CSA sit tight on Zim

From IOL

Cricket South Africa and the players representatives, the South African Cricketers Association (Saca), will meet next week to thrash out arrangements for Zimbabwe's inclusion in South Africa's professional domestic competitions.

In the meanwhile, Zimbabwe's participation in the SuperSport Series has been put on hold. The matter was discussed at a special meeting of Cricket South Africa's General Council held yesterday.

Zimbabwe's participation in the three domestic competitions; the four-day SuperSport Series, 45-over MTN Domestic Championship and the Standard Pro20 Series, had caused a furore earlier this week when Saca objected to the unilateral fashion in which CSA sought to force Zimbabwe's inclusion in the local competitions.

Protests at Milpark Hospital against ZANU-PF

Rev. Hove's blog spot has photos of HERE.

and other reports and links.
The Photos are of The Zimbabwe Revolutionary Youths demonstrating in JHB at Milpark Hospital against ZANU-PF Generals who are admitted there!

Blog update

I apologize for light blogging and posting. I am getting ready to visit relatives in the US next week, so posting may be light for the next month.

Misc links

writings by Rev. Hove:

www.finalpushzim.blogspot.com !)

I refer you to my submission “The thoughts and memories of a former ZANU-PF cadre” and the link thereof can be got at www.finalpushzim.blogspot.com .

For numerous articles and submissions on the atrocities of the 80s in Matebeleland and the Midlands in the 80s, I refer you to my www.gukurahundi.blogspot.com .

The next main “ZIMFINALPUSH HEADER” is the current page which is now available at www.thezimbabwedigest.blogspot.com .

This page serves in conjuction with the www.zimfinalpush5.blogspot.com

A link to that letter can also be found at www.finalpushzim.blogspot.com .

Why the SADC/MBEKI INTIATIVE CANNOT AND WILL NOT SOLVE ZIMBABWE'S PROBLEMS!

From Rev Mufaro Stig Hove:

There is no journalist, no blogger, no analyst, no politician: there is no individual or organisation that can ever describe the whole or even a part of the suffering that the people of Zimbabwe are going through just today as you read this humble submission of mine.

Suffering can never be adequately described!

It is the sufferer himself/herself who goes through the experience and may then try to describe it to whoever is interested in listening.

Zimbabweans are suffering both within Zimbabwe and outside Zimbabwe.

Whoever is reading this submission of mine has probably already read or heard of the trials and tribulations of the lovely people of Zim.

I will not go the direction of descriptions!

I will rather concentrate on looking at the Mbeki fallacy that the Elections of 2008 may/will help end the Crisis in the country of Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai, Lovemore Madhuku, millions others and myself also.

In brief, the State President of the Republic of South Africa, Cde Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki seems busy with what looks like some Initiative of some sort to try and return Zimbabwe to a state of “normality.”

(In the meantime, his Government is on a recruiting spree absorbing all the qualified teachers, nurses, accountants, engineers etc that are fleeing the humanitarian disaster across the Limpopo.

Who remains to look after the sick in the Hospitals, who remains to teach our children in the schools, who is working for various Industrial Establishments back home?

I am equally guilty of fleeing the land of my fathers and hiding in the land of my uncles!)

Thabo Mbeki’s under-paid soldiers and police are making a “killing” collecting bribes at the border and within the country from desperate Zimbabweans wanting to “regularize” their entry and stay in the mighty Republic of South Africa.

Farmers at the northern border are having various items disappearing as the “illegal immigrants” pilfer whatever they can so they can sell and get the precious Rand to use on the uncertain journey Southwards. The Rand will be required to pay for transport, for further bribes and for survival as one tries to establish oneself in the land of the intellectual Marxist-Leninist Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki.

When our legal or illegal immigrant brother/sister arrives in some town further South, life then really becomes another Hell as bad or even worse than the Zim one abandoned.

The only difference is that here one can set up a Barber Shop of sorts and get R10 per hairdo or whatever one can involve oneself in.

Bricklayers and other skilled or semi-skilled persons can be luckily absorbed in some project or other.

Women must brace themselves for vigorous sexual orgies and the word “prostitution” does not exist in this new land of South Africa. If one puts on a condom and gets in and then gets out, where is the problem there? The liberal ANC Government makes it even easier since they have exterminated all fear and acknowledgement of God in the short time they have presided over the affairs of the South African State.

The whole story of what is really happening as far as sexual abuse of Zimbabwean women is concerned will never be fully known or told!

Women share blankets with men at Marabastad Home Affairs (Pretoria / Tshwane) and the “lucky” ones are picked up in the evenings, spend the night earning a few rands “God-knows-where” and are then returned in the mornings to continue their wait for weeks and months for “papers” of one sort or another.

