Flamboyant businessman Ginimbi has promised fireworks when he reopens his popular club Sankayi which will be operating under a new name, Dreams.
Ginimbi said party lovers were in for a treat as Dreams, like its name suggests, will be a lifestyle club.
With Sankayi being his first nightspot, Ginimbi said he had learnt a lot and learnt from past mistakes. As such, he is confident that he will change the entertainment scene, not only in Harare, but in Southern Africa with this new club.
In an interview yesterday , Ginimbi said he shut down Sankayi after he noticed he had made mistakes because he was a novice in the entertainment scene.
Dressing, Ginimbi said was of high importance at this club. He urged people to dress up when going to club there in order to avoid the embarrassment of being sent away by bouncers.
“When I opened the nightclub in May last year, it was my first time to run one. I realised all the mistakes that I had made from the setting up of the club and for us to fix all those mistakes, we needed to close the club and rebrand.
“We also decided to drop the Sankayi name because we didn’t want anything to do with it. The owner is the same, but the name has changed,” said Ginimbi.IHarare News
Claiming there are ongoing illegal sanctions, ZANU PF aligned War veterans have asked Government to pronounce the October 25 so called anti-sanctions day a public holiday after Sadc countries declared the day a solidarity event against sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe adding that modalities for the anti-sanctions day will be discussed at the Former Liberation Movements summit to be held in Victoria Falls next month.
Zanu-PF’s secretary for Welfare Services for War Veterans, War Collaborators, Ex-political prisoners, Detainees and Restrictees, Douglas Mahiya commended the SADC resolution and said this is an important day for the country.
“It would be very good for the day to be declared a holiday. If the President says that day is a holiday it means that industry, farmers, doctors and everyone must be supportive of that day.
“The day is very important, this is a day Zimbabweans should demonstrate how progressive they are because here is a whole region supporting Zimbabwe,” said Mahiya.
He described the opposition MDC-Alliance and its leaders as misguided elements who are bent on causing disharmony in a peaceful country.
“They are a clique of misdirected, politically immature people who still give the white man support to suppress the black Zimbabweans,” said Mahiya.
He also added that sanctions are not only a threat to Zimbabwe, but the region at large.
“Let’s talk about trade for example, Zimbabwe does not consume everything it produces and the same applies for the other regional countries, they produce surplus and that surplus has to be sold to other countries hence countries require a trade congruent where they meet and trade and sanctions have actually affected the region in that respect.
“We are pleased that at the end of the day the region is now satisfied that the fight against sanctions is real and affects everybody. Sanctions are a weapon of mass destruction and they are corrosive as said by the President before.
“Sanctions are meant to punish a nation in order for imperialism to take charge of the economy of that particular country,” he said.
Mahiya also highlighted that modalities for the anti-sanctions day will be discussed at the Former Liberation Movements summit to be held in Victoria Falls next month.
Zanu-PF’s Zaka East by-election candidate, Clemence Chiduwa, has said he is optimistic that the party will romp to victory in the poll slated for September 21.
Chiduwa who recently won the primary election will battle it out with Masvingo-based lawyer, Mr Derick Charamba (MDC Alliance), Mr Clemence Chavarika (NCA) and Mr Lazarus Mubango (FreeZim Congress).
The Zaka parliamentary seat fell vacant following the death of the incumbent Zanu-PF MP, Caston Gumbwanda, in June.
In an interview, Chiduwa said he was going to emerge victorious as Zanu-PF is the only people-centred party among those contesting. “People always want a political party which is people-oriented and it is only our party, Zanu-PF which has those qualities. Zaka East has always been our stronghold and that will not change.
“I am very optimistic that I am going to be the next MP for this constituency and I promise members that I will not fail them in doing my duties,” said Chiduwa.
He said the party had a major campaign rally over the weekend. “As a barometer, we had a campaign rally over the weekend which attracted
a bumper crowd. This obviously sent shock waves to other contestants, especially from MDC Alliance. “In actual fact, there is no room for opposition politics in Zaka and the whole province of Masvingo,” he said. Zanu-PF Masvingo provincial information and publicity secretary, Ronald Ndaba, said it is a foregone conclusion that the party would retain the Zaka East seat as it is a formidable political force.
“Holding the by-election is just a formality as the result will be obvious. No party will stand against Zanu-PF and that is the reason why you see the party winning seats, originally held by the opposition,” said Ndaba.
“We are sure that we will give MDC Alliance and two other contesting parties a drubbing, come September 21. That is our seat and we are going to retain it without any problem.”State media
By Tawanda S Dzvokora | In a press conference at the Zanu-PF Headquarters on August 19, 2019, Pupurai Togarepi, the 55-year-old Secretary of Youth in the Zanu-PF government accused US Ambassador, Mr. Brian Nichols, of meddling in Zimbabwe’s politics, encouraging demonstrations, sponsoring terrorists and aiding do called “violent” protests by MDC-A.
Tawanda S Dzvokora
These mischievous statements also come after State Media had accused the US ambassador to Zimbabwe of actively encouraging MDC officials to go ahead with Friday’s demonstrations and assuring MDC that the US would impose punitive measures should the government arrest or assault the protestors. The Zanu-PF government’s state media also alleges that there are three hands, US embassy officials, the MDC and civic society organizations that are engaged in planning to oust president Mnangagwa.
Firstly, Togarepi Pupurai at age 55 you are no longer a youth. In a normal party like the MDC after age 35 one is no longer a youth. However, we would understand, knowing that your party, Zanu-PF, is well known for geriatric leaders.
There is no second or third hand behind the peaceful demonstrations by the citizens of Zimbabwe. For over 3 decades your party has been digging its own grave and it is now almost done. If you refer to the Zimbabwe Constitution, Chapter 4, Part 2, Section 59, it says: *Every person has the right to demonstrate and to present petitions, but these rights must be exercised peacefully*. The people of Zimbabwe have been peacefully using demos to let the government know of their misery, torture from the government, hunger, no jobs, no running water, no electricity, no education, no money, no basic needs met, the collapse of industries and infrastructure. Zimbabweans are asking for political and economic reform. However, your illegitimate government has captured the armed forces and hapless real youths to react ruthlessly with live ammunition and baton sticks, killing and maiming citizens who are demanding their rights.
Your colleague, Home Affairs Minister, Cain Mathema, has warned NGOs to disclose their sources of funding or they will be deemed spy organizations and forced to close their offices. Disgusting. The people of Zimbabwe are grateful to NGOs because it is difficult to fathom what condition the country would be like without the NGOs.
Zanu-pf is the axis of evil, perpetuating suffering through plundering of the nation’s wealth, police and military brutality, abuse of citizens, including your relatives Pupurai, and denying them of their fundamental rights. The world has for decades watched your party strip Zimbabwean citizens of their fundamental rights, beat them up, maim, kill and destroy their property. It is necessary and important that the world knows that Mnangagwa and his ZANU-PF government including you Pupurai, are evil terrorists, lawless thugs, thieves, murders and a very selfish lot.
All the killings and injustices you pretend to be blind to will continue to set back and isolate the country in the eyes of the international community, Zanu-Pf’s own doing not by anyone’s hand. The USA you barked at in your statement is part of the international community your president Mnangagwa has been courting and wooing through lobbyists. What a confused contradiction!
Meanwhile, Zimbabweans are eagerly calling for and anticipating intervention by the international bodies in accordance with internationally agreed procedures of international responsibility to protect world citizens.
To use your words Pupurai, we know just as the sun will rise tomorrow that we shall soon be free from the heartless Zanu-PF government, including yourself.
MDC Youth Assembly notes with concern and aghast at the futile blame shifting attempts by one Pupurai Togarepi to shoulder peace loving citizens and MDC leadership blame while absolving ZANU PF youths, green bombers and the police on the violence that engulfed the streets of Harare last Friday.
In a long incoherent monologue, the 57 year old ZANU PF Youth leader, Togarepi exhibited quantums of ideological dissonance and mental deficiency by trying to sanitize a ZANU PF hand on the violence that was unleashed on innocent civilians by the ‘police’.
Togarepi’s reckless utterances mirrors a sore picture of the death and dearth of leadership in ZANU PF and the ripple effects of such has deleterious consequences on citizens.
It is quite regrettable that Zimbabweans have been robbed of quality leadership by an illegitimate looting conspiracy that tries so hard to force themselves on the people after stealing an election.
While Togarepi and cabal are now busy enjoying the loot that comes with illegitimacy, Zimbabweans from all walks of life including ZANU PF supporters are forced to bear the brunt that emanates from leadership failure of this fascist clique.
Maybe it is also important to unpack who is Pupurai before further debunking his lies and reckless utterances.
Here is a 57 year old grandfather who is also forcing himself on ZANU PF youths hence it is understandable that the only language he understands is violence.
As we alluded to earlier, Togarepi exhibits clear signs of mental deficiency, dissonance, incoherence and inconsistence!
This is the very same man who threatened a big pro-people political movement, MDC with extinction if the party was to go ahead with its plan to hold a peaceful demonstration on that fateful Friday.
True to his word, the world witnessed scenes of violence that has never been seen before as ZANU PF youths clad in police attire terrorized and brutalized unarmed and defenceless citizens on the streets of Harare.
Now one wonders has Pupurai quickly forgot his word that he made on the eve of demonstrations?
If so, then our problems as a people might be bigger than what meets the eye especially if this clique continue to impose themselves on us.
With such kind of rigid, rabid, dishonest, knavish scoundrels at the helms of power then it becomes easier for the common man to see why the economy is on a free fall!
Ancient Chinese wisdom has it that before hitting a dog sometimes it is important to look for its owner first.
It is not far fetched and mendacious for ordinary citizens to view Togarepi’s utterances as a reflection of Emmerson Mnangagwa’s deficiencies too!
There is a clear common denominator of pretence and falsehood that underlines the character of Mnangagwa and Togarepi.
From ‘New Dispensation’, ‘soft as wool’, ‘third hand to violence’ to ‘the economy is on a recovery path’ it is lies galore in Mnangagwa and Togarepi’s worlds.
Stephen Sarkozy Chuma MDC Youth Assembly National Spokesperson
Farai Dziva|Violence is not the solution to the political crisis in the country, Tatenda Maposa the director of Girl Child Empowerment of Zimbabwe has said.
Maposa called for political tolerance and castigated violence against women.
See Maposa’s statement:
PEACE BEGINS WITH YOU: NO TO POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND ABUSE OF WOMEN
As Masvingo residents we are saying no to politically motivated violence, no to looting and no to hate-
speech.
As Masvingo residents, we wish to reiterate that violence is not the solution to political problems.
Apart from leading to injury and infrastructure destruction,
violence breaks social cohesion and peace of the nation.
As Zimbabwe is currently faced by a huge economic turmoil and disagreements between
political parties, Zimbabweans must never allow political discourse to turn poisonous instead we
should all seek dialogue. We also believe that peace must begin with you and is extended to the next
person.
Politically motivated violence disturbs the lives of peace loving citizens and also endangers
the lives of those who have nothing to do with politics.
As Masvingo residents and Zimbabwean
citizens we urge all political party leaders to continue preaching the gospel of dialogue and peace to
their supporters. Political leaders must take lead in denouncing violence in any part of the nation.
Party
supporters must also take a leaf from unity which must be shown by their leaders. Violence itself, in
whatever form is not the best way forward and one can never use violence to advance one’s political
agenda.
Political differences mighty be there but, we are kindly pleading with all political parties to
swallow their pride, put the nation first and at heart and help each other to rebuild the nation. We do
not believe that politically motivated violence is the solution, we must desist from a situation whereby
young people are used as political weapons towards fueling political violence. As a province we are
eager to breed a peace loving generation which believes in peace and nation building. It is high time
our politics should be taken to the next level, where supporters of the victor and loser would be able
to sit down and share ideas, not exchange blows.
Our country has seen so much violence over the
past decades and it is high time political leaders should promote national peace, healing and tolerance.
At the centre of non-violence stands the principle of love.
As Masvingo residents, we believe that returning
violence for violence multiplies violence, adding the deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Farai Dziva|MDC-T vice president has said Zimbabwe is not a puppet nation such that external forces should not not interfere with the country’s internal affairs.
Gutu accused the United States of America of allegedly interfering in Zimbabwe’s domestic affairs.
“We respect the United States of America as a superpower and a global political force, but at the same time, the Americans and indeed, all other foreigners for that matter, should simply leave us to decide and determine our own destiny.
Just look at the havoc that American political interference has brought about in Venezuela. Zimbabwe might be a small country, but all the same, we are a sovereign and independent State and we don’t deserve to be treated like some satellite puppet state of the United States,” Gutu told a state run daily paper.
CAPS United have appointed Darlington Dodo as their new coach following the departure of Lloyd Chitembwe.
Makepekepe made the announcement on Tuesday and went on to post on their Twitter handle.
“Caps President, Mr Farai Jere said: At the moment coach Dodo is going to be responsible for the technical team. He is a qualified guy, he has got all the papers and it’s all about the the support.”
Dodo was assistant to Chitembwe who left to join Harare City.H-Metro
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) notes with concern the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Communique on the just ended 39th SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
In particular, the SADC Summit turned a blind eye to the deteriorating socio-economic situation, ongoing human rights violations, persecution of human rights defenders, suspension of the Constitution of the land and lethargy on comprehensive reforms.
The MDC is perturbed by the statement on Zimbabwe in the 36-paragraph SADC Communique issued Sunday following the regional body’s 39th summit of Heads of State and Government that ran from 17 to 18 August 2019 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The SADC Communique is gravely concerning not just about what it said but also about what it did not say about Zimbabwe.
On paragraph 14 of their Communique, SADC leaders report that “Summit noted the adverse impact on the economy of Zimbabwe and expressed solidarity with Zimbabwe and called for the immediate lifting of the sanctions to facilitate socio-economic recovery in the country”.
