

Translation: they will send a letter saying they are wery wery angwy...

BBC ignoring a million deaths.

The BEEB has an article on Mozambique celebrating independence.

LINK

It starts with the story of the EVIL PORTUGUESE COLONIALISTS
and goes on to say that Mozambique was at the forefront of the war against apartheid, another colonialist bogeyman.

But then, in the middle of the article, to be missed if you read too quickly, is the line:
a frontline state in the anti-apartheid struggle with neighbouring South Africa, spawning a civil war that claimed more than a million lives

Translation:
There was a war against the communist government that was mainly tribal, and South Africa helped the non communist side.
Like Angola, where Cubans backed the communist government and protected the oil companies, and South Africa backed the non communist majority tribe, this is rewriting history.

When both sides are distasteful, the people suffer. But acknowledging the evils of apartheid does not mean you have to ignore the evils of communist social engineering, or the evils of tyrants of one tribe ignoring and killing those belonging to another tribe...

"There were no rains in 1972/73. In 1983 we saw people dying, it happened again in 1991/92 and in fact it happens every 10 years.

Oh, you mean there were deaths in the 1990's also? Oh well, instead of blaming pro apartheid SA we will blame Bush for Global warming, or blame globaliztion...of course, if you start irrigation and proper crops, you could export food, but that's not politically correct, I guess...

Slum clearance: NOT

BBC states that other countries won't condemn Hatfield because they had similar slum clearances..
LINK
Heck, we have similar clearances of squatters in the Philippines. I don't know why these other African countries cleared the squatters but in the Philippines, when this is done (often when there is a fire, often accidental but sometimes deliberate, that burns the bamboo and cardboard shacks), the government, families, churches and neighbors helps those displaced.
The big difference in Zimbabwe is that there is no govenment help. The "slums" include concrete houses and clinics, not cardboard shacks.
Secondly, In the Philippines, if someone builds a HOUSE on your land, you have to go to court and throw him out...and only from one plot, not an entire neighborhood. This is called "rule of law"..
Third, unlike those other African countries, those displaced were not being shipped to rural areas that are in the midst of a major famine.
So one suspects it is an ethnic cleansing of political enemies, not slum clearance.

200 groups ask Zim to stop

LINK

Johannesburg - Over 200 African and human rights groups called on the African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN) on Thursday to take immediate action to stop mass evictions in Zimbabwe.

"We urge all member states of the AU and UN to ensure the relevant bodies of the two organisations take immediate and effective action — consistent with their mandate — to ensure an end to the mass forced evictions and destruction of livelihoods in Zimbabwe, including by publicly condemning these violations and calling for their immediate end," a joint statement read.

And how do they take immediate and effective action?

They urged AU chairperson and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo to put the matter on the agenda of the upcoming AU assembly scheduled for Libya in July.

Oh, we'll talk about the problem next month

The group also called for the Zimbabwean government to make sure people rendered homeless had immediate access to emergency relief.

"No human being deserves to be treated in this degrading manner, especially by their own government," said Arnold Tsunga of Zimbabwe's Lawyers for Human Rights.

Government supposed to provide accommodation

Reporters at a Johannesburg press conference were shown footage of buildings being clawed at by excavation equipment, the smouldering ruins of a once-thriving market and families sleeping in the rubble of their homes in the winter cold.

Jean Du Plessis from the centre of housing rights and evictions said it was against international law to evict people without first arranging alternative accommodation.

Ah, reminds me of the Philippines....lots of laws, but enforcement is spotty, and often you can bribe the cops......

Anna Tibaijuka, the Tanzanian head of UN agency Habit, who has been despatched to Zimbabwe by UN head Kofi Annan to assess the situation, said homes for HIV positive orphans were destroyed with less than 24 hours' notice and urgent court applications to prevent this were unsuccessful.

The Zimbabwe solidarity and consultative fForum reiterated its call on South Africa's weapons company Armscor not to supply the Zimbabwe government with any equipment.

Of course, If they actually enforce the law against SAfrica supplying arms, undoubtably the company will find a way to sell thru a third country...no big deal..

South Africa asked to step in

Hassen Lorgat called on the South African government to take action.

"We want our own government to speak out. Silent diplomacy clearly is resulting in deaths," he said.

South African news broadcasters came under the spotlight when asked how the film footage was obtained in the light of strict media laws in Zimbabwe that have limited journalists' accreditation.

The SA press is probalby in bigger trouble than Mugabe...

Presidential spokesperson Bheki Khumalo expressed irritation on Thursday at a so-called bogeyman approach being used to scare African countries into conforming with the West.

Ah, not starving their people...how Western...

"I am really irritated by this 'kgokgo' approach," Khumalo said when approached for comment on a call by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

He said 'kgokgo' was a Sesotho word meaning something akin to a bogeyman being used to scare children into being obedient.

"South Africa refuses to accept the notion that because suddenly we're going to a G8 summit we must be reminded that we must look good and appease the G8 leaders," said Khumalo.

Systemic CLeansing in Zimbabwe

Read the report from the Christian Science Monitor.
LINK

This African ruler claims his program - going on for about a month now - is to clean up urban blight and put a stop to illegal businesses. His political opposition says it's intended to crush anti-Mugabe people, who have a strong presence in the cities, and to force them out to rural areas.

Indeed, the displacement brings to mind Cambodia's former dictator Pol Pot, who forced masses to the countryside to disperse his opponents.

The situation in Zimbabwe is alarming enough for the UN to announce this week that it's sending an envoy to investigate, and to prompt the US to condemn the operation as a "tragedy, crime, horror."

Zimbabwe is literally emptying out. Millions of people have fled the country, and AIDS claims 3,000 deaths a week. In 2002, the head of the secret police said the country would be better off with a far smaller population of "our own people" who support Mugabe's "liberation struggle."...