I will not talk of the rise in criminal activities because I have noticed that Cde Thabo Mbeki will then concentrate on having me substantiate this and that allegation instead of appreciating that the crime levels of any society will definitely go up when hundreds of thousands of hungry, angry and displaced persons are absorbed in that particular society.

As I have already said above, I will not go on singing about the trials and tribulations of my countrymen within and without the Zim borders.

Police detain WOZA membersPolice Officers from Harare Central Law and Order Division briefly detained 3 members from Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) at

from SWRadioAfrica:

Police Officers from Harare Central Law and Order Division briefly detained 3 members from Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) at a restaurant in Harare, saying they wanted WOZA coordinator Jenni Williams to surrender herself to Harare Central Police station. The 3 women, Clara Manjengwa, Lilian Nketula and Kesina Munda, were interrogated for about 2 hours outside on the pavement. The police accused them of taking part in WOZA demonstrations on Monday, and planning more protests in the future.

Williams said she refused to turn herself in and wondered why the police did not deal with whatever the issue is on Monday, when she was in custody at Harare Central all day. According to Williams, the 3 WOZA members were ordered to walk to the police station with the officers. Just outside Harare Central the officers asked for Z$5 million from each member. The women refused and insisted on being charged if they had committed any crime. They were released without charge.

Williams said the police have been abducting WOZA members and asking for bribes. This has become a way for them to raise money to line their own pockets. The WOZA leader described how many ordinary Zimbabweans, especially vendors, are being forced to pay bribes by corrupt police officials. She added: “But the ordinary people have no platform to voice their anger about this. So we speak on their behalf.”

Sekai Holland explains Mugabe to New Zealand left

From SWRadioAfrica...
There are still some on the left who think that Zim's land reform was land reform...Ms. Holland tells them the truth:

Members of Parliament from the Maori party of New Zealand have withdrawn their support for Robert Mugabe’s regime, after it was explained to them that the land redistribution exercise has only benefited an elite few from Zanu-PF....

Since 1980, a government body established to settle legal claims has been engaged in compensating the Maori for land that was illegally confiscated.
This has similarities to what is happening in Zimbabwe, except that the regime in Zimbabwe has used violence to kill and subdue people it is taking land from. Kunaka said the impression the Maori people had was that Mugabe was taking land back for the people.

‘They genuinely thought the regime was empowering the indigenous blacks in Zimbabwe until Sekai Holland gave them the correct picture. They were shocked and immediately withdrew their support for Mugabe’s land redistribution exercise,’ Kunaka said.....

Holland is currently based in Australia were she’s still receiving medical treatment for injuries sustained during the 11th March beatings of the opposition.

China still supports Mubage

from All Africa;

...."First on the political front, we support the efforts Zimbabwean people have made to restore social tranquillity and develop national economy and oppose any exterior interference in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe in any form.

"We believe that the Government of Zimbabwe has the ability to solve the problems on their own," Amb Nansheng said.

He said China would continue to rally behind Zimbabwe and continue strengthening the strong ties, which dated back to the liberation struggle....

Anglicans seek to oust rogue Archbishop

From All Africa..

The controversial reign of Harare Bishop Nolbert Kunonga might be coming to an end if the Anglican Church has its way in court. The Church will now seek court intervention to seize control of its assets from Kunonga. This follows his decision to withdraw the diocese from the province over a feud on homosexuality that exploded at a meeting in Malawi. In papers submitted by lawyers the church says it has a well-founded fear that the bishop, 'will fund his new ministry with the Church's resources as he has access to the Church's investments and funds.'...

The Harare bishop has for years dominated headlines with his blunt support for violent land grabs that saw him receive a farm from government as a 'thank you' gesture. He has faced allegations of using state security agents to harass, intimidate and even threaten death on those parishioners who opposed his rule. To ensure support for his reign as bishop he has planted his supporters in positions of authority in the different parishes across Harare. Those victim to his threats have meanwhile fled the country fearing for their lives. But his latest decision to withdraw the diocese from the province has backfired and offered a legal route for the church to expel him....

How western policies slow down African growth

If you read the headlines, Africa is a basket case.

For example, today’s NYTimes headline says: Cost of Africa’s wars is equal to all aid money.

But there is another side to Africa that rarely gets in the news.

Last week in Minneapolis, there was a Pan African Trade and Investment Summit. It was to try to connect local businessmen, especially those of the African diaspora, with small businesses in African countries.