Other than paragraph 6 of the Communique that congratulates “Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe as Chairperson of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation”, nothing else is said about Zimbabwe.
It is disconcerting that SADC could congratulate Mr. Mnangagwa as the new head of the regional body’s organ on Defence and security at a time when Zimbabweans are suffering insecurity and defenselessness from the regime in power in Harare.
While SADC leaders are well within their rights to pronounce themselves on the sanctions issue, it is disappointing that they have a frozen and opportunistic narrative on the matter. There’s no difference between what they have been saying since 2001 and what they said yesterday, like a record stuck in a groove.
For SADC leaders, it is enough to make the news headlines by “expressing solidarity with Zimbabwe” and “calling for the immediate lifting of the sanctions to facilitate socio-economic recovery in the country”. This 18-year old stock-narrative no longer has an audience besides the SADC leaders themselves.
On sanctions, SADC leaders must speak through actions, not through convenient but hollow words for the media. Contextualizing sanctions over a year ago, in January 2018, Mnangagwa himself said, “Yes, sanctions are there, but we should not continue talking about them. We must have solutions and already we have solutions in agriculture, and this should cascade to all sectors”.
Given Mnangagwa’s position, SADC’s call “for the immediate lifting of the sanctions to facilitate socio-economic recovery in the country” is odd and out of step with the reality in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabweans have come to know that when SADC leaders want to ignore or distort the tricky crisis of illegitimacy in Zimbabwe, they wax lyrical about sanctions and express “solidarity with Zimbabwe”, while saying and doing nothing about the worsening plight of Zimbabweans.
Yet there can be no Zimbabwe without Zimbabweans.
Before its 38th summit in August 2018, SADC was confronted by military and police atrocities committed in Harare on 1 August 2018, in which six Zimbabweans were killed in cold blood and 35 others were critically injured by the Army and the Police. This was confirmed by the Kaglema Motlanthe Commission, an international body whose appointment SADC supported.
It is incredulous that the 2019 SADC summit was dead silent about the findings of the Motlanthe Commission and the failure and the unwillingness, by Mnangagwa’s administration to hold to account the army and police officers who killed six and injured 35 Zimbabweans on 1 August 2018.
Even worse, between 14 to 28 January 2019, at least 17 Zimbabweans were killed, hundreds tortured, some raped, by elements in the army, police, CIO and Zanu PF militia with thousands were displaced internally and externally in an unprecedented orgy of State violence that affected all major cities across Zimbabwe.
As in the case of the atrocities committed on 1 August 2018, in fact worse than in that case, no process of enquiry has been undertaken; and the State culprits are once again getting away scot free with impunity.
The January 2019 scenario was another major clampdown on citizens and was carried out resulting in 17 extra-judicial killings, 17 cases of rape and other violations of a sexual nature, 26 abductions, 61 displacements, 81 assaults consistent with gunshot attacks, at least 586 assaults, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment (including dog bites), and 954 arrests and detention (including dragnet detentions). Further, a record breaking 22 MDC and Civil Society leaders including parliamentarians and labor leaders face trumped up charges of treason and subversion.
On 16 July 2019, labor leaders received anonymous letters with bullets in a clear move meant to intimidate the labor movement against exercising their right to peacefully demonstrate and petition.
Where is SADC’s responsibility to protect? When will SADC, just for once, stand with the people of Zimbabwe and express solidarity not with Zimbabwe but with Zimbabweans?
Yes. Zimbabweans have had enough of a SADC that is always congratulating the President of Zimbabwe and expressing solidarity with the State but never addressing itself to the plight of the ordinary people brutalized by the State.
As SADC leaders were meeting in Dar es Salaam over the weekend, Zimbabwean State agents were busy abducting civil society and political activists; while the police and army were issuing illegal prohibition orders like confetti to deny citizens from holding peaceful demonstrations against the worsening economic hardships induced not by sanctions but by unprecedented corruption through rent-seeking schemes like command agriculture, fuel cartels and abuse of treasury bills by the ruling elite.
On the back of Zimbabwe’s crisis of illegitimacy, these hardships induced by corruption coupled with incompetence are causing multitudes of Zimbabweans to cross the borders into neighbouring SADC countries, notably but not only South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia. The consequences of the emigration influx on regional economies are too ghastly to contemplate, yet SADC leaders continue to bury their heads in the sand like ostriches, only to raise the heads when they want to pontificate about 18-year old sanctions while doing nothing about them in real economic terms.
The MDC reiterates that the root cause of Zimbabwe’s problems is political, being a crisis of governance. A legitimacy crisis.
The July 2018 elections further entrenched the legitimacy crisis through a fundamentally flawed electoral process that did not guarantee the will of the people. The 2018 plebiscite did not conform to the provisions of the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections and the African Union (AU) Declaration on the Principles Governing Democratic Elections.
The electoral process was marred by irregularities including a highly partisan and captured Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, lack of transparency in the electoral process including on the printing and storage of ballot papers and poor stakeholder engagement by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, a party-state-military complex, partisan conduct of traditional leaders, partisan distribution of food aid, widespread Intimidation, abuse of State resources, biased State media, an Electoral Law that is not aligned to the Constitution of Zimbabwe including the disfranchisement of diasporans and post-election violence. Such a flawed electoral process perpetuated the legitimacy crisis and is manifesting in the current socio-economic crisis, deteriorating human rights situation and lethargy.
Moreover, there was an outright fudging of the figures as demonstrated by the fact that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission revised downwards its own figures a record three times in a plebiscite SADC still held as credible.
The MDC urges SADC to urgently take note of the worsening situation in Zimbabwe as a threat to peace and security in the region and to recognize its responsibility to protect. We urge SADC to take the following specific actions:
Urgently be seized of the matter of Zimbabwe in order to address the multifaceted crisis and prevent further deterioration of the situation.
Urgently find a lasting solution to the Zimbabwean crisis anchored on facilitated and credible national dialogue.
Farai Dziva|The MDC has bemoaned the suppression of the will of the people by Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government.
In the statement MDC deputy spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka argues that the “Zanu PF regime will not suppress the will of the people forever.”
State effects a de facto ban on civilian politics
In light of the continued proscription of the people’s sacred right to freedom of assembly and expression, Zimbabweans are disheartened that all democratic space in the country has virtually been closed.
Rights have been taken away and democratic space has shrunk. As a people, in light of the national grievances affecting the nation, we have followed the law to the letter and spirit so as to allow ourselves to demonstrate peacefully.
Alas, there has been no appetite on the other side to allow citizens the full enjoyment of their democratic rights. In fact, there has been a de facto ban on the MDC and on civilian politics in the country. State-sponsored violence against innocent citizens has become the regime’s default setting.
The people are being subjected to State-sponsored terrorism while the State continues to foment acrimony between citizens and the law enforcement agents as characterized by the cat-and-mouse games between the citizens and those in authority in the various cities and towns. The sight in Gweru today of soldiers doing public drills in the town where a peaceful and constitutional march was supposed to take place is a case in point.
In the past few days, there has not just been a ban on civilian politics, but a de facto state of emergency. It is tragic that political gatherings and free expression, which have virtually been banned in Zimbabwe, are the very oxygen of politics. The proscription of the people’s fundamental rights is therefore a crude form of political asphyxiation.
Zimbabweans are suffering and have braved myriad national grievances that range from power outages, unemployment, fuel shortages, spiraling cost of living and a steep hike in basic education and health costs, among other issues. It is the view of ordinary Zimbabweans that the final and ultimate solution to the multi-layered crisis afflicting the country is a legitimate people’s government that can begin to address the concerns of the people.
We have seen in the past few days that POSA remains a problem while its successor, the Maintenance of Public Order Act, has dismally failed to enhance the people’s democratic rights. If anything, MOPA has been plucked from apartheid statutes and marks a major regression on the democratic agenda.
Put simply, MOPA is just but another POSA in a scarf!
It must be made clear that the prohibition orders that are being used to stifle and throttle democratic space are in themselves unconstitutional as they brazenly take away sacred constitutional rights and freedoms. As a people, we are sticklers to Constitutionalism and the rule of law.
Sadly, the people have gone to court but have received no remedy. Put simply, the people have found the remedies not available at the courts.
Ultimately, it must be understood that the people reserve their right to organize and express themselves. We have the people and we have the right.
MDC: Change that delivers.
Luke Tamborinyoka
Deputy National Spokesperson
Movement for Democratic Change
By A Correspondent- Figures released by the police show that no case of corruption has been recorded against cops in Manicaland since the beginning of the year.
Officer Commanding Manicaland Police, Commissioner Dr Wikleaf Makamache, made a stunning revelation that no corruption case had been recorded against his officers in the province so far this year.
He, however, quickly pointed out that this does to necessarily mean that everyone in the force was clean as some cases might go unreported.
Comm Makamache said the reduction in corruption cases was a result of the work being done by anti-corruption commission committee, regular checks and balances during deployments, close supervision by commanders and life style audits.
“It is not in doubt that corruption has wrecked havoc among individuals and institutions in this country and the ZRP has not been an exception,” he said.
“Probably as one of the most conspicuous arms of Government and in view of our key role in crime prevention and management, corruption included, we have endeared ourselves to ensure we lead by example.
“That our members have been cause of concern and cited in cases of corruption is no secret.
“As such, we commit ourselves to continue with and intensify the house cleansing in the same manner as we re-position ourselves to bring the scourge to a screeching halt amongst our people.”
He said in significantly reducing corruption the police was swiftly dealing with reported cases.
“We have taken a step further to decisively deal with any manifestations of the crime, once its occurrence is brought to our attention.
“Let me announce that we do not have any cases recorded so far in the province for the year 2019.
“Pleasing as this might be we remember that the cancerous effect of corruption among our officers is always lurking somewhere and as such we will keep our eyes wide open and nose on the ground for any unwarranted development. Over the years particular attention has been paid to areas that used to be hotspots and breeding ground of the scourge among our members.
“These included points of deployment like mobile and static roadblocks . . . we are of the opinion that measures employed in line with the zero tolerance to corruption stance have paid dividends.”-ManicaPost
By A Correspondent- A Malawi haulage truck driver was on Sunday night attacked by eight robbers in Headlands, Manicaland province, after his vehicle had developed a mechanical fault at night.
He said Mwiza Mukandawire (32), an employee of Almedia Transport Logistics, which is based in Lilongwe, Malawi, lost mobile phones, clothes and US$70, among other items.
Chananda said Mukandawire’s haulage truck, which was heading to Malawi, developed a mechanical fault at Eagle’s Nest shopping centre.
While he was attending to the fault, eight robbers armed with knives and hammers approached him.
They ransacked the vehicle and took most of his belongings and fled into the darkness.
Mukandiwire made a report at Headlands Police Station.- Newsday
By A Correspondent- Incarcerated traditional leader, Chief Nhlanhla Ndiweni has filed an appeal application against both his conviction and sentence at the High Court.
In a related development, Ndiweni’s 23 subjects whom he is jointly accused with of having vandalised property belonging to one of his subjects are also appealing against their 525 hours of community service sentence.
Ndiweni said that the court failed to recognise that he was empowered by law to banish subjects who would have violated customary law.
In his application, the traditional leader said:
“The court a quo erred in failing to appreciate that whatever the first appellant (Ndiweni) did was in the terms of which he subjectively believed was within his powers to do.
The court a quo erred in failing to appreciate that the Ndebele culture and customary law empower the first appellant to banish out of his jurisdiction any subject convicted of a customary offence. The court a quo erred in failing to appreciate that first appellant had a defence of a claim of right as provided for in terms of Section 236 and 237 of the Criminal Codification and Reform Act.
The Chief also contended that the punishment he was getting was rather not commensurate with the alleged crime considering that the damaged property was worth $300.
He wants the court to set the initial ruling to be set aside and be substituted with 24 months imprisonment of which six months will be suspended for five years and the remaining 18 months to be suspended on condition that he pays a fine of $20.-Newsday
By A Correspondent- Addressing the media in the capital Harare Tuesday, Foreign Affairs minister Sibusiso Moyo said the police was an independent organ of the state which dealt with situations using their own independent analysis.
He was responding to a question on government’s position regarding the recent statement by the EU diplomatic missions in Zimbabwe urging government to recognise and stop violating its citizens’ human rights including the right to peaceful protest.
This followed the brutal attack of peaceful protesters in Harare last Friday by the police which left scores nursing injuries
Said Moyo:
“Yes, i have just heard about it. But it is their independent position…. Sanctions are outdated as SADC, AU has said.
The police is an independent organ of the state which deals with situations as they would have accessed. Whether the ZRP used excessive force or commensurate force is always an issue that can be debated.. it is really a subjective matter.
By A Correspondent- A six year Nyazura child drowned in Mucheke River after slipping from a rock while playing with her friend on Friday last week.
Manicaland deputy police spokesperson, Assistant Inspector Luxon Chananda confirmed the incident to NewsDay yesterday.
He identified the deceased as Lorraine Mudyiradima (6).
Police said the minor had been instructed by her mother Janet Hariwu to collect a pair of shoes she had left earlier at the river, when tragedy struck.
Chananda urged parents and guardians not to allow children to play alone near large water bodies.-Newsday
By A Correspondent- Epworth residents have revealed that they are being charged RTGS$8 for 40 litres of water which is not enough especially for those with infants.
The residents have taken to doing their laundry in discarded holes with dirt infested stagnant water.
PRESS RELEASE: RESPONSE TO WESTERN MISSIONS’ JOINT LOCAL STATEMENT ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY
The Government of Zimbabwe has taken note of the Joint Local Statement issued on August 20, 2019, by the Heads of Delegation of the European Union, France, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom together with Heads of Mission of the United States, Canada and Australia (Missions) on human rights and freedom of assembly in Zimbabwe following illegal demonstrations staged by sections of the Zimbabwean opposition on 16 August, 2019.