Success story

The government is justifying Hatfield because it made crime fall...

LINK

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said on Wednesday the operation had slashed crime in Harare adding that 42,415 people had been arrested, fined or had their goods seized.

He said 120,000 people were left homeless after their structures were demolished. Aid groups and churches, who have condemned the operation, put the figure at 200,000.

"We observe that crimes such as plain robbery, murder and theft have declined because we have cut the ready market that criminals had for stolen goods,"

Yup. have the government thugs demolish houses and confiscate their goods will prevent these goods from being stolen by honest criminals...

Blogfather and CNN mentions Zimbabwe

Professor Reynolds, AKA Blogfather, is an influential American blogger. He has mentioned Zimbabwe again today on his blog.(good publicity for the sleeping US press...
LINK
LINK


and links to the CNN story on the destruction of urban vegetable gardens.

Brownshirt alert

The Nazis trained street thugs to be their "hitmen" to intimidate voters and opponants even before they took over the government. These gangs were called the Brownshirts.

A week ago, I noted THIS plan to train street kids might indeed be a variation of the Brownshirts.

They will be rounded up in towns, sent to rural areas for "ideological re-education" and then out in uniform to patrol the streets of Harare, Bulawayo and other urban areas looking for "dissidents", members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and suspicious-looking foreigners.

If the youngsters - who have no home other than sewers at night or disused warehouses and garages where they live out of dustbins or on what they can steal from shops or passersby - refuse to volunteer, they will be pressganged into the militia....

Sources said the plan looked good on paper, to rid the streets of troublemakers, clean them up and give them an understanding of their country's history. Street children regularly harass residents, robbing, molesting and in some cases raping.

"But unless these kids are tightly controlled and organised, they will become a law unto themselves," said a media source who asked not to be named. "Many of us now believe Mugabe has gone too far and we would like to link up with a well-organised opposition to stop him - but there is no organised opposition here, just the MDC which is run by white Christians who want to avoid street confrontation with the police and army at all costs."

The government denies that children recruited into the Mugabe Youth will persecute political opponents. "They will be taught the country's history and how Robert Mugabe saved us from white terrorists," said a source.....

This is a real worry, because the genocide in Ruanda was not a spontaneous murder of neighbor against neighbor, but occured when government trained street thugs went into villages and ordered the Hutu to kill their Tutsi neighbors, and if they didn't do it, they killed the resisting Hutu.

Text messaging?

HERE is a link telling of how the Mullahs in Iran, who control TV, radio, and newspapers, are now trying to stop text messaging of news by information.

I note this for two reasons.

One is that here in the Philippines, even though we have a free press, government opposition is using text messaging and also selling cd's by street vendors to get the message out...and this makes me wonder if they text message in Zimbabwe.

The second reason I made the link is that a week ago, I published a link to an article mentioning that Iran was helping Zimbabwe to set up TV and other communication technology...hmmm....

I see nooothiiing....

THIS Denver Post editorial discusses the West ignoring Zimbabwe and the other democides by African tyrants.

THIS article in the Zimbabwean discusses how international diplomacy, like the threads that imprisoned Gulliver, are preventing the UK and others from interfereing with national sovereignty.

“We’ve got to talk to Mugabe” yelled a headline over an article which contained the stunning suggestion that the time to strike a deal with Mugabe is now: “There is a chance of an internal deal that may involve immunity for past crimes. Zimbabwe may be one of the places where justice has to be delayed – perhaps until the next world – for the sake of peace.”

Yup. we have to allow democide for the sake of peace...

Sister Pat's report on orphanage destruction

Sr. Patricia ran the HIV clinic/orphanage destroyed in Hatfield. Here is a report, from a church newsletter, typed out on a right wing American website that has a religion forum..
LINK

DOMINICAN CLINIC FOR THE POOR DESTROYED

In 1992 many thousands of people were put into a Holding Camp at a place called Hatcliffe Extension, they were not allowed to build permanent structures because this was going to be temporary. We have worked with the people there for the past 10 years, peoples of all religions and none, people of all political persuasions and none.

Over the years through the generosity of you all we were able to sink 8 boreholes, help to feed thousands of people, build and run a crèche for AIDS orphans (180) of them. We visited once a week and two of our nursing Sisters, Gaudiosa and Carina treated people, helped to get about 100 people on to an Anti-Retroviral medicine programmers etc do home based care, took people to hospitals etc.

The people of Hatchliffe have become friends and family of us the Dominican Sisters. On Friday morning last week I got a call that the riot police had come into a section of the area and demolished everything - most of the wooden shacks are just broken to pieces. I went out on Friday and Saturday - people were sleeping out in the open, many of them sick, cold and hungry. On Saturday I visited again some had managed to leave (those who have Z$500 000 - and have some relatives in "legal" places".

On Sunday morning I got a call that the police had given instructions that all structures in the original section have to be demolished within 24 hours, including the crèche, clinic and other structures which we had built with and for the people. Where do I get people on Sunday to come and dismantle all the buildings. I decided to wait until Monday. On Sunday evening I received one phone call after another saying "come quick they are going to kill us" - others would say "don't come you might be killed". Early on Monday morning I drove out to Hatcliffe, already in the distance I could only see smoke rising up - nothing else.I arrived, I wept, Sister Carina was with me, she wept, the people tried to console us - they were ALL outside in the midst of their broken houses, furniture and goods all over the place, children screaming, sick people in agony. Some of the people who are on ARV drugs came to us and said we are phoning Sister Gaudiosa (Sister is doing the ARV programme) but she is not answering us, we are going to die". We explained that Sister was on home leave but that we would help in whatever way we could. It was a heartbreaking situation.