You see, development has to be done at many levels. As the Chinese saying goes: Give a man a fish, he eats for one day. Give him a boat, and he feeds his family for a generation.

And after a generation where the western elites insisted that socialism was more suited to Africa (because tribal land is owned in common) the failures of the socialist paradigm are now making some Africans stand up and say: But African traders and market women and skilled workers are also part of our heritage.

But the new paradigm for Africa is not the exploitation of cheap labour by multinational corporations, but the grass roots growth of small and medium sized businesses that are slowly making things better. And some African governments are starting to help their local economies grow.

For example, much of Africa (or Asia for that matter) are small farmers.

You need government to help small farmers with subsidies to buy fertilizer and get high yield seeds for their crops so that they have a surplus to sell…and use the money to send one’s children to school.

Mary Kalika certainly thinks the subsidy policy makes sense. Ms. Kalika and her five children farm a little less than a hectare of land in this nine-house village in central Malawi. “We harvested 42 oxcarts of maize this year; that is the most ever for this land,” she said. “It’s very good news, and it’s because of the subsidized fertilizer.”

Ms. Kalika has already sold some of her surplus to buy seeds and tools to plant tomatoes to sell in town for cash. She may put a new roof on their house, and buy the children school uniforms if the tomato crop does well.

So in one generation, we will have two things: Farmers limiting families (because it’s expensive to send kids to school, and when there is enough food, all your kids live). But all those kids won’t keep farming. They’ll move to the city and get office or factory jobs.
So the next step for development: Once you have excess grain, you have to allow merchants to buy the grain, transport it, and then sell it elsewhere. So Malawi is selling surplus grain to Zimbabwe.

Such transportation takes an infrastructure, which again is the government’s job. One problem in the past was that roads were built, but not used. Now, a smart country will allow locals and businessmen to have input in to where to put the roads, getting the money from things sold overseas.

And the small farmers will of course benefit. People will have money to spend, so there will be a market for other things, such as bottled softdrinks, or a second dress, or red sandals, or headscarves, or a magazine.

Ironically, the best hope for a prosperous Africa in the future is China.

As people get a little extra money, people will buy clothing, plastic dishes, shoes, and all sorts of things that China is willing to sell and distribute cheaply to the world. China needs raw materials, but will work with local businesses to get their products into small rural shops…One of the undercovered stories of globalization is a China that sees plans as long term, and has a millenium of experience in trade, will invest in infrastructure, knowing the resulting prosperity will mean more customers in the future.

But in the short term, the greatest danger to African economic growth is actually the eco friendly emphasis on using things grown and manufactured locally.

Much of America’s “off season” fresh food comes from South America, thanks to NAFTA. Africa hopes to do the same, but is finding their crops blocked by the gospel of ecology:

“Fresh vegetables from Africa” have for several years been one of the main focuses of environmental and anti-globalisation activists…Already in 2003, airlifted baby carrots and garden peas from South Africa were highlighted in energy budgets of imported foods. For carrots, “it will have taken 68 calories of energy in the form of fuel to air freight each calorie of carrot energy,” while “fresh peas require approximately two and half times the energy to produce, package and distribute as those sourced locally,” the British daily ‘Guardian’ reported….

The dirty little secret, as the article points out, is that the same grocery stores that discourage imported African crops think nothing about selling subsidized European food to China.

Even Tesco, being concerned about CO2 emissions of transported foods, shows its real face when it comes to exporting from Europe. Only two weeks before its much-publicised marketing campaign on “carbon counting” labels, the UK retailer… announced the opening of ten supermarkets in China, where it will be selling popular European grocery products.

Sigh.

——————————-

Green revolution needed in Africa

NYTimes notes problems getting new high yield hybrid seeds into the hands of local farmers...

Developed with financing from wealthy countries and private foundations, the New Rices for Africa, or Nericas, are unpatented and may be grown by anyone. Yet there is a severe shortage of them in a region where both the private and the agricultural sectors are woefully undeveloped.

“This is a story repeated thousands of times all over Africa,” said Joseph Devries, who is the head of seed development for a joint effort by the Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations to jump-start farm productivity in Africa.

“You have farmers who are very willing adopters of new technologies and want to raise yields,” he added, “but are not getting access to seed, fertilizer and small-scale irrigation.” Finding a sustainable way to supply them with seed, he said, “is emerging as the holy grail for agricultural development.”

Here in West Africa, where rice is a staple crop, the African Development Bank is financing a $34 million program in seven countries to spur wider use of the new rice seeds. But the obstacles are daunting.