The Government of Zimbabwe is taken aback by the judgmental attitude displayed by the Missions and the shocking partisanship informing the joint statement with respect to the situation in Zimbabwe.
The statement by the Missions fails to acknowledge that the High Court made a well-considered judgment on the legality of the demonstrations by the opposition MDC-Alliance after the Zimbabwe Republic Police- as the Regulatory Authority – proscribed the intended actions on August 16, through a Prohibition Order.
The effect of both the Prohibition Order and the High Court decision that upheld it was to render any and all activities associated with the planned demonstrations by MDC-Alliance on August 16, 2019 illegal,
We, therefore, note with concern that the Missions’ statement appears not to acknowledge this position of the law.
A disturbing suggestion from the statement is that our Courts should not have made the judgment and that illegalities were supposed to manifest and left unchecked.
We find it quite strange and bewildering and an offence on the principle of the rule of law that countries represented by the Missions want so much to preach about.
It is disappointing that we are presented with a statement that ignores the importance of upholding both the Constitution of Zimbabwe and the rule of law.
Our Judiciary sits as the arbiter in situations of conflict, and in this case mediating between a Regulatory Authority and constitutional freedoms of citizens in the face of a potentially violent and destabilizing demonstration.
A decision was made, which ought to have been respected by all. It is instructive to note that up to the point of the Missions’ statement being issued the Police were not in contempt of any court order regarding the issue of protests and demonstrations, neither had a suit of such nature brought forward.
For the foreign Missions to totally ignore the fact that the Zimbabwean Courts had spoken on this matter suggests a contemptuous attitude towards our institutions, including the Judiciary.
Government of Zimbabwe expects those countries committed to supporting the freedom of expression, association and assembly politically stable, economic stable and prosperous Zimbabwe to exercise impartiality and not to unduly interfere in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe in a way that promotes unrest and public disorder unless they harbor an ulterior motive. seen as facets for a politically stable and prosperous Zimbabwe- to exercise impartiality and not to duly interfere in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe in a way that promotes unrest and public disorder unless they harbour an ulterior motive.
Zimbabwe remains committed to carrying out reforms necessary for addressing the political, social and economic challenges in the country. In this vein, Government is open to engaging its partners in the international community on best ways of implementing the reforms.
However, Government believes that re-engagement and dialogue should be conducted in the spirit of mutual respect and should not be in any way prescriptive, coercive or manipulative.
Regarding national dialogue, the door remains open to all political players to converge in the national interest and this process is currently underway under the aegis of the Political Players Dialogue (POLAD).
This is a platform that remains open for the people of Zimbabwe to exchange ideas and craft a new inclusive political dispensation.
Issued by N. Mangwana Secretary for Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services
By A Correspondent- Finance Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube, has said that the government projects to have finished making major decisions by December this year so as to start focusing on other issues such as employment creation.
Speaking during an exclusive interview with Bloomberg News recently, Ncube said:
“What people are feeling is really wage compression and not hyperinflation. Prices adjusted instantly to the exchange rate, but wages have been too slow to catch up with the adjustment. The issue is about wage adjustment and I am a big champion of wage adjustment.
The big macro-economic decisions should be complete by year-end. In December, everything stops in terms of the big decisions. Beyond that, we focus more on jobs, growth, productivity and development.”
Ncube’s remarks come when the nation is in pain due to austerity measures which the government has put in place.
They also come when the ruling ZANU PF has been criticised for failing to fulfil electoral promises in its manifesto.
In his inaugural speech, President Mnangagwa promised the creation of “jobs, jobs, jobs” and “resuscitation of industry”, a pledge that was received by ululations and whistles from thousands of attendees.
The past twenty-four months have however recorded a sharp contrast to Mnangagwa’s promises as some major companies have been retrenching or closing.
The country is submerged in a myriad of challenges including power deficit that make it unconducive for business.
Therefore laying off of workers or closure of business has been one of the preferred options.-StateMedia
By A Correspondent- Bureaux de Change are reportedly becoming popular among residents of Bulawayo causing illegal foreign currency dealers to lose on business.
A survey by the Chronicle in the city on Monday revealed that some members of the transacting public prefer bureaux de change as they are safer than transacting on the black market.
A Bulawayo resident, Nobukhosi Moyo who spoke to the publication is quoted as saying that changing money at bureaux de changes is more discreet and safer. She said:
It is more discreet and safer. There is privacy and I have no fear that there could be someone following me.
I used to change on the streets but the problem with that is you could never trust the person you are dealing with.
Sometimes forex dealers connive with robbers and you can be robbed of your money soon after changing.
Despite the safety of bureaux de changes, some residents complained that service was slow. One Farai Makuvaza said:
I know that at the banks and bureaux de changes it is safer but the service is very slow. Too much paperwork for me to just change my money. In the streets it is swift and I do not need to wait until it’s my turn.
An illegal foreign currency dealer told the Chronicle that business has become less lucrative as competition from bureaux de changes has become stiffer. He said:
It makes it difficult to operate because we have to offer deals that are just as competitive but it is unsustainable. Our major business now is selling cash.
If someone wants bond notes in exchange for bank transfer or zipit, we offer the deals at a premium. The average rate is 30 per cent but it can go higher or lower depending on demand.
On Monday, some of the designated forex outlets were offering ZWL$10,4 and ZWL$7,4 per US$1 for electronic transfers and cash transactions respectively while on the streets, US$1 was being traded for ZWL$10,60 for electronic transactions and ZWL$7,5 for cash.
By A Correspondent| Zanu PF central committee member, Moses Gutu, is reported to have survived a suspected politically motivated attack by unknown assailants at his Mufaro farm in Nyanga.
While Gutu is said to have escaped unharmed, his wife Primrose Manyetu sustained deep cuts and a fractured hand with his son Kudakwashe also sustaining injuries.
The alleged attack is reported to have occurred 10:30 pm when a group of unknown people holding an axe, stones and petrol among other weapons wanted to kill him and family members as they tried to petrol bomb his house before breaking in.
Speaking after he had escaped from the attack,
Gutu said:
People holding axes threatened to kill me before I escaped using another door. I failed to identify the perpetrators of violence but I am traumatised by the attack. I strongly suspect the attack is politically motivated.
Reports suggest that the assailants attacked Gutu’s wife upon realising that Gutu had escaped using another door. Gutu’s wife confirmed the attack saying that the eight assailants seemed to have come for Gutu.
She also revealed that four of them entered the house while the others remained outside destroying windows.
Primrose also revealed that those who entered the house were the ones who attacked her and Kudakwashe before rushing away fearing that they will be caught in action.
Police are said to be already seized with the matter.-StateMedia
Veteran journalist Godfrey Majonga, alleged to have been forced by President Emmerson Mnangagwa to jump from a high rise building in 1987 during a clash over a woman, has died.
In post on its Twitter page on Tuesday, the Zimbabwe information ministry said, “We have learnt with sorrow and sadness the passing on of veteran broadcaster Mr Godfrey Majonga. Mr Majonga made immense contributions to the broadcasting industry as a broadcaster and later as the chairperson of the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC). May his soul rest in eternal peace.”
Addressing a Zanu-PF interface rally in Mashonaland Central in 2017, then President Robert Mogabe revealed that he had been told by Professor Jonathan Moyo, then Higher Education Minister, how Mnangagwa made Majonga jump from a high rise building.
Mugabe said when Mnangagwa found Majonga at the woman’s flat, he forced Majonga to choose between sitting on a red hot stove or jumping to his death from the third floor of a high rise building in Harare.
The former President said Majonga went for the “easy route” of jumping through the window of the flat.
In 2017, Majonga declined to comment on the incident referring journalists to the generators of the allegations.
By A Correspondent| Posters bearing the image of President Emmerson Mnangagwa plastered on the eve of Heroes and Defences Forces holidays in Marondera have been vandalised.
The posters were erected by ZANU PF youths to show solidarity with their party leader whose rein so far has been blighted by economic hardships that have driven the nation to despair and despondency.
Efforts to get a comment from the party’s leadership were however futile by the time of publishing.
A party youth who refused to be identified however told a local publication that he was not worried as the poster had served their purpose.
He said:
“The posters were erected during the Heroes holidays as we joined the President in celebrating the lives of the fallen heroes as well as the Defence Forces Day. The posters have served their purpose, hence some are now torn.”
By A Correspondent| A health hazard is looming in Ruwa with the Ruwa Local Board admitting that it is discharging raw sewage into Ruwa River due to a shortage of land dedicated for treatment of sewage.
Ruwa Local Board secretary Kumbirai Madanhi said that there is an urgent need for more land to avoid a health disaster. He said:
We have a challenge on sewer reticulation, it is flowing into the Ruwa River and we are having a geographical challenge.
It is a potential risk area which needs to be addressed, but unfortunately, we do not have land to use for that purpose.
… We have been putting pressure on the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, as well as the Ministry of Lands on the issue.-Newsday
AllAfrica.com|One Bilkis Banu Ismail has slapped a top Egyptian diplomat Ms Rania with a $1, 5 million lawsuit claiming she has used her position to destroy her marriage to Mahmoud Eid Ahmed Eid.
Ismail has approached the High Court with the summons after her husband of twelve years dumped her for the diplomat.
Her husband is now staying with Rania causing extreme tension in her family.
“The basis of the plaintiff’s (Ismail) claim is that the defendant is having an adulterous relationship with the plaintiff’s husband since 2018.
“The plaintiff has now lost the affection and companionship of her beloved husband as a result of the defendant’s (Rania) actions.
“The plaintiff because of the actions of the defendant is being deprived of her conjugal rights that used to be her preserve as the husband has actually moved in to stay with the defendant,” reads part of the summons.
Ismail also told court that she has suffered economic deprivation because of her husband’s divided attention since Rania is enjoying and benefitting from the couple’s sweat.
“The defendant is abusing her position as a senior diplomat to conduct the illicit liaison with plaintiff’s husband.
“The plaintiff believes that the marriage union is sacrosanct particularly in the Zimbabwean context as it is entrenched deeply in the country’s culture, tradition and religion,” wrote Mutatu, Mahuni legal practitioners representing Ismail.
Ismail also claimed that her standing in the community has been irreparably damaged because of Rania’s actions which have had the effect of humiliating and embarrassing her.
She claimed $1 million adultery damages and a further half a million dollars for loss of consortium and contumelia.
By A Correspondent| Analyst Pedzisai Ruhanya has accused President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration of selectively using the law to persecute political rivals.
His comments come after revelations by the Zimbabwe Anti Corruption Commission (ZACC) that the former Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko was on the run to evade arrest.
However Ruhanya described the current persecution of the opposition and imminent arrest of Mphoko as reflective that there was the selective application of the law.
He said:
“The current crackdown on opposition and attempts to arrest VP Mphoko. Two things: selective application of the law and the party/state/security complex = Animal Farm!”
FIRST LADY, Auxillia Mnangagwa has warned bakery owners against sabotaging the government’s economic turn-around initiatives by operating nicodimously and raising prices willy-nilly.
Speaking during the official opening of a women bakery project in Kwekwe on Sunday afternoon, the First Lady urged bakery companies to operate transparently and stop promoting black-market operations.
“I have heard a lot of grumbling with regards to bread prices, the bakery companies just charge some exorbitant prices, sometimes when I travel at night I see those big bakeries’ motor vehicles trading in some bushy roads and areas.
“Business should be done transparently in broad day night not nicodimously. That is highly unacceptable and it is against the government’s will,” said the First Lady.
The bakery project was established for women to gain knowledge and skills under the mentorship of Douglas Kwenda, who operates DCK Bakeries in Midlands.
“This bakery is run by Mr DCK but it is a project for women. They are the ones, who are supposed to gain knowledge and skills. I have also urged Mr DCK to employ local people.
“We realized that if there is no competition in business people tend to charge high prices but if there are competition products may be readily available at affordable prices,” the First Lady said.
First lady urged women and the young people to take a leading role in starting their own businesses and boost production which results in competition and lowering of prices.
During the same event Kwenda) pledged to work with the women and young people in the bakery industry and he urged local people to work on production to flood the market with affordable commodities.
“We have managed to increase competition in the bakery industry and people no longer buy bread on the black market because we have flooded the market with our special affordable bread.
“Let us continue to support each other and increase production so that prices of bread and other basic commodities may be affordable,” said Kwenda.
By A Correspondent- Addressing the media in the capital Harare Tuesday, Foreign Affairs minister Sibusiso Moyo said the police was an independent organ of the state which dealt with situations using their own independent analysis.
He was responding to a question on government’s position regarding the recent statement by the EU diplomatic missions in Zimbabwe urging government to recognise and stop violating its citizens’ human rights including the right to peaceful protest.
This followed the brutal attack of peaceful protesters in Harare last Friday by the police which left scores nursing injuries
Said Moyo:
“Yes, i have just heard about it. But it is their independent position…. Sanctions are outdated as SADC, AU has said.
The police is an independent organ of the state which deals with situations as they would have accessed. Whether the ZRP used excessive force or commensurate force is always an issue that can be debated.. it is really a subjective matter.
By A Correspondent- Following a brutal crackdown on MDC demonstrations by the police in Harare last Friday, the Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ) recently announced that it had shelved plans to picket at Finance minister Mthuli Ncube’s offices over their poor salaries.
The teachers last month announced that they would engage in collective action dubbed Pay Day Funerals as a way of putting pressure on the government to review their salaries.
in December last year, the teachers marched 275 kilometers from Mutare to Harare on foot protesting their poor salaries. They were harassed by the police and some of them detained before their arrival in Harare where they started picketing at the Finance ministry offices to present their grievances.