The structures "mentioned above" that we the Dominican Sisters were working from were left untouched but had to be dismantled immediately otherwise they too would be destroyed. Sister Balbina from the House of Adoration came with carpenters and other staff members and started dismantling the structures. Just now we are going back there with food, clothing, medicine and cash, we can only try. I am NOT cold, I am NOT hungry but I am very ANGRY. I pray that this will pass. We stand in shock and cry with the people but we also have to try and keep them alive. When will sanity prevail. Where is the outside world? busy talking about a "NO vote by France" How can the "little ones of this world be brutalized in this way" - their only crime - they are poor, they are helpless and they happen to live in the wrong part of town and in a country that does not have oil and is not very important to the West.

One bystander told me that he had phoned the Red Cross asking for help but was informed "it is not a war situation" so there is nothing we can do!

Patricia Walsh OP

Churches take up relief work

LINK
The Christian Science Monitor has a first hand report on the consequences of the Hatfield "cleanup"...

With Mugabe denying and delaying NGO help, the local churches are helping those displaced from Hatfield. Not mentioned, of course, is the situation in the rural areas, which lack food due to the drought, and who are not allowed to be helped by the NGO's. Many of these will go to relatives (see below) but alas, if they go back to their villages, they may be met by no food...

The paper has an "aside" on their stringer (local reporter from whom they got the story).

Homeless in Harare: The crackdown on the poor in Zimbabwe (see story) hit close to home for reporter Ryan Truscott. "We have a housekeeper whose cousin just had a baby. It was 2-days-old when the police moved in and demolished her house," he says. The mother and child are staying with the housekeeper and her daughter. "We've helped with clothes and bedding. Her situation is a microcosm of what's happened: The majority of the 300,000 homeless have been absorbed into extended families. Those without relatives go to churches or the holding camp outside Harare," he says.

Air Zimbabwe smuggling drugs

A suitcase on an Air Zimbabwe flight was found to have drugs...

More corruption, or just someone out to make a buck?

Zimbabwe unraveling

LINK
Editorial in San Francisco Calif Chronical notes the problems in Zimbabwe...

and the UN will investigate the Hatfield mess, and probably send a letter saying they are wery wery angwy...

with China, Libya, and Iran on Mugabe's side, don't expect too much from the UN...

Is genocide a public health problem

LINK
Erik Larson thinks so...

Sorry, Dr. Larson. This might be true for some genocides, but there is quite a difference among genocides.
The Ruanda genocide has complex roots in history, and both Hutu and Tutsi have killed each other in outbreaks.
The genocide of kulaks in Russia or "landlords" in China might fit the bill, but what about the starvation of peasants in the Ukraine or in China's great leap forward? Is it okay to starve people rather than admit your idealistic socialist utopia didn't work?
Often "genocides" are manipulated by politicians for political ends...
Yes, I agree that having radio stations and local organizations promote peace and love will help greatly. But you miss the point: the politicians in those countries encourage hatred against "the other" so that the hatred is directed against the "other" and not the government who is probably the source of the growing civilian frustration. (a major cause of the "war on terror" is based on the reality that many of the Arab governments encourage dislike of Israel to discourage criticism of their corrupt governments...)
And, of course, the government will control the radio and newspaper-- and in cases like Zimbabwe even the internet.

And one suspects Mugabe is not copying Ruanda's tribal genocide, but the social engineering of previous Marxist democides.

Mugabe stripped of honorary degree

LINK

Michigan State University (MSU), ... awarded our very own dictator an honourary Doctor of Laws in 1990. .....

The fact that MSU awarded this evil man an honourary doctorate is now a serious embarrassment to the famous institution, one of the Big Ten in the USA. A small group of students and staff at MSU are lobbying the relevant authorities at MSU to strip Mugabe of the doctorate, but the authorities are reluctant to do so arguing that such action is likely to embarrass the institution even further.

It is better to hope that most people have now forgotten all about it, they argue. It is obvious that the MSU awarded the honour on our dear dictator well before he had shown his true colours. MSU was not aware that deep down in his heart of hearts, if he still has one,

The brave reporter than added this comment:

Mugabe is a die-hard racist and tribalist. A cursory examination of the composition of his cabinet clearly demonstrates the dictator’s desperate moves to ensure that he is surrounded by people only from his own Zezuru tribal grouping.

I Promise Africa

I Films has a short film on it's website about HIV orphans...

It is a short independent film filmed in Kenya..

LINK

Synopsis

"I went to Kenya in Aug, 2001 to shoot a documentary on HIV+ orphans. ... I was in a rural village without newspapers, TVs or even running water. I filmed these children on a daily basis and with every chance I got, I played with them. They'd never seen a digital camera and no matter where I was, they'd follow. On my last day, the village leader named me "Thoun" which means "hero" in Luoh.

Church leaders point out growing repression

Zenit, a Catholic news organization has a long report on the situation in Zimbabwe...

It summarizes the situation quite nicely, but like other reports, merely says that since other African countries see Mugabe as a hero for throwing out the white government, they hesitate to criticize him...so this essentially blocks western intervention in that country.

Wolfowitz on African leadershop

LINK

Wolfowitz calls Zimbabwe's actions "a tragedy"...

Wolfowitz said leadership was key to solving the continent's problems. "It is certainly true that leadership can be a critical factor and the four countries I've visited have good leadership and that is why they have been making progress," the former U.S. deputy defence secretary told Reuters shortly before meeting South African President Thabo Mbeki. But Wolfowitz said South Africa's northern neighbour Zimbabwe, which is suffering from inflation, economic collapse and food shortages, was in a "pretty bad shape and getting worse".

we are wery wery angwy...