Farmers typically lack credit to buy seed and fertilizer. And the agricultural economy itself suffers from a lack of investment. Foreign aid for agriculture has plunged over the past two decades. And African governments — some, like Guinea, endowed with natural resources and cursed with corruption — have too often spent less of that wealth than they might have on rural development.

Decent roads to move crops to market are scarce. So are storage facilities to preserve harvests and crop insurance to protect farmers from drought, flood or bumper yields that perversely cause prices to collapse. All can wipe out the income farmers need to provide reliable demand to seed companies, making sale and distribution of the improved seeds a high-risk venture.

Across the region, a handful of private companies in Nigeria and Benin have begun to multiply and market the new rice varieties. Here in Guinea, where there is not a single seed company, the government is now working with farmers to expand the supply of Nericas seed.

Villagers here in Hermakono first enviously spotted the new rices growing in a neighboring community’s field. In 2006, after writing to Guinea’s Agriculture Ministry, they got their first small store of the seeds.

So precious were they that as the first crop grew heavy with grain, the villagers took turns standing watch in the fields. “We divided into small groups to guard it so nobody would steal even one stalk,” said Goulou Camara, a farmer.

,....

Tsvangirai embarks on mission to explain talks

From swradioAfrica:

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai is in the United States on the first leg of a two-nation tour of North America to appraise party supporters and pro-democracy groups on the progress made so far at the SADC led mediation talks.

Rocked by a backlash from its supporters and its partners from the civil society for supporting constitutional amendment bill number 18, the MDC leadership has been jolted into action to explain why it voted with Zanu-PF in Parliament a month ago.....

As a follow-up, the party dispatched its entire cabinet last week to meet with Mbeki’s mediation team and explain the need to either open up the talks, or alternatively give regular media briefings.

Hebson Makuvise, the MDC chief representative in the UK told Newsreel on Monday that Tsvangirai had several engagements in the United States and would fly to Canada for further consultations with both party activists and pro-democracy groups.

‘It is very important for the party to remain steadfast and focussed on the important job that lies ahead. ...

Mugabe admits Zim a "laughing stock"

from the UKTelegraph:

Zimbabwe a laughing stock, says Mugabe

By Sebastien Berger, Southern Africa Correspondent

Last Updated: 2:50am BST 09/10/2007

	President Robert Mugabe confiscated farms from white owners

The malnutrition that afflicts millions of Zimbabweans has reduced the country to a "laughing stock", President Robert Mugabe has admitted.

Distributing equipment to black farmers resettled on land seized from white owners, he said: "We have become the laughing stock because of hunger. We all need to eat, whether you are Zanu-PF or MDC. Let's unite."

Since Mr Mugabe began confiscating farms Zimbabwe has gone from being an agricultural exporter to a country where millions need food aid. He blames supposed Western sabotage for the situation, rather than his own actions.

An international court is to be asked to rule on the seizure programme. Papers filed with the Southern Africa Development Community Tribunal accuse Mr Mugabe's regime of illegal racial discrimination and violations of human rights...

---------------

Actually, I agree with land reform. But there are ways to do it that compensate families. Here in the Philippines, my husband's ancestral land was given to the workers, but we kept small farm plots. And his family were paid: not much, but enough to help pay school fees in university

White farmers in court: They grew food

from the UKTelegraph

Ten white farmers appeared in court in Zimbabwe yesterday accused of growing crops on their land — in a country where millions of people will need food aid within the next few months.

The case in Chegutu district, 70 miles southwest of Harare, exposes the perversity of President Robert Mugabe's policies. Commerical agriculture was the mainstay of the economy in the days when Zimbabwe was a food exporter...

The farmers, aged from 38 to 75, produce a variety of food from chickens to oranges and have already given two-thirds of their farms to the government for resettlement. All but one still work their remaining land intensively and say they intend to try to continue....

"The position is that food shortages or no food shortages, we are going ahead to remove the remaining whites," he said recently. "Too many blacks are still clamouring for land and we will resettle them on the remaining farms."

In fact many farms were given to members of the government and their cronies, and one minister has admitted that the new farmers have failed in their cultivation efforts.

------

South Africa rescues miners

from LA times

CARLETONVILLE, South Africa -- Some 2,700 gold miners -- some singing, some swearing, but most looking dazed -- were hauled from deep underground today as efforts continued to bring hundreds more to the surface after an accident crippled an elevator.

There were no casualties when a pressurized air pipe snapped at the mine near Johannesburg and tumbled down a shaft Wednesday, causing extensive damage to an elevator and stranding more than 3,000 miners more than a mile underground.