The latest action however saw the rural teachers resolving to start picketing at Ncube’s offices on pay days to push for interbank rate-pegged salaries and the protests were scheduled to begin yesterday.
During the Pay Day Funerals, the teachers in a statement said they would wear black as a sign of mourning their poor salaries and the death of the purchasing power of their incomes.
However, ARTUZ president, Obert Masaraure revealed in a statement that they had shelved the protests and rescheduled it to August 23.
The organisation attributed this to the recent relentless brutal crackdown of innocent men and women and the youths by the regime following the August 16 protests.
Said the ARTUZ in a statement:
The ARTUZ has resolved to postpone our Pay Day Funeral from 19 August to 23 August 2019.
This is in the wake of the Zimbabwe regime’s relentless brutal crackdown of innocent men, women and the youth of our beloved motherland – before, during and after the 16 August 2019 demonstrations – whose only ‘crime’ was a peaceful and constitutional desire for prosperity and freedom.
Such a shameful and brazenly callous response by the regime to the genuine cries and aspirations by the suffering masses of Zimbabwe, further exposes the heartless nature of those who are supposed to be our leaders and employers, thereby highlighting the urgent need for us all not to falter in our struggle for a better life, but instead to put on the whole armour of boldness and fearlessness in our quest for a dignified livelihood worthy of any human being.
The PayDay Funeral is just but one of the peaceful and constitutional instruments in our vast toolbox of options that ARTUZ has seen appropriate in urging our employers (the government of Zimbabwe) to finally award the plight of the long-suffering teachers the seriousness it deserves.
It is with shame that we have to resort to pressure our government to consider teachers as an integral part of any vision to develop the living standards of the people of Zimbabwe – as there can never be any knowledge without the teacher, and there can never be any economic prosperity without knowledge. Something that should have seemed obvious to any government with genuine intent on improving the livelihood of the people.
However, we find ourselves having to engage in never-ending struggles for teachers to finally receive recognition and appreciation that they deserve – and we urge all peace-loving progressive and caring Zimbabweans to unite in solidarity on 23 August 2019 as we mourn our meagre salaries, as our government further exposes its wanton disregard for our welfare and the survival of our families – thereby, betraying its general contempt for the people of this country.
Teachers merely demand a living wage in this age of of the ever-escalating cost of living.
A nation without a teacher is a nation without a future!
File picture of ZANU PF Members fighting each other
ZANU-PF Manicaland provincial committee member, Moses Gutu was on Sunday evening attacked at his farm in Nyanga by suspected fellow party members as intra-party violence continues to rear its ugly head in the province.
Gutu confirmed the attack, saying his wife and 14-year-old son were seriously injured and are currently admitted at Nyanga District Hospital.
“I am very sure that these are Zanu-PF members who attacked me and my family, not the MDC. They wanted to torch my house, they were pouring petrol around it and when I woke up they started destroying property,” Gutu said.
“My wife and child were attacked with an axe and sustained deep cuts and they were admitted at Nyanga District Hospital.”
Property destroyed has an estimated value of $5 000.
It is believed Gutu angered his fellow party members due to his outspokenness on under-utilised land and abuse of government farm inputs.
Gutu has been calling for the redistribution of idle land in the province. He says he believes if the land is given to people with resources and a passion for farming, they would utilise it fully and help turn around Zimbabwe’s fortunes.
He has also called for accountability in government-funded agriculture projects including command agriculture where inputs are reported to have been misappropriated.
Zanu-PF Manicaland provincial chairperson and Home Affairs deputy minister Mike Madiro, said the law would take its course.
“Gutu is an innocent soul. He is a citizen like any other with the right to life. Whoever has issues, there are amicable ways of settling (them) than to attack him and his family,” Madiro said.
“If they are Zanu-PF members, let me warn those perpetrators of violence, that this diabolic behaviour is unacceptable. The police are investigating the matter; once caught, the party is going to take drastic measures against them.”
Efforts to get a comment from Nyanga police were fruitless as their phones went unanswered.
An officer who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed that senior police officers had visited Gutu’s farm and had begun investigations.
Bloomberg|Zimbabwe will issue new notes and coins soon to replace the country’s quasi currency that was introduced three years ago in a failed attempt to counter a crippling shortage of cash and that’s pushed inflation to the highest rate since 2008.
The return to a fully fledged local currency exchangeable outside the country’s borders will be backed by an undisclosed amount of foreign-exchange reserves, gold and loans, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said in an interview on Aug. 15 in the capital, Harare.
A Treasury spokesman on Monday said it first needed to compile data on the country’s reserves before commenting on how much foreign exchange would be used to back the new currency.
“We already have our own local currency, but this will be the first Zimbabwe dollar notes which will trade at parity to the bond notes,” Ncube said.
The southern African nation abandoned the Zimbabwe dollar in 2009, after a bout of hyperinflation, in favor of a basket of currencies including the U.S. dollar and the rand. In a bid to deal with the subsequent cash shortages it introduced so-called bond notes, and RTGS$ in their electronic form, which aren’t accepted outside the country.
Ncube reintroduced the Zimbabwe dollar in June, accompanied by a ban on the use of foreign currencies. This led to a rapid erosion of spending power with the local dollar trading at almost 10 to the greenback. Bond notes were officially said to be at parity as recently as February.
By A Correspondent- Bureaux de Change are reportedly becoming popular among residents of Bulawayo causing illegal foreign currency dealers to lose on business.
A report by the state media claimed that some members of the transacting public prefer bureaux de change as they are safer than transacting on the black market.
A Bulawayo resident, Nobukhosi Moyo who spoke to the publication is quoted as saying that changing money at bureaux de changes is more discreet and safer.
She said:
“It is more discreet and safer. There is privacy and I have no fear that there could be someone following me.
I used to change on the streets but the problem with that is you could never trust the person you are dealing with.
Sometimes forex dealers connive with robbers and you can be robbed of your money soon after changing.”
Despite the safety of bureaux de changes, some residents complained that service was slow.
One Farai Makuvaza said:
“I know that at the banks and bureaux de changes it is safer but the service is very slow. Too much paperwork for me to just change my money. In the streets it is swift and I do not need to wait until it’s my turn.”
An illegal foreign currency dealer confirmed this and said that business was slower as competition from bureaux de changes had become stiffer.
He said:
“It makes it difficult to operate because we have to offer deals that are just as competitive but it is unsustainable. Our major business now is selling cash.
If someone wants bond notes in exchange for bank transfer or zipit, we offer the deals at a premium. The average rate is 30 per cent but it can go higher or lower depending on demand.
On Monday, some of the designated forex outlets were offering ZWL$10,4 and ZWL$7,4 per US$1 for electronic transfers and cash transactions respectively while on the streets, US$1 was being traded for ZWL$10,60 for electronic transactions and ZWL$7,5 for cash.
Farai Dziva|MDC-T vice president has said Zimbabwe is not a puppet nation such that external forces should not not interfere with the country’s internal affairs.
Gutu accused the United States of America of allegedly interfering in Zimbabwe’s domestic affairs.
“We respect the United States of America as a superpower and a global political force, but at the same time, the Americans and indeed, all other foreigners for that matter, should simply leave us to decide and determine our own destiny.
Just look at the havoc that American political interference has brought about in Venezuela. Zimbabwe might be a small country, but all the same, we are a sovereign and independent State and we don’t deserve to be treated like some satellite puppet state of the United States,” Gutu told a state run daily paper.
CAPS United have appointed Darlington Dodo as their new coach following the departure of Lloyd Chitembwe.
Makepekepe made the announcement on Tuesday and went on to post on their Twitter handle.
“Caps President, Mr Farai Jere said: At the moment coach Dodo is going to be responsible for the technical team. He is a qualified guy, he has got all the papers and it’s all about the the support.”
Dodo was assistant to Chitembwe who left to join Harare City.H-Metro
By A Correspondent| Opposition MDC Vice Chairperson Job Sikhala has raised the flag over the harassment and clampdown of party stalwarts in St Mary’s Chitungwiza by members of the ZRP PISI Department.
Sikhala said the security details, led by one Javangwe are terrorising party supporters as they are hunting them in a door to door operation.
He said:
The members of the ZRP PISI Department under the leadership of one Jabangwe are currently terrorizing members of the MDC in St. Marys.
Jabangwe is moving from house to house in St. Marys looking for our party members for no apparent reason or any logical explanation.
At the present moment, they have arrested Elizabeth Maengahama, wife to the MDC District Vice Chairman Big Chitengu.
She is currently detained at St. Marys Police Station enroute to the Law and Order.
The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights have swiftly and effectively responded to this gross human rights abuse by deploying lawyer Fred Michael Masarirevu to deal with the matter.
I urge all our party members to remain strong and vigilant during this time of attack by the enemy.
As your leadership we are here to be with you at all material and given time.
We strongly condemn the perpetration of terror against our membership in St. Mary’s, by the enemies of our people.
Farai Dziva|The MDC has bemoaned the suppression of the will of the people by Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government.
In the statement MDC deputy spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka argues that the “Zanu PF regime will not suppress the will of the people forever.”
State effects a de facto ban on civilian politics
In light of the continued proscription of the people’s sacred right to freedom of assembly and expression, Zimbabweans are disheartened that all democratic space in the country has virtually been closed.
Rights have been taken away and democratic space has shrunk. As a people, in light of the national grievances affecting the nation, we have followed the law to the letter and spirit so as to allow ourselves to demonstrate peacefully.
Alas, there has been no appetite on the other side to allow citizens the full enjoyment of their democratic rights. In fact, there has been a de facto ban on the MDC and on civilian politics in the country. State-sponsored violence against innocent citizens has become the regime’s default setting.
The people are being subjected to State-sponsored terrorism while the State continues to foment acrimony between citizens and the law enforcement agents as characterized by the cat-and-mouse games between the citizens and those in authority in the various cities and towns. The sight in Gweru today of soldiers doing public drills in the town where a peaceful and constitutional march was supposed to take place is a case in point.
In the past few days, there has not just been a ban on civilian politics, but a de facto state of emergency. It is tragic that political gatherings and free expression, which have virtually been banned in Zimbabwe, are the very oxygen of politics. The proscription of the people’s fundamental rights is therefore a crude form of political asphyxiation.
Zimbabweans are suffering and have braved myriad national grievances that range from power outages, unemployment, fuel shortages, spiraling cost of living and a steep hike in basic education and health costs, among other issues. It is the view of ordinary Zimbabweans that the final and ultimate solution to the multi-layered crisis afflicting the country is a legitimate people’s government that can begin to address the concerns of the people.
We have seen in the past few days that POSA remains a problem while its successor, the Maintenance of Public Order Act, has dismally failed to enhance the people’s democratic rights. If anything, MOPA has been plucked from apartheid statutes and marks a major regression on the democratic agenda.
Put simply, MOPA is just but another POSA in a scarf!
It must be made clear that the prohibition orders that are being used to stifle and throttle democratic space are in themselves unconstitutional as they brazenly take away sacred constitutional rights and freedoms. As a people, we are sticklers to Constitutionalism and the rule of law.
Sadly, the people have gone to court but have received no remedy. Put simply, the people have found the remedies not available at the courts.
Ultimately, it must be understood that the people reserve their right to organize and express themselves. We have the people and we have the right.
MDC: Change that delivers.
Luke Tamborinyoka
Deputy National Spokesperson
Movement for Democratic Change
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) notes with concern the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Communique on the just ended 39th SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
In particular, the SADC Summit turned a blind eye to the deteriorating socio-economic situation, ongoing human rights violations, persecution of human rights defenders, suspension of the Constitution of the land and lethargy on comprehensive reforms.
The MDC is perturbed by the statement on Zimbabwe in the 36-paragraph SADC Communique issued Sunday following the regional body’s 39th summit of Heads of State and Government that ran from 17 to 18 August 2019 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The SADC Communique is gravely concerning not just about what it said but also about what it did not say about Zimbabwe.
On paragraph 14 of their Communique, SADC leaders report that “Summit noted the adverse impact on the economy of Zimbabwe and expressed solidarity with Zimbabwe and called for the immediate lifting of the sanctions to facilitate socio-economic recovery in the country”.
Other than paragraph 6 of the Communique that congratulates “Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe as Chairperson of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation”, nothing else is said about Zimbabwe.
It is disconcerting that SADC could congratulate Mr. Mnangagwa as the new head of the regional body’s organ on Defence and security at a time when Zimbabweans are suffering insecurity and defenselessness from the regime in power in Harare.
While SADC leaders are well within their rights to pronounce themselves on the sanctions issue, it is disappointing that they have a frozen and opportunistic narrative on the matter. There’s no difference between what they have been saying since 2001 and what they said yesterday, like a record stuck in a groove.
For SADC leaders, it is enough to make the news headlines by “expressing solidarity with Zimbabwe” and “calling for the immediate lifting of the sanctions to facilitate socio-economic recovery in the country”. This 18-year old stock-narrative no longer has an audience besides the SADC leaders themselves.
On sanctions, SADC leaders must speak through actions, not through convenient but hollow words for the media. Contextualizing sanctions over a year ago, in January 2018, Mnangagwa himself said, “Yes, sanctions are there, but we should not continue talking about them. We must have solutions and already we have solutions in agriculture, and this should cascade to all sectors”.
Given Mnangagwa’s position, SADC’s call “for the immediate lifting of the sanctions to facilitate socio-economic recovery in the country” is odd and out of step with the reality in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabweans have come to know that when SADC leaders want to ignore or distort the tricky crisis of illegitimacy in Zimbabwe, they wax lyrical about sanctions and express “solidarity with Zimbabwe”, while saying and doing nothing about the worsening plight of Zimbabweans.
Yet there can be no Zimbabwe without Zimbabweans.