In the movie Team America, the hansblix puppet told North Korea that if they didn't change that the UN will send them a letter saying they were wery wery angwy...

Sorry, but that's what this reminds me of...

Catholic bishops in the southern African country issued a Pastoral Letter, The Cry of the Poor, condemning ongoing demolitions....Prayers be offered for the whole nation by all congregations on Sunday June 26, 2005 in all churches, and a reflection read or given along the lines appearing in the latest Pastoral Letter of the ZCBC, The Cry of the Poor, emphasizing human dignity, human rights and respect for all regardless of social status.

Actually, I am a believer in prayer...and we Filippinos know that it was Cardinal Sin leading a million Filippinos on the EDSA praying and singing hymns that ended in the overthrow of Marcos...but one wonders if merely issuing a letter is a big deal...

But it probably takes guts to even use churches to criticize the Mugabe Regieme...bishops have been martyred for doing less...so I'm probably wrong in the matter...

OK...you can help

NGO's now have permission to help those displaced by operation clean out poor people...aka Mugabekrystalnacht...the bad news is that the government is going to keep an eye on them...

Non-governmental organizations in Zimbabwe have started delivering relief to the displaced after securing permission from the government to do so. Jonah Mudewe, executive director of the National Association of Nongovernmental Organizations, told Studio Seven that a coordination center is being set up to manage the assistance effort.

NGOs received the go-ahead to provide relief from Housing Minister Ignatius Chombo late this week. It was agreed that the government would establish an emergency assistance committee to liaise with local NGOs and the international humanitarian organizations involved. This committee had not yet been set up as of Friday, but Mr Mudewe told Studio 7 reporter Patience Rusere that NGOs will work with state welfare services to determine critical needs.

Translation: Nothing being done yet...it is a weekend...and the government will make sure aid goes to those approved by the government...

ITV reports on atrocities

LINK

Foreign journalists are banned from Zimbabwe, but working covertly and in defiance of the authorities, ITV News has learnt of the sheer scale of the destruction that has taken place over the past two weeks.

ITV Africa correspondent Neil Connery, who entered Zimbabwe illegally, said: "It is wasteland. Street after street after street razed to the ground.

"It looked like a natural disaster. The hundreds of thousands who have been left homeless call this Zimbabwe's tsunami. But man, not nature is to blame for the destruction enveloping this country

"The whole force of the state is busy destroying homes and lives. The Government calls this Operation Restore Order."

Children from Hatcliff Orphanage, many of whom have been left destitute after their parents died from Aids, were given 24 hours to get out.

Sister Patricia Walsh from the orphanage said: "It was one of the most painful experiences. I never thought I would see the day this would happen to Zimbabwe."

A picture is worth a thousand words...

photos of evictions: Slideshow here

Silent diplomacy is useless

LINK

The UK Times has an editorial discussing the Hatfield krystalnacht...the author pleads for Tony Blair to intervene with African leaders:

The humanitarian need in the country is overwhelming. Zimbabwe was already a country staring disaster in the face. Now, with nearly a million people displaced, most without shelter or the means of earning a living, the situation is becoming a catastrophe.

The African Union must demand that the International Red Cross and United Nations relief agencies are given unrestricted access to Zimbabwe to deal with the internal refugee and food crisis, as they would in any other disaster situation.

The organisers of Live 8 must urge the millions of people who will enjoy the concerts on July 2 to demand that politicians attending the G8 summit get their heads out of the sand and push Zimbabwe’s plight to the top of their Africa agenda.

But many of those leaders are almost as bad as Zimbabwe...as for all the internal refugees and food crisis, this is one way to stop the international community from complaining about it: jail the messengers:

LINK

LINK

First hand accounts of Hatfield via BBC

LINK

Some are obvious plants by the government, but even those plants sometimes slip up...for example, this is from a Bulawayo Policeman supporting the Government's actions:

I am a policeman in Bulawayo, and I tell you that these slums are filled with criminals and opponents of the elected government. Once again the western media makes up lies about the Mugabe government when it is a clean-up mission to make the city beautiful and prosperous for the law-abiding. Out of our business please!
Anonymous, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

Ah, those darn opponents...must clear them out....
Nicolas Kristoff, call your office...

Krystalnacht in Hatfield

LINK

The Zimbabwean pundit has three firsthand accounts of the Hatfield krystalnacht...the link will get you part three, with links to parts one and two...

Indoctrinating street children

LINK

The Zimbabwe government plans to conscript thousands of street children into its controversial national youth service training programme blamed for converting youths into violently zealous defenders of President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu PF party.....

Mohadi said the scheme to train the youths was part of wider efforts by the government to remove street children and other people from the streets and rehabilitate them. Mohadi said: "Yes there is a plan to ensure that we rid our streets of these kids, some of whom are now adults. They have to be rehabilitated and the facilities and resources (to train and rehabilitate them) will be found." Under the plan, the police will round up all youths from the streets and take them to holding centres to be set up in every city and town.

Good news: They don't have enough money to actually do it...

Bad News: Ruanda did the same thing.. trained street kids to be government thugs....remember what happened there?

Churches help those displaced from Hatfield

LINK

Mugabe still blocking international NGO's, but the churches are filling in the gap...

HIV center destroyed by Mugabe's thugs

LINK
Yesterday, I posted a link to Mark Steyn sarcastically noting that Mugabe had destroyed a mosque and a Catholic HIV shelter...
Here is the story on the HIV shelter....

The Tariro orphanage and the Batsirai and Rutendo child care centers provided services to more than 300 children.

Dominican nuns ran Tariro for AIDS orphans. Two elderly women established the Batsirai day care center and the Rutendo facility for disabled children was operated by members of the Soroptimists, an international women’s charity.