The trapped workers were bringing brought to the surface in a second, smaller cage in another shaft that can hold about 75 miners at a time. Most of the miners who emerged into the blinding sunlight looked dazed and exhausted, but there were no signs of injuries. The mineworkers union said 500 people were still trapped by evening.

"We nearly died down there," one man yelled as he walked past reporters. "I'd rather leave (the job) than die in the mine."

3000 trapped in South African mine

from aljazeerah

Amelia Soares, a spokeswoman for Harmony Gold, the world's fifth biggest gold producer, told Al Jazeera the workers at the Elandsrand mine in South Africa's Mpumulanga province, near Johannesburg were trapped after an electrical cable of a lift carrying workers to the surface snapped on Wednesday.

But Seshoka told Al Jazeera a water pipe had burst and probably caused the lift shaft to collapse.

Seshoka said: "It's a terrible situation. The only exit is blocked, probably by a fall of ground."

He added: "There is no contact at the moment. That is our greatest worry."

He said the miners were trapped in a cramped space where temperatures could reach 30 to 40 degrees Celsius.

NEWS AFRICA Tsvangirai calls for free polls

Morgan Tsvangirai has said he will not take part in national elections next year if the Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe continues political "repression" in the country.

"There is no point in participating in repressive elections if the environment is not conducive," the Movement Democraticfor Democratic Change leader told supporters.

But he said it was important to talk to Mugabe's Zanu-PF party "to create a free and fair election environment in this country" and denied allegations he had betrayed MDC supporters by making compromises with the ruling party....from aljazeerah

Mugabe a tyrant from the start

By James Kirchick
September 30, 2007
As Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, presides over what might be the most rapid disintegration yet of a modern nation-state, it has become de rigueur for journalists, politicians and academics to offer what has become a near-universal analysis: Mugabe, who has ruled his country uninterrupted for 27 years, was a promising leader who became corrupted over time by power.

This meme was popularized not long after Mugabe began seizing white-owned farms in 2000. Four years ago, in response to these raids, the New York Times editorialized that "in 23 years as president, Mr. Mugabe has gone from independence hero to tyrant." Earlier this week, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said that "I'm just devastated by what I can't explain, by what seems to be an aberration, this sudden change in character."

The characterization of Mugabe as a good man gone wrong extends to popular culture as well. In the 2005 political thriller "The Interpreter," Nicole Kidman played a dashing, multilingual exile from the fictional African country of Matobo, whose ruler was once a soft-spoken, cerebral schoolteacher who liberated his country from a white minority regime but became a despot. Mugabe certainly understood the likeness; he accused Kidman and her costar, Sean Penn, of being part of a CIA plot to oust him.

But this popular conception of Mugabe -- propagated by the liberals who championed him in the 1970s and 1980s -- is absolutely wrong. From the beginning of his political career, Mugabe was not just a Marxist but one who repeatedly made clear his intention to run Zimbabwe as an authoritarian, one-party state. Characteristic of this historical revisionism is former Newsweek southern Africa correspondent Joshua Hammer, writing recently in the liberal Washington Monthly that "more than a quarter-century after leading his guerrilla army to victory over the racist regime of Ian Smith in white-minority-ruled Rhodesia, President Robert Mugabe has morphed into a caricature of the African Big Man."

But Mugabe did not "morph" into "a caricature of the African Big Man." He has been one since he took power in 1980 -- and he displayed unmistakable authoritarian traits well before that. Those who were watching at the time should have known what kind of man Mugabe was, and the fact that so many today persist in the contention that Mugabe was a once-benign ruler speaks much about liberal illusions of African nationalism....



In 1984, Mugabe imprisoned Methodist Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who had won the 1979 multiracial election boycotted by Mugabe, for 10 months without charge, falsely accusing him of conspiring against Zimbabwe.

And over several years in the early 1980s, Mugabe executed what arguably might be the worst of his many atrocities, a campaign of terror against the minority Ndebele tribe in which he unleashed a North Korean-trained army unit that killed between 10,000 and 30,000 people.

Yet, even in the midst of these various crimes, Mugabe never lost his fan base in the West. In 1986, the University of Massachusetts Amherst bestowed on Mugabe an honorary doctorate of laws just as he was completing his genocide against the Ndebele. In April of this year, as the campus debated revoking the degree it ought never have given him, African American studies professor Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, who had been in favor of honoring Mugabe two decades ago, told the Boston Globe: "They gave it to the Robert Mugabe of the past, who was an inspiring and hopeful figure and a humane political leader at the time." Similarly, in 1984, the University of Edinburgh gave Mugabe an honorary doctorate (revoked in July of this year), and in 1994, Mugabe was inexplicably given an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II....