Before its 38th summit in August 2018, SADC was confronted by military and police atrocities committed in Harare on 1 August 2018, in which six Zimbabweans were killed in cold blood and 35 others were critically injured by the Army and the Police. This was confirmed by the Kaglema Motlanthe Commission, an international body whose appointment SADC supported.
It is incredulous that the 2019 SADC summit was dead silent about the findings of the Motlanthe Commission and the failure and the unwillingness, by Mnangagwa’s administration to hold to account the army and police officers who killed six and injured 35 Zimbabweans on 1 August 2018.
Even worse, between 14 to 28 January 2019, at least 17 Zimbabweans were killed, hundreds tortured, some raped, by elements in the army, police, CIO and Zanu PF militia with thousands were displaced internally and externally in an unprecedented orgy of State violence that affected all major cities across Zimbabwe.
As in the case of the atrocities committed on 1 August 2018, in fact worse than in that case, no process of enquiry has been undertaken; and the State culprits are once again getting away scot free with impunity.
The January 2019 scenario was another major clampdown on citizens and was carried out resulting in 17 extra-judicial killings, 17 cases of rape and other violations of a sexual nature, 26 abductions, 61 displacements, 81 assaults consistent with gunshot attacks, at least 586 assaults, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment (including dog bites), and 954 arrests and detention (including dragnet detentions). Further, a record breaking 22 MDC and Civil Society leaders including parliamentarians and labor leaders face trumped up charges of treason and subversion.
On 16 July 2019, labor leaders received anonymous letters with bullets in a clear move meant to intimidate the labor movement against exercising their right to peacefully demonstrate and petition.
Where is SADC’s responsibility to protect? When will SADC, just for once, stand with the people of Zimbabwe and express solidarity not with Zimbabwe but with Zimbabweans?
Yes. Zimbabweans have had enough of a SADC that is always congratulating the President of Zimbabwe and expressing solidarity with the State but never addressing itself to the plight of the ordinary people brutalized by the State.
As SADC leaders were meeting in Dar es Salaam over the weekend, Zimbabwean State agents were busy abducting civil society and political activists; while the police and army were issuing illegal prohibition orders like confetti to deny citizens from holding peaceful demonstrations against the worsening economic hardships induced not by sanctions but by unprecedented corruption through rent-seeking schemes like command agriculture, fuel cartels and abuse of treasury bills by the ruling elite.
On the back of Zimbabwe’s crisis of illegitimacy, these hardships induced by corruption coupled with incompetence are causing multitudes of Zimbabweans to cross the borders into neighbouring SADC countries, notably but not only South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia. The consequences of the emigration influx on regional economies are too ghastly to contemplate, yet SADC leaders continue to bury their heads in the sand like ostriches, only to raise the heads when they want to pontificate about 18-year old sanctions while doing nothing about them in real economic terms.
The MDC reiterates that the root cause of Zimbabwe’s problems is political, being a crisis of governance. A legitimacy crisis.
The July 2018 elections further entrenched the legitimacy crisis through a fundamentally flawed electoral process that did not guarantee the will of the people. The 2018 plebiscite did not conform to the provisions of the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections and the African Union (AU) Declaration on the Principles Governing Democratic Elections.
The electoral process was marred by irregularities including a highly partisan and captured Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, lack of transparency in the electoral process including on the printing and storage of ballot papers and poor stakeholder engagement by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, a party-state-military complex, partisan conduct of traditional leaders, partisan distribution of food aid, widespread Intimidation, abuse of State resources, biased State media, an Electoral Law that is not aligned to the Constitution of Zimbabwe including the disfranchisement of diasporans and post-election violence. Such a flawed electoral process perpetuated the legitimacy crisis and is manifesting in the current socio-economic crisis, deteriorating human rights situation and lethargy.
Moreover, there was an outright fudging of the figures as demonstrated by the fact that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission revised downwards its own figures a record three times in a plebiscite SADC still held as credible.
The MDC urges SADC to urgently take note of the worsening situation in Zimbabwe as a threat to peace and security in the region and to recognize its responsibility to protect. We urge SADC to take the following specific actions:
Urgently be seized of the matter of Zimbabwe in order to address the multifaceted crisis and prevent further deterioration of the situation.
Urgently find a lasting solution to the Zimbabwean crisis anchored on facilitated and credible national dialogue.
READ: Joint Statement by Diplomatic Missions in #Zimbabwe, including the UK
"Only by addressing concretely & rapidly these human rights violations will the Government of Zimbabwe give credibility to its commitments to address longstanding governance challenges"#ActiononReformpic.twitter.com/SWD4bGNn81
Opposition MDC has suggested that President Emmerson Mnangagwa must be taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC) over human rights violations. Do you think Mnangagwa must be taken to the ICC?
Farai Dziva|Owing to the crippling economic problems, the Zimbabwe Football Association has revealed that it has taken some measures aimed at reducing spending.
The local football body, which is facing financial challenges says the measures, will affect all national teams where players will have to travel by road for some games.
“The Association is currently implementing austerity measures, and national teams will travel by road when and where the trip doesn’t affect team performance.”
The women’s national teams that were taking part at the Cosafa tournaments in South Africa early this month were the first to be affected after travelling more 1000km from Port Elizabeth to Jorbug on their way home.
Farai Dziva| Spanish giants Real Madrid have reportedly made a £150 million offer to buy want-away Brazilian star Neymar from PSG.
The 27-year-old is in the midst of a battle between Los Blancos and Barcelona with both giants wanting to sign him and according to Spanish publication AS, the former have made a final £150 million plus James Rodriguez offer in exchange for the Brazlilian.
Barcelona are also pushing for Neymar’s return to Camp Nou to reunite with Leo Messi and Luis Suarez and have reportedly had a bid rejected by the French champions.
Farai Dziva|Knowledge Musona’s coach at Anderlecht Vincent Kompany has left the Warriors skipper in the cold.
Kompany, 33, who is also doubling as a player rejoined the Belgian giants at the start of the campaign and has picked just two points from their opening four games. He failed to beat modest opposition in Oostende, Mouscron, Mechelen and more recently to Kortrijk.
Ex-Anderlecht, Belgium and Sheffield Wednesday striker Marc Degryse is now accusing the former Manchester City captain of “thinking he is God”.
“Kompany is only human, besides being a good footballer – but I feel he thinks he is God,” said Degryse, according to The Sun newspaper.
“In the coming international break, a coach would normally have two weeks to work intensively with his squad.
“But Kompany will be off with Belgium to play San Marino and Scotland – before having his testimonial game in Manchester.
“Some people like to be busy, but they can become too preoccupied.
“Kompany should think about this. There are limits to everything.
“If another centre-back had made the mistakes he made he’d have been criticised – and Kompany would have dropped him for the next game.
“Of course Kompany shouldn’t retire from playing – but he has to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.”
Meanwhile, Musona had hoped to find his place in the Anderlecht squad following the appointment of Kompany, but the Zimbabwean forward remains out in the cold.
MDC Youth Assembly notes with concern and aghast at the futile blame shifting attempts by one Pupurai Togarepi to shoulder peace loving citizens and MDC leadership blame while absolving ZANU PF youths, green bombers and the police on the violence that engulfed the streets of Harare last Friday.
In a long incoherent monologue, the 57 year old ZANU PF Youth leader, Togarepi exhibited quantums of ideological dissonance and mental deficiency by trying to sanitize a ZANU PF hand on the violence that was unleashed on innocent civilians by the ‘police’.
Togarepi’s reckless utterances mirrors a sore picture of the death and dearth of leadership in ZANU PF and the ripple effects of such has deleterious consequences on citizens.
It is quite regrettable that Zimbabweans have been robbed of quality leadership by an illegitimate looting conspiracy that tries so hard to force themselves on the people after stealing an election.
While Togarepi and cabal are now busy enjoying the loot that comes with illegitimacy, Zimbabweans from all walks of life including ZANU PF supporters are forced to bear the brunt that emanates from leadership failure of this fascist clique.
Maybe it is also important to unpack who is Pupurai before further debunking his lies and reckless utterances.
Here is a 57 year old grandfather that is also forcing himself on ZANU PF youths hence it is understandable that the only language he understands is violence.
As we alluded to earlier, Togarepi exhibits clear signs of mental deficiency, dissonance, incoherence and inconsistence!
This is the very same man who threatened a big pro-people political movement, MDC with extinction if the party was to go ahead with its plan to hold a peaceful demonstration on that fateful Friday.
True to his word, the world witnessed scenes of violence that has never been seen before as ZANU PF youths clad in police attire terrorized and brutalized unarmed and defenceless citizens on the streets of Harare.
Now one wonders has Pupurai quickly forgot his word that he made on the eve of demonstrations?
If so, then our problems as a people might be bigger than what meets the eye especially if this clique continue to impose themselves on us.
With such kind of rigid, rabid, dishonest, knavish scoundrels at the helms of power then it becomes easier for the common man to see why the economy is on a free fall!
Ancient Chinese wisdom has it that before hitting a dog sometimes it is important to look for its owner first.
It is not far fetched and mendacious for ordinary citizens to view Togarepi’s utterances as a reflection of Emmerson Mnangagwa’s deficiencies too!
There is a clear common denominator of pretence and falsehood that underlines the character of Mnangagwa and Togarepi.
From ‘New Dispensation’, ‘soft as wool’, ‘third hand to violence’ to ‘the economy is on a recovery path’ it is lies galore in Mnangagwa and Togarepi’s worlds.
Stephen Sarkozy Chuma MDC Youth Assembly National Spokesperson
Farai Dziva|Violence is not the solution to the political crisis in the country, Tatenda Maposa the director of Girl Child Empowerment of Zimbabwe has said.
Maposa called for political tolerance and castigated violence against women.
See Maposa’s statement:
PEACE BEGINS WITH YOU: NO TO POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND ABUSE OF WOMEN
As Masvingo residents we are saying no to politically motivated violence, no to looting and no to hate-
speech.
As Masvingo residents, we wish to reiterate that violence is not the solution to political problems.
Apart from leading to injury and infrastructure destruction,
violence breaks social cohesion and peace of the nation.
As Zimbabwe is currently faced by a huge economic turmoil and disagreements between
political parties, Zimbabweans must never allow political discourse to turn poisonous instead we
should all seek dialogue. We also believe that peace must begin with you and is extended to the next
person.
Politically motivated violence disturbs the lives of peace loving citizens and also endangers
the lives of those who have nothing to do with politics.
As Masvingo residents and Zimbabwean
citizens we urge all political party leaders to continue preaching the gospel of dialogue and peace to
their supporters. Political leaders must take lead in denouncing violence in any part of the nation.
Party
supporters must also take a leaf from unity which must be shown by their leaders. Violence itself, in
whatever form is not the best way forward and one can never use violence to advance one’s political
agenda.
Political differences mighty be there but, we are kindly pleading with all political parties to
swallow their pride, put the nation first and at heart and help each other to rebuild the nation. We do
not believe that politically motivated violence is the solution, we must desist from a situation whereby
young people are used as political weapons towards fueling political violence. As a province we are
eager to breed a peace loving generation which believes in peace and nation building. It is high time
our politics should be taken to the next level, where supporters of the victor and loser would be able
to sit down and share ideas, not exchange blows.
Our country has seen so much violence over the
past decades and it is high time political leaders should promote national peace, healing and tolerance.
At the centre of non-violence stands the principle of love.
As Masvingo residents, we believe that returning
violence for violence multiplies violence, adding the deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
The Zimbabwe National Army Bomb disposal Squad and police were on Monday called to Bulawayo’s Emganwini Island suburb after residents stumbled on a bomb.
Police had to clear the mob as residents jostled to catch a glimpse of the explosive.
Bulawayo Police have since confirmed the development.
By A Correspondent- Following a brutal crackdown on MDC demonstrations by the police in Harare last Friday, the Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ) has revealed that the organisation has shelved plans to picket at Finance minister Mthuli Ncube’s offices to pressure government to review their salaries.
A fortnight ago, the rural teachers resolved to start picketing at Ncube’s offices on pay days to push for interbank rate-pegged salaries.
Dubbed Pay Day Funerals, the protests were scheduled to begin Monday with teachers urged to wear black as a sign of mourning their poor salaries and the death of the purchasing power of their incomes.
ARTUZ however said that they had set a new date for the protests.
Said ARTUZ leader Obert Masaraure:
“Due to the current instability in the capital, the proposed salary funeral (demonstration) at Mthuli Ncube’s offices has been shifted from August 19 (yesterday) to Friday August 23.
Masaraure reiterated that the postponement was a strategic decision taken by the rural teachers after last week’s ruthless crackdown on MDC protesters by riot police.
“It (postponement) was a strategic decision to remobilise and rebuild the momentum that has been destroyed by the cowardly violence perpetrated by the State against innocent citizens last Friday.”
Last year when ARTUZ camped at the Finance ministry’s offices making similar demands, the police rounded up the union’s leaders and locked them up.
However, Masaraure indicated there is no fear among teachers due to the previous actions by the police.
“Out of courtesy we notified the police and they guaranteed the safety of all protesters. At law we are exempted by the Public Order and Security Act in such a protest because it is an internal event. It will be ridiculous to find the police meddling in a labour dispute between an employer and employees,” the ARTUZ president said.
Last month, government gave a once-off $400 cushion allowance to all civil servants and expectations were that the amount would automatically be effected on this month’s salaries. However, the civil servants did not get the allowance, effectively pushing them deeper into poverty as the local currency continues to tumble against the United States dollar.
Masaraure said currently teachers were earning the equivalent of US$30.
Joint Local Statement On Respect For Human Rights And Freedom Of Assembly
The Heads of Mission of the Delegation of the European
Union, France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden and the United
Kingdom and the Heads of Mission of Australia, Canada and the United States of
America issue the following statement in Zimbabwe:
Intimidation, harassment and physical attacks on human
rights defenders, trade union and civil society representatives, and opposition
politicians – Prior to, during and following the demonstration in Harare on 16
August – are cause for great concern.