Sister Patricia Walsh of the Dominican Order of the Zimbabwe Roman Catholic Church issued a statement saying that Tariro housed about 180 AIDS orphans. The orphanage offered clinic and crèche services, and the Dominican sisters cared for some 100 people with HIV-AIDS taking anti-retroviral drugs.

Batsirai provided food and other services to about 50 orphans in Hatcliff Extension. The two women who founded it have filed an urgent application for relief with the High Court challenging the demolition. Their lawyer, Otto Saki of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, provided Studio 7 reporter Blessing Zulu with details about the court filing and the services the organization provided to orphans.

Is Zimbabwe the next Ghana?

David Frum's blog has an email discussing this...

he also has a comment on debt relief...

Again, I don't know enough about economics to say if it is accurate...

No aid allowed to displaced famlies

LINK

Senior officials at the Social Welfare Ministry, which approves humanitarian assistance, said governors of provinces have been ordered to block donor groups from distributing food and clothes apparently because Harare fears accepting such aid would be tantamount to admitting the shortcomings of its highly unpopular campaign.

"By allowing donors, the government would be admitting that its actions have caused a humanitarian crisis. So the donors will be kept away while the government works out solutions to the problem," said one official, who did not want to be named for fear of victimisation.

For example, in the eastern province of Manicaland governor, Tinaye Chigudu, confirmed stopping non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from distributing medicines and food. But he said he had done so only because he wanted to consult with his superiors in Harare.

But, like all dictators, Mugabe has his priorities right...no money for those displaced by his actions, but a million pounds for a party....

ROBERT Mugabe and his wife Grace are this weekend preparing for a lavish wedding anniversary celebration by approving a guest list that includes the names of African leaders seeking massive debt relief for their impoverished countries.

"It will be a classy, royal-like occasion," a government source said in Harare. "The Mugabes will be driven from a church service at Kutama Mission outside Harare where they were married in August 1996 in an open Rolls-Royce with horses in front. That's how they want it."

The wedding anniversary party will reportedly cost close to £1m. It will be preceded by a Mugabe family trip to an as yet unnamed country with close ties to Zimbabwe - possibly Libya.

....
The all-day party will be partly paid for by President Mugabe - one of Africa's wealthiest men - partly by impoverished Zimbabwean taxpayers and partly by local companies seeking to stay in business at a time when the words "ethnic cleansing" are never far away from the lips of European, Asian and middle-class African businesspeople.

Grace Mugabe is 40 years younger than her husband. The couple met when President Mugabe was still a married man.

Reminds me of Imelda Marcos' shoes...

Opposing Mugabe

BBC: Opposing Mugabe "no easy task"

A pretty good and gloomy analysis...

and don't miss the comments, such as those by "john dash" from Canada who insists everything is honky dory and only Those who complain are mostly disgruntled 'Rhodie' whites, misinformed foreigners and general malcontents with power-hunger ambitions.

Most of the other comments agree with the report, probably because they are by Africans....

Controlling information

LINK
about controlling internet content in the name of stopping white collar crime

LINK
A technical and co-operation protocol signed between the Angolan Social Communication Ministry and the Zimbabwe Department of Information and Publicity was upheld by the Cabinet Council in March this year.....
This protocol aims at the harmonisation of the laws and instruments of media organs, their production contents, regimes of investments and the national strategies for the challenges from an environment of a globallised media....

I'm not sure what this means in plain English, but since Angola learned a lot from the Cubans, it doesn't look good...

LINK
Did Zimbabwe buy tear gas from Malawi?

UK led the way in getting the European Union and the US to impose a ban on sales of tear gas to Zimbabwe in 2002 after the police were implicated in a pattern of human rights abuses. But the Zimbabwe police have continued to obtain stocks of tear gas. The BBC report said a British diplomatic source had told the BBC that there was increasing evidence pointing Malawi in a trade in teargas. The BBC report also said it is understood that the British High Commissioner to Malawi wrote a letter to the government complaining about the purchase. Although it is not thought that any British aid money was directly involved in the purchase, the report said local DFID staff apparently fear the Malawi government may be using “backfilling”. Backfilling involves the diversion of the government’s own money earmarked for development projects followed by the use of British aid money to fill the financial void. The BBC further said the claims have thrown the British government into embarrassment since Malawi is a major recipient of UK aid. The teargas recently was linked to at least the death of 11 people, including five babies during a single incident in Zimbabwe. Reports from human rights organisations say teargas has been in use in the last two weeks in Zimbabwe as police arrested 22,000 people as part of what they say is a crackdown on illegal traders.

Attention Iran

A couple days ago, I posted about Iran helping Mugabe build a TV infrastructure...

Well, one wonders if the Mullahs know about THIS:

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's kleptocrat strongman, destroyed a mosque the other day. It was in Hatcliffe Extension, a shantytown on the edge of Harare razed by the "police." Mugabe is an equal-opportunity razer: He also bulldozed a Catholic-run AIDS center. The government destroyed the town in order to drive the locals out into the countryside to live on the land stolen from white farmers. Quite how that's meant to benefit any of the parties involved or the broader needs of Zimbabwe is beyond me, but then I'm no expert in Afro-Marxist economic theory.

The point is the world's Muslims seem entirely cool with Infidel Bob razing a mosque.... no excitable young men went bananas in Pakistan; no western progressives berated Mugabe for his "cultural insensitivity." And sadly most of the big shot Muslim spokespersons were still too busy flaying the Bush administration to whip their subjects into a frenzy over Hatcliffe Extension's pile of Islamic rubble.

Last week, Ambassador Atta el-Manan Bakhit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference called on Washington to show "no leniency" to the "perpetrators" of "this despicable crime." "This disgraceful conduct of those soldiers reveal their blatant hatred and disdain for the religion of millions of Muslims all over the world," said His Excellency.

Ah, but if you are an anti western marxist starving his own people, and you destroy a mosque, we will give you money to spread propaganda on your tv network?

Bill Gates Vs Democracy

Via RogerSimon: This Financial Times article discusses how Microsoft is helping China block the internet users from searching words such as "freedom"...

Attempts to input words in Chinese such as "democracy" prompted an error message from the site: "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item." Other phrases banned included the Chinese for "demonstration", "democratic movement" and "Taiwan independence".

It was possible to enter such words within blogs created using MSN Spaces, but the move to block them from the more visible section of the site highlights the willingness of some foreign internet companies to tailor their services to avoid upseting China's Communist government.

Beijing has long sought to limit political debate on the internet and is in the throes of a campaign to force anybody who operates a website to register with the central government.

What does this have to do with Zimbabwe? Well, a week ago I noted that Mugabe was being helped by China to develop ways to monitor internet using and blogs...so does that mean that China is illegally taking the information that is given them by Microsoft and exporting it to other tyrannical governments? I have no idea, but Inquiring Minds Want to Know.....

Landless thrown off land...

LINK

Black settlers moved into the two farms in 2000 when the government embarked on a land reforms programme by driving away white farmers and redistributing their properties to landless blacks, saying it was to correct colonial-era imbalances in land ownership.
Witnesses at Lowdale Farm reported increased activity with farmers frantically trying to harvest their corn before the police moved in.

Let them eat TV's....

Here is a post from Iran celebrating Mugabe's "cultural" ties with Iran....

Ummm, what cultural ties?

There are few Muslims in Zimbabwe (most of them are immigrants from Malawi or other nearby countries who came to work in the mines or farms)..

Referring to the friendly relations between the two capitals, Jokonya said in a meeting with Iran's Ambassador to Harare, Hamid Moayyer, that Tehran and Harare joined "positive" cooperation in all fields.

...

The minister also appreciated efforts by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) to develop TV networks in Zimbabwe.

Translation: Setting up propaganda tv and radio....

Jokonya further lauded Tehran's role in introducing and promoting the international plan for Dialogue Among Civilizations.

Between Marxism in Zimbabwe and with Islamic theocracy...nice dialogue.....

The Iranian ambassador, for his part, said that Tehran and Harare shared a growing relations in political, economic and cultural fields.

Moayyer added that the Export Development Bank of Iran (EDBI) has allocated a 15-million-euro credit for investment in different agricultural, media, scientific and cultural projects in Zimbabwe.

He said that the IRIB would complete equipment of the Bulawayu TV Network in the second major city of Zimbabwe after it finished an ongoing project with the National TV Network of the country.

People starving, deporting the opposition to the countryside...ahh but let's have our priorities straight: TV...

Blogosphere take four

Kingdom of chaos blog
has given me some more links to Zimnews.
Kumbata Trust is a center for NGO news
and has links on how to do E-activism...
Come now come all and get those mouses moving...

It's Official

The NYTimes noticed something rotten is going on in Zimbabwe: of course, this is several days after the bloggers and the WaPost noticed things...better late than never...

Related links on today's news HERE, from AP..

Nicolas Kristol,call your office...

G8 to write off 8 billion debt

Link

Sorry, I don't know enough about economics to know if this will help, but it won't hurt..

Blogosphere take three

Winds of Change blog has a long list of links and discussion of Zimbabwe...

But I disagree with him about the guns...you see, guns only work if 1) you know how to shoot, 2) you can shoot straight under pressure and 3) you have an aggressive instinct that allows you to use guns.

Zimbabwe's Army

Yesterday I posted some bloglinks. One of them included a long discussion, and one of the commenters noted that Zimbabwe's army was tough and had experience in the Congo, and that their backing of Mugabe was one reason the untrained locals would rise up in rebellion, and a reason South African would hesitate to invade that country.

Indeed, the army has been called out to keep the peace

I don't know if any of this is true. So I googled for information.

LINK
The London Telegraph describes how people were terrified by police and army bulldozing their homes

LINK
says the strike has failed because opposition leaders want to play it safe...

LINK
Is a BBC report from 2002 about the "loyalty" of the ZimArmy, at least among the higher officers.

LINK
describes Zim's army in the Congo and how diamonds paid their way..

LINK
reports 200 ZimArmy are going to Botswana for a peacekeeping exercize with other SA nations...(HMMM WONDER WHERE THEY ARE KEEPING THE PEACE).

Ways to change governments include 1 elections (Mugabe won)
2. general peaceful uprising (sounds like it is a dud)
3. outside intervention from other powers (not as long as SAfrica backs Mugabe)
4. Mercenaries (hmm...but I don't know if multinationals would bother)
5. Army coup.

However, I was in Liberia when Sargent Doe took over in 1980...alas, he was incompetent (Rolling stone had an article about his government called "Liberia Kaput") and there now has been 20 years of civil war, and probably 600 000 deaths...hardly noticed by outsiders.

So I am not hopeful for a military answer to this problem.

David Frum's comments

David Frum's comments are HERE

Rangel calls for revolution

More links from Instapundit on Zim

Samizant LINK

Belmont club link

reviews the situation and then observes: "This suggests that GWB is looking for a regional partner that can actually intervene in Zimbabwe if it falls to pieces, but that Mbeki isn't biting,..."

Blogosphere on Zimbabwe

Instapundit has links to two bloggers discussing Zimbabwe..

Publius Pundit
has a summary on the general strike

Chester
compares Zimbabwe to Kitty Genovese...the brooklyn lady killed while fifty people watched out of their windows but didn't bother to get involved..

IN the meanwhile, Zimpundit has an update from the front lines...