The Zimbabwean Constitution guarantees the right to personal
security from violence and prohibits physical or psychological torture. The
Heads of Mission urge the authorities to respect these fundamental rights, and
to hold perpetrators of violence legally responsible.
The Heads of Mission call on the authorities to respect the
constitutional rights to freedom of assembly, association and expression as
well as to peaceful protest, and urge all political party leaders and
supporters to abstain from threats and incitement to violence as well as acts
of violence or vandalism. The security forces must adhere to their
Constitutional mandate and exercise restraint and proportionality while
maintaining public order.
Only by addressing concretely and rapidly these human rights
violations will the Government of Zimbabwe give credibility to its commitments
to address longstanding governance challenges. The Heads of Mission reiterate
their calls for the implementation of the government’s political and economic
reform agenda, underpinned by inclusive national dialogue and increased efforts
to address the severe social situation.
By A Correspondent- A senior Egyptian diplomat seconded to Harare, one Ms Raina, has been taken to court by a local woman Bilkis Banu Ismail, who is seeking $1,5 million compensation in adultery damages after the former allegedly snatched her husband.
Through her lawyers, Laita and Partners of Marondera, Ismail recently issued summons against Raina citing her business address as the Embassy of Egypt situated at number 7 Aberdeen Road, Avondale in Harare.
In her declaration, Ismail said she has been married to Mahmoud Eid Ahmed Eid for more than 12 years. She accused Raina of having an adulterous relationship with her husband since 2018.
“The basis of the plaintiff (Ismail)’s claim is that the defendant (Raina) is having an adulterous relationship with the plaintiff’s husband since 2018. The plaintiff has now lost the affection and companionship of her beloved husband as a result of the defendant’s actions,” Ishmael said through her lawyers.
“The plaintiff, because of the actions of the defendant, is being deprived of her conjugal rights that used to be her preserve as the husband has actually moved in to stay with the defendant. The plaintiff believes that adultery is an act of sexual incontinence and the deliberate intrusion into her marriage by the defendant is an attack on her dignity as she is just an innocent party.”
Ismail also said, as a result of Raina’s interference in her marriage, she has suffered economic deprivation because her husband now has divided attention more so that Rania is enjoying and benefitting from the couple’s sweat.
“The defendant is abusing her position as a senior diplomat to conduct the illicit liaison with plaintiff’s husband. The plaintiff believes that the marriage union is sacrosanct, particularly in the Zimbabwean context as it is entrenched deeply in the country’s culture, tradition and religion,” the lawyers said.
Ismail further said her standing in the community has been irreparably damaged because of Rania’s actions, which have had the effect of humiliating and embarrassing her.
“The plaintiff has no other recourse except to approach this honourable court for expiation. Wherefore, the plaintiff’s claim against the defendant is $1 000 000 adultery damages and $500 000 for loss of consortium and contumelia, plus cost of suit,” the lawyers said.
By Own Correspondent- Bulawayo deputy mayor, Cllr Tinashe Kambarami’s photo after he was reportedly abducted and tortured has surfaced.
Tinashe Kambarami
His abductors reportedly used glass to shave his dreadlocks.
Kambarami was reportedly abducted ahead of the MDC Bulawayo demonstration that was scheduled to start at 1000 hours on Monday.
The demonstration was however blocked by the police.Cite@citezw quoted Councillor Arnold Batirai and posted:
MDC Provincial Youth Chairperson Cllr Tinashe Kambarami was allegedly abducted on Saturday night outside his residence. According to Cllr Arnold Batirai, Cllr Kambarami’s dreadlocks were shaved off using glass. He is receiving medical attention.
Compare with his old looks below.
Kambarami was in the news recently over the suspension of Bulawayo Town Clerk, Christopher Dube.
The deputy mayor suspended the Clerk citing the Clerk’s failure to address the water crisis bedevilling the city and also maladministration of public funds.
The suspension was however reversed 24 hours later by the Mayor, Solomon Mguni who argued that the suspension would cause despondency in the council.
Some commentators have since argued that the crisis in the city was tribal in nature.
Both the government and the opposition MDC have instituted investigations into the matter.-CITE
HARARE – Zimbabwe police deployed in force in the city of
Gweru on Tuesday, witnesses said, as authorities sought to keep a lid on
dissent after banning the third anti-government protest that the main
opposition party has sought to organise inside five days.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) planned
rolling mass demonstrations in different cities starting last Friday. It
accuses President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government of mishandling the
economy, which is facing its worst crisis in a decade, and repression.
The MDC said it would challenge the ban in court on Tuesday.
The party failed to overturn two previous bans on marches in Harare and
Bulawayo.
In Gweru, a central city, police patrolled on foot and in
lorries and also cordoned off a university, a local journalist told Reuters.
“There is a determined effort by the regime to ensure
that there is no more democratic space,” MDC national spokesman Daniel
Molokele said.
“They are also deploying a lot of military and police
in the streets… It clearly shows that the new government is even worse than that
of Robert Mugabe.”
The demonstrations are viewed as a test of Mnangagwa’s
willingness to tolerate dissent in a country tainted by a long history of
repression under his predecessor Mugabe.
But authorities are jittery following violent fuel protests in January that triggered an army crackdown that killed more than a dozen people.
Jane Mlambo| The Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services has confirmed the death of former journalist and television personality Godfrey Majonga.
News of Majonga’s death began circulating on social media this morning.
According to the Information ministry, Majonga was a commissioner in the Zimbabwe Media Commission.
“We have learnt with sorrow & sadness the passing on of veteran broadcaster Mr Godfrey Majonga. Mr Majonga made immense contribution to the broadcasting industry as a broadcaster & later as the Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC). May his soul eternal peace,” noted the information ministry on Twitter this morning.
By A Correspondent- The Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) has effected a new tariff system to encourage domestic consumers to make optimal use of electricity within a calendar month.
The system is designed to encourage conservation of power by ensuring heavy domestic power users pay more.
ZESA public relations manager Mr Fullard Gwasira said the move was in line with recently approved electricity tariffs.
“The Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company would like to advise its valued customers that it has now started implementing the stepped prepayment tariff for domestic consumers to replace the flat tariff of 14c/KWh which was previously in use for domestic customers.
“The flat rate tariff afforded customers of electricity a standard tariff for purchase despite the units purchased and the number of times customers bought electricity in the same month and thus wasteful and expensive for low poor users,” said Mr Gwasira in a statement. The stepped tariff is with effect from August 1.
“The prepayment tariff is designed to encourage practices, of conserving electricity to consumers, given the current power supply situation.
“The stepped domestic tariff electricity encourages consumers to use electricity more sparingly and efficiently and rewards them with a low tariff with heavy domestic power users having to pay more for higher consumption,” Mr Gwasira said.
He consumers to buy electricity units sufficient for their monthly consumption.
“Customers are thus advised to buy electricity units that are sufficient for their monthly consumption as any excess units would be charged at the higher tariff,” said Mr Gwasira.
In every calendar month customers, Mr Gwasira said, are afforded a lifeline tariff rate of ($0,06) $6,00 for the first 50kwh, which is enough electricity to power a two plate stove and five lights for a calendar month for a single-household with the next 150 KWh (51 to 200 KWh) in the same calendar month being charged at $0,30 ($30,00).
“The first 250 KWh are enough for the majority of domestic households. Any additional purchases in excess of 200 KWh with in the same calendar month, is thus charged at a higher rate of $0,40 ($40,00),” he explained.
He said that the lifeline tariff is enjoyed at point of the first purchases during any calendar month to cushion less privileged consumers.
“The reduced amount of electricity in kWh is due to the fact that the second purchase within the same calendar month is cumulative, and thus the customer would have exhausted the lifeline benefit for that particular month.
“In order to assist customer, prepayment vouchers will indicate how the units purchased are charged and the brands to which they belong, in compliance with the provisions as set by the regulator,” he said.
In addition, Mr Gwasira said the stepped tariff takes cognisance of the depressed power supply situation emanating from the law water levels at Lake Kariba and the need to conserve the available power and reduce imports.-StateMedia
There was much news and momentum when Prisca Mupfumira was arrested. After this, why have things gone dead quiet now? No more arrests by ZACC. Apart from a visit to Emmerson Mnangagwa’s nemesis, an obvious political enemy of the ZANU PF leader, Phelekezela Mphoko there is nothing else zilch!
Why, why?
We will know ZACC is serious when Obert Mpofu, Walter Magaya and others are arrested. Why is ZimEye not reporting on the deathly hush from ZACC and calling for more arrests?
Jane Mlambo|Former journalist and director of sports and Danhiko Godfrey Majonga has died.
While full details of his death are still sketchy, a local publication reported that Majonga died last night at 11pm.
Majonga became paralysed after allegedly took a jump through the window of the flat in Harare which led to injuries to his nervous system and spinal cord from blunt force trauma after landing on hard concrete.
MDC Youth Assembly notes with concern and aghast at the futile blame shifting attempts by one Pupurai Togarepi to shoulder peace loving citizens and MDC leadership blame while absolving ZANU PF youths, green bombers and the police on the violence that engulfed the streets of Harare last Friday.
In a long incoherent monologue, the 57 year old ZANU PF Youth leader, Togarepi exhibited quantums of ideological dissonance and mental deficiency by trying to sanitize a ZANU PF hand on the violence that was unleashed on innocent civilians by the ‘police’.
Togarepi’s reckless utterances mirrors a sore picture of the death and dearth of leadership in ZANU PF and the ripple effects of such has deleterious consequences on citizens.
It is quite regrettable that Zimbabweans have been robbed of quality leadership by an illegitimate looting conspiracy that tries so hard to force themselves on the people after stealing an election.
While Togarepi and cabal are now busy enjoying the loot that comes with illegitimacy, Zimbabweans from all walks of life including ZANU PF supporters are forced to bear the brunt that emanates from leadership failure of this fascist clique.
Maybe it is also important to unpack who is Pupurai before further debunking his lies and reckless utterances.
Here is a 57 year old grandfather that is also forcing himself on ZANU PF youths hence it is understandable that the only language he understands is violence.
As we alluded to earlier, Togarepi exhibits clear signs of mental deficiency, dissonance, incoherence and inconsistence!
This is the very same man who threatened a big pro-people political movement, MDC with extinction if the party was to go ahead with its plan to hold a peaceful demonstration on that fateful Friday.
True to his word, the world witnessed scenes of violence that has never been seen before as ZANU PF youths clad in police attire terrorized and brutalized unarmed and defenceless citizens on the streets of Harare.
Now one wonders has Pupurai quickly forgot his word that he made on the eve of demonstrations?
If so, then our problems as a people might be bigger than what meets the eye especially if this clique continue to impose themselves on us.
With such kind of rigid, rabid, dishonest, knavish scoundrels at the helms of power then it becomes easier for the common man to see why the economy is on a free fall!
Ancient Chinese wisdom has it that before hitting a dog sometimes it is important to look for its owner first.
It is not far fetched and mendacious for ordinary citizens to view Togarepi’s utterances as a reflection of Emmerson Mnangagwa’s deficiencies too!
There is a clear common denominator of pretence and falsehood that underlines the character of Mnangagwa and Togarepi.
From ‘New Dispensation’, ‘soft as wool’, ‘third hand to violence’ to ‘the economy is on a recovery path’ it is lies galore in Mnangagwa and Togarepi’s worlds.
Stephen Sarkozy Chuma
MDC Youth Assembly National Spokesperson
By A Correspondent- Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Nelson Chamisa is set to visit Moscow and Beijing to seek help in settling the political and economic crisis gripping Zimbabwe, Russia’s Sputnik news agency reported on Monday.
The situation in Zimbabwe remains tense since July 2018 when Chamisa refused to concede defeat to Emmerson Mnangagwa in a closely-fought presidential race, claiming that the result was rigged.
Zimbabwe’s economy has tanked, and economists say the country is not entering hyper-inflation after inflation peaked at 176 percent in July – the highest in over a decade. Western powers, on whom Mnangagwa had banked for debt forgiveness and fresh investment, have held back after the Zimbabwe government cracked down on protesters in August last year and January this year. Rights groups say two dozen activists were killed in the anti-government protests.
Most recently, the opposition had to call off its mass demonstrations in Harare and Bulawayo after police issued prohibition orders which the MDC says are unconstitutional.
In Harare last Friday, hundreds of protesters defied the decision, prompting the police to use tear gas and truncheons to disperse crowds. Nearly 100 people were arrested.
“The [MDC] president is open and has plans to travel to major international centres, including Moscow and Beijing, some capitals in Europe and the West, just to highlight the extent of the problem in terms of how the problem is man-made and how the problem is costing millions of lives and has threatened food security for millions of people,” Nkululeko Sibanda told Sputnik.
According to Sibanda, the economic situation in the country is unprecedentedly fragile.
“In just a few weeks, I’m told, we would completely run out of electricity. And we haven’t got money to buy electricity from other countries like we have done in other years when there was a drought.
“The situation has been made worse as in the last twelve months we have lost about $3 billion to corruption in one transaction. It means that the country doesn’t have money to pay for electricity, the country doesn’t have money to pay for food,” he argued.
Zimbabwe’s opposition believes that Mnangagwa’s government is not much different from the one of Robert Mugabe, who ruled the country for 37 years.
Along with blaming the incumbent government for pressuring the opposition, the MDC is also highly critical of the economic situation in the country, which is one of the poorest in the world.
By A Correspondent- Zimbabwe’s former vice president on Monday fled from anti-corruption after being tipped off that if he is detained, he will be injected with a poisonous substance.
Phelekezela Mphoko, 79, who served under long-time ruler Robert Mugabe, was due at the police in Bulawayo, the country’s second city, to record a statement on the allegations.
But he drove off as soon as officials from the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) approached his car.
“We had agreed to meet at the police post at the magistrate’s court to record a warned-and- cautioned statement and have his fingerprints taken but when our officials approached his car, he drove away at high speed,” ZACC spokesperson John Makamure told AFP.
“He is now a fugitive from justice,” the spokesperson said, facing accusations of ordering the release from police custody of a chief executive officer and a non-executive director of the state-run roads authority.
Mphoko was, along with current president Emmerson Mnangagwa, one of two vice presidents at the time of the ouster by the military of Mugabe in November 2017.
He left the country as the coup unfolded but later returned.
An attempt to arrest him by ZACC last week was blocked by his family.
ZACC tweeted Friday that it was “sad” that Mphoko had “refused to collaborate with the enforcement officers and unfortunate that he and those around him believe that they are above the law”.
Mphoko’s lawyer Zibusiso Ncube told the Voice of America’s Studio 7 that he met ZACC officials early Monday and they agreed that Mphoko would present himself to court. Prosecutors were not going to oppose bail, they had agreed.
But he said when they arrived outside court, he was approached by ZACC officers he had met earlier informing him that there had been a change of plan, and Mphoko was now expected to present himself at the Bulawayo Central Police Station to sign his “warned and cautioned” statement.
“That was a dramatic shift,” Ncube said. “One does not need to go to a police station to sign a warned and cautioned statement. The client was already concerned, he fears that these people want to kill him.
“I must emphasise that the client has no fear of going to court. We are prepared to have a trial if we are given the charge sheet, even tomorrow we are ready. We told ZACC we are ready. If it’s justice they really seek, we told them let’s get in court and conduct the trial. All they need to do is summon us and say your trial starts on such-such a day and we will be there, whether in Harare or Bulawayo.
“The client fears that if he leaves court, and he is in cells – whether prison cells, court cells or police cells – they will inject him with poison. That’s his fear.”
Ncube said he had written to ZACC chair Justice Loice Matanda-Moyo stating that Mphoko was not afraid of appearing in court or assisting investigations, since he had already given his statement.
“I told her that the change of goal-posts after our earlier agreement does not inspire confidence. It only heightens Mr Mphoko’s fears of foul play,” Ncube added.
“I told the ZACC chair that Mphoko is not fleeing the court’s jurisdiction, but he wants security.”
Ncube said the poison fears stemmed from information that Mphoko received from intelligence sources.
“He was informed that when the ZACC officers were leaving Harare, they were instructed to pick up a bag of potatoes, and use that bag of potatoes. That’s what the client has told me,” Ncube said.
He is the second high ranking member of the ruling Zanu-PF party under probe by the recently reconstituted ZACC.
Prisca Mupfumira, who was fired as tourism minister earlier this month, became in July the first high profile official to be arrested and detained for alleged graft. She is still in remand prison after being denied bail.
Following a brutal crackdown on MDC demonstrations by the police in Harare last Friday, the Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ) yesterday announced that it had postponed plans to picket at Finance minister Mthuli Ncube’s offices to pressure government to review the educators’ salaries.
A fortnight ago, the rural teachers resolved to start picketing at Ncube’s offices on pay days to push for interbank rate-pegged salaries. Dubbed Pay Day Funerals. The protests were scheduled to begin yesterday with teachers urged to wear black as a sign of mourning their poor salaries and the death of the purchasing power of their incomes. ARTUZ president, Obert Masaraure told NewsDay that they had set a new date for the protests.
“Due to the current instability in the capital, the proposed salary funeral (demonstration) at Mthuli Ncube’s offices has been shifted from August 19 (yesterday) to Friday August 23,” he said.
Masaraure reiterated that the postponement was a strategic decision taken by the rural teachers after last week’s ruthless crackdown on MDC protesters by riot police.
“It (postponement) was a strategic decision to remobilise and rebuild the momentum that has been destroyed by the cowardly violence perpetrated by the State against innocent citizens last Friday,” he said.
Last year when ARTUZ camped at the Finance ministry’s offices making similar demands, the police rounded up the union’s leaders and locked them up. However, Masaraure indicated there is no fear among teachers due to the previous actions by the police. “Out of courtesy we notified the police and they guaranteed the safety of all protesters. At law we are exempted by the Public Order and Security Act in such a protest because it is an internal event. It will be ridiculous to find the police meddling in a labour dispute between an employer and employees,” the ARTUZ president said.
Last month, government gave a once-off $400 cushion allowance to all civil servants and expectations were that the amount would automatically be effected on this month’s salaries. However, the civil servants did not get the allowance, effectively pushing them deeper into poverty as the local currency continues to tumble against the United States dollar.
Masaraure said currently teachers were earning the equivalent of US$30.
Opinion By Ibbo Mandaza|As undergraduates in our day, one of the most cynical commentaries on post-independent Africa was French writer, Rene Dumont’s book False Start in Africa (1966).
Those were the years of military coups and counter-coups, mostly in West Africa where Ghana’s first president and Pan-African luminary Kwame Nkrumah was deposed in 1966; or Nigeria in the coup of 1966 which subsequently led to the civil war (1967-1970) and its ill-fated Biafra; but also in North Africa when in 1969, the young Colonel Muammar Gaddafi deposed the Libyan monarch, Idris.
As in most such historical precedents in Africa or elsewhere, the term “false start” is a retrospective evaluation of an act usually premised on the necessity for change or revolution, and the associated and implicit expectations that tomorrow has to be better than today.
In the case of Zimbabwe’s coup of November 14/15 2017, the euphoric claims on the part of its architects and apologists, and even the expectations of a new dawn of political emancipation and economic prosperity, have been the subject of controversy, claims and counter-claims, from the very onset.
Exactly a year on since the coup, the evidence speaks for itself: it is back to the future (things from the past are being currently recycled, while packaged as though they are something new).
Political front
The incomplete implementation of the 2013 national constitution has become almost institutionalised to the extent that Zimbabweans have almost forgotten that ours is patently an “unconstitutional democracy” exacerbated by a coup which, by its very definition, is nothing but a coup.
Hence the burden of illegitimacy is one that threatens to bring President Emmerson Mnangagwa to his knees, sooner rather than later, and possibly through a similar agency as that which in the first place has placed him in this invidious position in history.
The hope that the July general elections would redeem him and his regime had turned out to be a pipedream, fading into a growing nightmare on the back of the massacre of innocent citizens on August 1 2018. This incident and its aftermath have only helped to highlight just how sick the Zimbabwean polity has been over the last two decades which we have in our previous writings characterised as the years of the securocratic state.
This is an establishment held together by a military apparatus, with its genesis in a liberation struggle that was essentially more militaristic than political or ideological, and one which has girded the post-Independence period, almost indiscernibly, until the reality of the coup on November 15 2017, and the killing of civilians on August 1 2018. So, if there is anything instructive to be extracted from the ongoing Kgalema Motlanthe Commission on the killings, it is this tragic reality: Zimbabwe is a military state, a securocratic state in which former president Robert Mugabe, and now his successor Mnangagwa, have been, at best, mere expedient symbols of it, at worst, a reflection of its authoritarianism.
It has to be recalled how Mugabe was conveniently and expediently installed as Zanu leader in Chimoio in January 1977 by the same military elements some of whom were implicated in the murder of the party’s external wing leader Herbert Chitepo and hundreds of comrades in 1975.
Fast-forward to November 2017, some of the actors who featured in the goings-on leading to the Chitepo assassination in Lusaka, Zambia, and events in Chifombo, eastern Zambia, in 1975 have become part of the civilian face of the coup which brought Mnangagwa to power before the disputed July presidential election.
As will be illustrated shortly, Mnangagwa is as dispensable, if not also an accidental candidate for the securocratic state for whom the November event was not about “restoring legacy”, as its architects claimed, but indicative of an advanced stage in the inevitable self-destruction and fall of Zanu-PF and its state.
As internal events in Zanu-PF now show, for this is a situation beyond retrieval; the party is facing an inexorable end in the final analysis even though it may appear that it has recovered and will renew itself. The tensions and looming potential clashes between Mnangagwa and one of his deputies, Constantino Chiwenga, cannot be taken lightly.
Indeed, the Zanu-PF of Mugabe is markedly different from the Zanu PF of Mnangagwa which not only lacks internal cohesion but is deeply divided over an unresolved leadership issue arising from the coup, its dynamics and conflicting expectations of its architects, hence the Mnangagwa-Chiwenga battle so soon after the coup.
While we will leave this for time to tell, the signs of a cracking edifice with collapsed pillars around it and a gradually sinking foundation are there for all to see. This is the reality of Zanu-PF now, which has been crumbling since its 2014 congress that dumped Joice Mujuru and scores of other high-profile party leaders.
The imminent Esigodini party conference is already characterised by fights behind the scenes as shown by the youths and provinces like Masvingo insisting Mnangagwa is the Zanu PF candidate for the 2023 elections, just over three months after he was controversially elected by a very thin margin. Chiwenga will not easily let go what he views as the military and his own personal project. This means the almost inevitable fallout between Mnangagwa and Chiwenga is going to be messy and will have a far-reaching impact on Zanu-PF and the nation as well.
Economic front
Here, the reality of failure is evident; its back to the future, for sure, as the economic nightmare of 2005-2008 slowly returns with a vengeance. The current news headlines around economic turmoil, cash and foreign currency shortages, the explosion of the black market and rising inflation speak for themselves.
So, if these problems remain as structural as they have been for the last two decades, then it was naïve to have expected a solution in the aftermath of the coup, let alone under Mnangagwa’s leadership and his “new dispensation” mantra “Zimbabwe is open for business”.
It was always a fallacy; a misleading notion, to have expected anything new from a man who has been part and parcel of the very system and leadership that is largely clueless on the economy, given to institutionalised profligacy, endemic corruption and unbridled patronage.
For the structural foundations of the economic malaise are almost synonymous with the political imperatives of the securocratic state: violence or the threat of it and, therefore, the need for a bloated state operations designed less in relation to the functions and operations of an average or normal government than, the objective of less policing regulating and intimidating its citizens; and the legacy of patronage, through which the party and state are conflated in a laager of self-defence and self-preservation, but at inordinate cost to the focus, and at the expense of prospective and potential investment in production, economic development and wealth creation for the country.
That is why Finance minister Mthuli Ncube’s austerity measures are already facing internal resistance.
Mnangagwa’s ascendancy
Therefore, Mnangagwa’s rise to power has to be understood in the context of the growing dominance of the securocratic state which, from its inception in 1980, he served as Minister of State Security up to 1988 formally, but in reality, embedded in national security issues throughout the period since he worked with Rhodesian Security supremo, Ken Flower and others like David “Dan” Stannard.
Essentially, Mnangagwa’s career is founded in historical circumstances in general and, as ironic as it may appear to some, on Mugabe in particular. For, hasn’t he gloated in years gone by as Mugabe’s “chosen son”? and still insists he was loyal to Mugabe to the very end.
Mugabe himself recalls how as a teacher in Zvishavane in 1945, Emmerson’s father seconded the little boy to live and cook for him (a detail which betrayed his age; he could not have been a mere three-year-old in 1945, but more likely seven or so!).
The relationship between the teacher and “son” was renewed during the prison years of the mid-1960s to the 1970s when Mugabe was serving in the beginning of his 10-year term of political detention that began in 1964, and with Mnangagwa, who had also been imprisoned for 10 years in 1965, following his involvement in that sabotage of a train in Masvingo (then Fort Victoria).
Even though Mnangagwa was freed and deported to Zambia in 1973, he would have benefitted politically from his brief but intensive association with the old nationalists that included, besides Mugabe himself, Ndabaningi Sithole, Maurice Nyagumbo, Leopold Takawira, Edgar Tekere, Enos Nkala and Morton Malianga on the Zanu side. Zapu nationalists were also in detention at the same time.
By all accounts, Mnangagwa appears to have disengaged almost completely from Zimbabwean politics on his release from prison, and subsequent return to Zambia where he enrolled at the local university to study law.
“He was now truly Zambian, either disenchanted with Zimbabwe and its politics, bitter at his experience in prison, or committed to his prospective career as a lawyer,” recalls a fellow Zimbabwean who was at the University of Zambia with Mnangagwa after his release.
Whether it was because of his marriage to Tongogara’s sister in 1974/75, or the political upheavals in Zanu following the Nhari Rebellion of 1974 and the subsequent assassination of Chitepo and other comrades in 1975, Mnangagwa re-engaged in Zimbabwean politics, albeit reluctantly and/or at least inadvertently in the late 1970s.
Besides, he was almost a victim of the Nhari Rebellion, witnessing as he did the miraculous escape of his brother-in-law Josiah Tongogara who had been the main target of the rebels that stormed Lusaka during the historic Unity Accords of December 1974; the process which saw the release from detention of the Zapu and Zanu leaders and concluded a unity pact by all the Zimbabwean liberation movements under the provisional leadership of Bishop Abel Muzorerwa.
Apart from his brief skirmish and the subsequent internecine conflict in Zanu — in which he might not have been an active participant, but nevertheless an associate — that saw the assassination of Chitepo in Lusaka on March 18 1975, and the related murders and executions of comrades at Chifombo, Mnangagwa remained somewhat outside mainstream liberation politics after prison.
Some of his detractors have variously accused him of consciously turning his back on the struggle supposedly refusing to join them as the Zanla combatants moved base from Zambia to Mgagao in Tanzania in late 1975.
In reality, however, the events in Zanu of 1975 left many a Zimbabwean, at home and in exile, despondent and discouraged about the future of the liberation movement.
So, if indeed Mnangagwa rebuffed the call to revolution, he was in the majority of those who were cautious, not least on the part of one who had come from jail and just commenced a career in law in Lusaka.