Why Helicopters are needed in Zimbabwe

LINK

The previous post reports on SAfrica providing spare parts so Zimbabwe's gov't can use their helicopters...so why would they need helicopters? To inspect isolated rural areas to see if famine relief is reaching there? To rescue people? To transport sick people to hospital? To report on traffic congestion so that commuters can take alternate roads to work?

Nope..they are needed to intimidate people from going along with the general strike/stayaway that is protesting the destruction of homes and "illegal" businesses....

HARARE - Army helicopters patrolled the skies over Harare’s restive working class suburbs yesterday while on the ground plain clothes police advised residents to “leave politics alone” as tension gripped Zimbabwe two days before an opposition-led mass job stayaway.

The police have also mounted roadblocks on all major roads leading into the capital’s central business district with motorists being thoroughly searched for weapons that could be used to commit violence.

Extra police have also been deployed in Zimbabwe’s other four biggest cities of Bulawayo, Gweru, Mutare and Masvingo in what police insiders said was a show of force designed to intimidate Zimbabweans from participating in the work stayaway planned for Thursday and Friday this week.

Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi threatened to come hard on organisers of the stayaway should it degenerate into violence.

Enabling political repression

LINK

Pretoria - Armscor has sold spare parts to the value of more than R1m to the Zimbabwean government, which will enable the country's Alouette helicopters to take to the air again despite European sanctions. In addition, the South African government donated equipment to the value of more than R3m for this purpose to Zimbabwe. A Zimbabwean company - which was, according to information, established by high-ranking members of the South African military community - will apparently undertake the upgrading of the helicopters......

No gas for automobiles, can't afford food, but helicopters are a priority....

Lt. Smash on Africa

Lt. Smash has a symposium on his blog, including a report of their discussion with Bob Geldof...

If you don't know Geldof, he's the rocker who raised money for Ethiopia...
And if you don't know Lt. Smash, you are really out of the loop...

Garbage?

Mugabe's human garbage dump

WHEN President Mugabe’s Government announced plans to “clean up” the country’s cities more than two weeks ago, many Zimbabweans wondered what the innocent-sounding phrase really meant. Now they know.

Thousands of street stalls demolished. More than 23,000 informal workers arrested. Entire neighbourhoods burnt to the ground or razed by bulldozers. Hundreds of thousands of poor people left homeless in the middle of winter.

The authoritarian regime has called the continuing campaign to curb illegal trading and housing Operation Murambatsvina, or “Drive Out Rubbish”.

Human rights organisations call it something different. It is a “blatant violation of civil, political, economic and social rights”, Amnesty International said. The normally cautious United Nations said last week that the eviction of 200,000 people was creating a new kind of apartheid, where the cities were only for the rich. Miloon Kothari, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, told reporters: “We have a very grave crisis on our hands.”

Garbage?

LINK

Children and orphans helped by UN program

LINK

The health ministry estimates that by December 2005, Zimbabwe will have 1.1 million orphans, who are vulnerable to sexual and economic exploitation, malnutrition, losing their rights to property, and have limited access to education.

Some good news for a change

Enabling Democide take two

Second LINK

Responding to questions at a Press conference on aid to Africa at the Africa Economic Summit underway here, President Mkapa passionately defended Zimbabwe and said the stance by the West could not be tolerated, particularly at a time when the entire continent sought to engage the Group of Eight leading industrial nations (G-8) and other states and blocs in its endeavour to address current economic and social challenges.

"We are doing enough to explain Zimbabwe's situation to the world, but some have decided to be deaf to what we say. What can we do about it?" he said.

"All we hear are sanctimonious and pious statements that are totally abhorrent. I mean every word of it," he said, in apparent reference to the criticism and bad Press Zimbabwe continued to endure....

Then people wonder why Bush and polls in the UK aren't too eager to loan these "leaders" money...

Mugabe's enablers

Last week, I listed some South African defenders of Mugabe...

Most in SAfrica do not defend him, but just want to gently persuade him not to commit democide....

However, Tanzanian president Mkapa defends Mugabe:

Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa strongly defended Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Cape Town yesterday.

"Zimbabwe has a right to manage its own affairs," Mkapa said yesterday.

HMMM...I believe the quote is: Am I my brother's keeper?

In reply to a journalist's question about his views on developments in Zimbabwe, Mkapa said Mugabe's land-redistribution programme was, "returning the ownership of the country to its people".

Ah, but which people? To the cronies of the government? I guess the Natabele don't count...

His remarks have confirmed further the Southern African Development Community's reluctance to distance itself from Mugabe on governance issues.

In psychology this is called Enabling...in moral theology, it is cooperation with sin...

But the Tanzanian president's strident remarks in support of Mugabe also run counter to the message that the World Economic Forum is pushing at its Cape Town meeting - that of a continent increasingly unprepared to tolerate poor governance.....

Mkapa said he felt emotional about Zimbabwe and particularly about what he saw as the west's unjust criticism.

As he would be leaving office when his term ended in a few months' time, he now felt free to speak out on Zimbabwe.

The Tanzanian president said he found "sanctimonious and pious declarations" by western countries about Zimbabwe "totally abhorrent".

It's not "totally abhorrent" to starve people, keep out NGO's who offer to feed your people, and destroy houses of poor people....it's only abhorrent to criticize those who do...not.

Hungry ghosts

LINK

Critics of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Sunday called for a two-day "stay-away" protest later this week after a police crackdown demolished thousands of illegal homes, shops and markets across the country.....

"This is to send a message to the government that it is causing human suffering and misery to the population through mismanaging the economy," Madhuku told Reuters.

"Instead of addressing the key issues, they are just consolidating their power."

Police have warned they will stop any overt demonstrations against the clean-up campaign, which a U.N. official on Friday estimated has made 200,000 people homeless since it was launched two weeks ago......

Critics blame the problems on Mugabe's mismanagement of the economy, while the veteran leader says Zimbabwe is being sabotaged by domestic and foreign opponents of his land reform programme which seized white-owned farms to give to landless blacks.

As I wrote to the WaPost yesterday: If these people flee to rural areas, it will be easier to hide deaths from the man made famine caused by Mugabe's policieis...

Then they came for the war veterans....

Now the war veterans are in the sites of the gov't...there are the ones that were supposed to benefit from the confiscated white farm lands...

The campaign, with Mugabe's approval, marked a turning point for the war veterans who played a key role in fending off the opposition Movement for Democratic Change's (MDC) challenge to Mugabe in the last few years.

Now with Mugabe firmly in charge after a disputed election last March, he has ditched the war veterans in a stunning development.

Over the last five years, the informal settlement at Whitecliff, was eulogised in government circles as a vision of hope for the black majority. But on what used to be sprawling housing structures, now lay debris of shattered dreams.....

War veterans, deemed untouchable, formed a key cog in ZANU PF's violent election campaigns during past polls. The war veterans were allowed to settle on the farms near urban areas in what critics said was an attempt by the government to neutralise the MDC’s urban support base.

Tarumbwa’s equally dejected neighbour who only gave his name as Mabhunu said: “Base commanders (war veteran leaders in charge of the land invasions) made us pay large sums of money on different occasions to acquire the "stands".

“I’m sure altogether we each paid up to $7 million. We were taken for a ride. Now we have no one to turn to.”........

new Marhall plan for Africa?

LINK

Just make sure it doesn't land up in South African bank accounts paying for Mercedes.....

So few are left

Cathy Buckle has a new report...

All everyone can think about and talk about is the massive destruction, the smoke that fills our skies and the multitudes of people who have been affected. There continue to be TV pictures of bulldozers knocking down brick houses. There are heart breaking, eye witness reports of families sitting in the filth, dust and rubble of what used to be their homes. All week there have been people desperately trying to save what they can of their lives. People carrying planks, boards, sheets of tin, bundles of plastic - the things that were their homes.
Everywhere people are desperately looking for somewhere to sleep, somewhere out of the cold to shelter, somewhere to store their belongings. The police tell them to go back where they came from, to go back to the rural areas. It is ironic that these are the same rural areas that the government said were so overcrowded five years ago that the congestion was used to explain the seizure of 95% of the country's commercial farms.

Mugabe to resign: In 2009...

OH happy day...Mugabe will resign in 2009...

Now, any other guy at age 80 might figure he should resign...but no, not Mugabe.

And what people are not discussing is that if those he appoints will still be alive then...you see, HIV is rampant among the elites in that country...maybe this is why he has appointed a woman, Joyce Muguru, to succeed him...

Does she have HIV? Probably not... in Mashona society, post menopausal women don't have sex...

And the dirty little secret is that Mugabe won't get HIV (unless he gets it from dirty syringes at clinics or from Muti cuts)...back in the 1970's there was news he was treated for a certain cancer.....

WaPost finally notices the atrocities

The WaPost has finally noticed the major demoicide in Zimbabwe, on page A 23 of the paper...I guess "deep throat" and Koran mishandling and Michael Jackson are more important...but even page 23 is better than nothing...

Zimbabwe Police Raze Poor Towns In Rampage
Government Says Homes Being Destroyed Are Illegal

Yup...must be fair and balanced in the headline...give the government spin in the headlines, but only if the government is a third world tyrant...we can't have the WaPost accused of dissing third world tyrants, can we?.

At least 22,000 street traders have been arrested, police said in government-owned newspapers, and tens of thousands of people have been left homeless. Though the full extent of the operation remains unknown, opposition leaders say as many as 1.5 million people in Harare alone may have lost their homes.

President Robert Mugabe has dubbed the campaign "Operation Murambatsvina," which the state-owned press translates as "Operation Restore Order" and portrays as a necessary effort to curb crime, garbage and the other excesses of rapid urbanization over the past several years. But in Shona, the dominant language in Zimbabwe, it has a more sinister translation, given that most of those targeted are poor: "Operation Drive Out the Rubbish."

kuSvina means to clean up...

In Hatfield Extension, more than 6,000 people lost their homes on police order last Sunday. No houses or shops remain standing, and a community mosque was destroyed.

Aggh they destroyed a mosque...where is Alqada when you need them? naah, it's okay to destroy a mosque if you are a tyrant or if you are a Islmofascist sunni bombing a shiite mosque in Iraq or Pakistan...

Since the March 31 parliamentary elections, in which Mugabe won a landslide victory in voting that many Western governments denounced as rigged, ah, fellahs: Everyone said it was rigged: the catholic church, the Anglican church, the opposition leaders, not just "western governments"...again WaPost anti western spin giving credance to a tyrant in the middle of an article that dares to criticize him...

the currency has plunged and basic commodities such as sugar, flour and cornmeal have disappeared from store shelves. Gas shortages are so severe that motorists line up for blocks simply on rumors of deliveries at filling stations.

But Mugabe's party traditionally has found support in Hatcliffe Extension and some of the other areas razed in the past two weeks, a fact that some people say is an indication that the government campaign is less about punishing opponents than reversing years of urbanization.

Hmm...reversing years of urbanization by forcing people back to the land...Mugabe is of course a trained Marxist...and forcing ignorant city folks back to farm areas to do rudimentary farming when they have no knowledge of farming is a recurring theme in marxist societies....

Zimbabweans in recent years have increasingly abandoned farming in rural areas to work as street traders in cities and live in shantytowns and other informal settlements....