The circumstances under which Mnangagwa finally arrives in Mozambique in 1977 are less clear if not also controversial. One version is that he was an itinerant arrival to the struggle, hence the innocuous title, and even spurious functions, of the position he landed as “Special Assistant” to Mugabe at Chimoio in 1977: neither a member of the central committee/politburo nor a functionary in Zanla at the time. Mugabe last year tried to shed light on this at the height of his succession battle.
The other version is that he was recruited by Tongogara, the de facto Zanla commander in those heady days (and for whom Mugabe’s installation as leader was as prudent as it was expedient, following the events in which Chitepo was assassinated in 1975 and for which Tongogara was the main suspect) to “spy and monitor” the movements of a new leader about whom only a few in the guerrilla movement were either familiar with, let alone confident in.
Therefore, the version that it was Mugabe himself who chose Mnangagwa as his “Special Assistant” is less credible: Mugabe was in a very invidious if not vulnerable circumstances in 1977, certainly bereft of the authority to call the shots; and more recently, Mugabe himself has thrown aspersions on Mnangagwa’s political history, including the allegations about a surreptitious arrival in Mozambique of the man who became his “Special Assistant” in 1977, later Minister of State Security (1980-88), and his political confidante throughout the period they worked together.
A confidence so brutally betrayed, through Mnangagwa’s complicity in the November coup, so said Mugabe in an interview a few months ago and, more recently, as asserted by Jonathan Moyo in his interview in lawyer Alex Magaisa’s blog.
President by accident?
Whatever the case, it could only have been Mnangagwa’s political and personal association with Mugabe that could constitute the basis of his claim to succession to his “father”. Mugabe was Mnangagwa’s pedestal to power; hence he is the most ardent Mugabeist there is now in local politics, as ironic as it might be.
For, Mnangagwa does not feature at all in the annals of Zimbabwean nationalist politics, no more or no less than the average political actor in the history of the struggle beyond his sabotage activities, prison and late return to action. He is a mere shadow of even Mugabe himself, not to mention such giants of Zimbabwe’s history as those whose names characterise and punctuate it: whether it is Joshua Nkomo or Ndabaningi Sithole, Edison Zvobgo, JZ Moyo, Leopold Takawira or Chitepo. Not even in the category of Simon Muzenda, Joseph Msika, Tekere, Dumiso Dabengwa or Solomon Mujuru, among many other nationalists! He is at the same level as Sydney Sekeramayi, John Nkomo and others.
Therefore, it is doubtful that he would have arrived at State House through any other agency other than the coup. Even then this appears to have been accidental, not by design. For example, at the crack of dawn on November 15 2017, the real coup leader, Chiwenga was in charge. That is why he won’t give up the project easily. It may also not entirely be correct to say it is Chiwenga’s project either until we peel the onion that has been the coup.
Mnangagwa had fled a week earlier on November 6 2017, having been sacked as vice-president and facing imminent criminal charges over various issues as Mugabe and his loyalists besieged the man.
But Chiwenga had braved it all, literally; returned to Harare from China on November 12 at the threat of arrest; addresses a press conference the following day in the presence of his fellow commanders and virtually the entire military hierarchy, throwing the gauntlet at Mugabe and, in retrospect, settling in motion the coup that became a reality hardly 48 hours later. One mistake in this process, Chiwenga would have been history and, likewise, Phillip Valerio Sibanda, Sibusiso Moyo and whoever else wants to take credit for these events.
In retrospect, Chiwenga’s claim to State House was frustrated by a combination of technicalities associated with his status in the military, and diplomatic manoeuvres on the part of regional and global actors complicit in the coup.
So he could not have assumed the status of head of state while still in military uniform; that would have betrayed the reality of the coup, laying it bare for a predictable reaction on the part of not only the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and African Union (AU), but also the international community most of whose representatives sought to hide behind the lie that this was a “military-assisted transition” simply because, just like most Zimbabweans, they were tired of Mugabe.
In his recent interview with Magaisa in his Big Saturday Read blog, Jonathan Moyo reveals that Chiwenga almost turned his back on the coup, in favour of the process whereby Mugabe remained in office, pending the resolution of the succession question at the Zanu PF congress a fortnight later, hence Moyo makes the point that it was the conspiracy between some Zanu PF hawks and “key military elements” aligned to Mnangagwa that prevailed, forcing Mugabe to capitulate on November 20 2017.
Besides, as is now well-known, the British in particular (through its recently redeployed Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Catriona Laing), were not only sworn to Mnangagwa’s ascendancy, but will have liaised with both regional and global factors towards the sanitisation of the coup and ensuring their man got the crown.
In this regard, I recall my meeting with Laing in her office in Harare in June 2016 when she angrily retorted to our (the Platform for Concerned Citizens) proposal for a National Transitional Authority: “Ibbo, you are seeking to pre-empt Emmerson from landing the post he has been waiting for 40 years …”
With hindsight, it is now clear what that was all about. It may well explain why Sadc and the AU after the coup, as well as other bodies and the international community took the position they took on the coup, setting a wrong precedent not only for Zimbabwe, but for the region and Africa. What will they now say if the same thing happens in Zimbabwe again or elsewhere in the region or the continent?
Curing the coup
So from the very outset, Mnangagwa’s reign has been founded on shifting sands and the associated political and economic dynamics, with a high level of insecurity for himself, his regime, and Zimbabwe in general.
All this has been exacerbated in the aftermath of a disputed election and evidence that he is not popular is his own party which got a two-thirds majority while he only scraped through.
Hence, his political fortunes since the coup have been diminishing with the passage of time, not least because of the incipient power struggle between himself and Chiwenga; and increasingly by an unenviable economic environment whose political and social ramifications could be calamitous.
There was the expectation, especially on the part of both his supporters and those who genuinely believed he could engineer an economic miracle on the basis of which the coup would be cured or forgotten, and his political profile enhanced. That these expectations were both misplaced can be illustrated with reference to two factors which also describe the character and personality of Mnangagwa.
Enter Fanon
Analysis of the factors and processes attendant to the coup refers in the context of “the pitfalls of national consciousness” and a retreat to the ethnic laager.
To begin with, the revelation about the “key elements” in the military reference to whom Jonathan Moyo makes in his interview. Is it a coincidence that the main among them, namely Sibanda and SB Moyo, are not only former Zipra commanders, but also Karanga from Mnangagwa’s Mnangagwa’s “home” region, along with all the others that Tendai Biti describes so sarcastically as, “Sibanda, Moyo and Associates”, the ethnic alliance that has become a distinguishing feature of the Mnangagwa regime, especially the military-security establishment? Even his key appointments in government speak to that.
There is a related argument, posited less as an accusation than a justification, that such “ethnic collusion” as has been characteristic of Mnangagwa’s appointments across the state sectors — including such advisers that straddle the professions of economists, bankers, lawyers, medical specialists, and even writers and spin-doctors — is a Karanga response to three decades or more of Zezuru hegemony during the Mugabe era.
No doubt, ethnicity is, historically, a function of African nationalists’ politics. By definition, African nationalism is largely a “coalition” of ethnic factors mostly imagined than real, but nonetheless serving their purpose within a given timeframe or historical context.
However, the old nationalists like Joshua Nkomo or even Mugabe himself were much smarter than Mnangagwa in their management of ethnic politics. And indeed, this is how the likes of Julius Nyerere of Tanzania or Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia helped build their respective nations, as social formations in which ethnic politics was subsumed or rendered secondary to the nation.
There has not been any period in Zimbabwe’s post-independence history during which “ethnic collusion” has been as narrow and as blatant as it has seen over the last year since the coup. It might help to define Mnangagwa’s regime, but it is also inherently its weakness and vulnerability, reflecting as it does a level of insecurity on the part of the leader and, therefore, falling short of the status and stature of those nationalist giants that have graced our continent.
Burden of continuity
Among the negative ramifications of the securocratic state, as it has expressed itself first under Mugabe and now Mnangagwa ever since 2000 to the present day, has been the primacy of the “national security” axis in the state; or the reality of military dominance; especially ever since the coup. This renders the state incapable of reform, neither politically nor economically; it is difficult to reform without unbundling securocracy itself. This is the dilemma that continues to confront post-coup Zimbabwe.
Obviously, an election outcome in which an opposition candidate could have been declared the victor might have helped resolve this dilemma, in the opportunity for a new start in the Zimbabwean political and economic process. But, predictably, the securocrats would not allow it and, as they have done since the 2000 elections, subverted the democratic process that might have been the beginnings of a genuine transition. Chiwenga and others saved Mnangagwa from defeat by MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa, again reinforcing the point that without the military Mnangagwa would not have been President.
More significantly, August 1 killings were meant to put paid, at least for the time-being, to any such prospects, by pre-empting what indeed could have escalated into yet another November 2017-like uprising on the part of a populace so evidently frustrated and angry at the theft of their vote. Again without military intervention, Mnangagwa would have been stopped in his tracks.
Conclusion
So, in the meantime, it is back to the future, the persistence of only the illusion that a military state can reform, politically and lead the much-needed economic recovery and growth.
As appears more likely, only mass protests on a national scale might rescue the situation and herald the beginnings of a new era; or, as remains still remote, the emergence of an enlightened leadership within the establishment itself, courageous enough to cure the coup and return Zimbabwe to constitutional and democratic governance, push for meaningful economic and social reform and re-engage the international community to rescue Zimbabwe.
So far Mnangagwa has failed to measure up to such a task and expectations; it is most unlikely that he will ever live up to that, although he still has a window of opportunity to redeem himself and save the nation.
* Dr Mandaza is a Zimbabwean academic, author and publisher.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of ZimEye.com
Soldiers supporting the police in Lavender Hill on the Cape Flats in August 2011. Now soldiers with peacekeeping experience in the Sudan and DRC have been deployed. File photo. Image: Esa Alexander
What does it mean when a country resorts to military intervention in an attempt to address violence and criminal activity within its domestic sphere? Is this an admission of failure by the police to police?
Or a failure of the capacity of the judicial system to investigate, prosecute and convict where necessary?
What exactly is SA ineptly admitting to, here? These are the questions that come to mind when thinking about the deployment of over 1,000 soldiers to help quell gang violence and crime in the impoverished parts of Cape Town since last week.
Is there an expectation to ultimately end gang violence in the Cape Flats? Or is it a deliberate mechanism to silence residents into fear? What will happen after the army is pulled out of that community?
Is there an expectation of peace? Who will craft and design that peace? In a military intervention, there are always winners and losers. Who then will emerge as a winner? Who will lose? In my view, it is an uncalculated gamble. A zero sum game.
In essence, this militarisation fails to take into consideration the country’s historical context and realities. SA comes from a painful history of military presence in townships, especially during the 1960s-1970s, and the state of emergency in the 1980s.
Many still recall the trauma and violent nature of community life during apartheid, where the regime relied on the armed forces to maintain its control and squash any resistance.
It’s therefore seems less than prudent for the state, in 2019, to still consider military intervention as a plausible solution to quell the gang-related violence in the Cape Flats.
The resort to instilling fear instead of finding solutions to address pervasive societal ills, mainly caused by systematic inequalities, poverty and unemployment is of much concern.
In a country where violence has already been entrenched, such an intervention poses myriad challenges and risks. The military may actually sow more seeds of resentment, hatred, anger and violence in the same communities it is meant to serve.
When violence manifests, it does not only do so through the exchange of gunfire, but in other forms. These include rape, sexual abuse, domestic violence and murder.
Is SA ready to take itself to such a violent place again? The message here is that, like in the past, we will also use violence to deal with your violence and criminal activities. SA does not need this.
What the state is trying to achieve is a negative form of peace. According to Johan Galtung, the father of peace studies, negative peace refers to the absence of violence, while positive peace is about the presence of harmony that meets the different understanding and needs of a society.
What is needed as a long-term solution in the Cape Flats is not a negative state of peace, but positive peace. It is through engagement that solutions will be found with a committed state, looking for long-term lasting solutions.
Finally, as SA is in the process of finalising an implementation framework on UN Resolution 1325, which specifically calls for gendered responses to peace and security, the country cannot surely afford to lose the ball at this point.
Again, SA has officially assumed its seat as a nonpermanent member of the United Nations Security Council for 2019/20. This comes with a lot of responsibilities and expectations. Africa and the world are looking for sustainable solutions to violence.
Nonhlanhla is a gender specialist at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR). Follow her on Twitter: @Nonhlanhla17
NewsDay|ZANU PF leader Emmerson Mnangagwa’s trademark scarf became an instrument of death after a 29-year-old Chinhoyi man used it to hang himself following a domestic dispute.
Mathingson Gandawa, who was a staunch Zanu PF supporter, allegedly hanged himself at his home in White City suburb after a domestic dispute with his wife over allegations of extra-marital affairs.
The scarf, which has been popularised by Mnangagwa, was first worn by the First President of Zimbabwe the late Canaan Banana and former President Robert Mugabe.
However, while the two former Presidents used to wear the scarf at weekends during soccer matches, Mnangagwa has taken the scarf to business conferences, including the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland in January this year.
Emmerson Mnangagwa’s policies have left the country on its knees – and those who dare to protest are met with violence
By Fadzai Mahere| In the Shona language, Nyamavhuvhu (August) signals the end of winter. The strong winds carry away the frost as they usher in the warmth of summer. With the silent strength of a new season, public discontent towards President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s failing socio-economic policies sweeps across Zimbabwe, manifesting itself through mounting displeasure and the growing threat of civil unrest.
On the streets of the capital, Harare, a middle-aged woman lies unconscious on the asphalt. An uncanny silence hangs in the air, punctuated only by the sound of water cannons patrolling the street and a sea of riot police conversing in hushed tones with each other. The blue-helmeted police, a signature of the Robert Mugabe era, march in straight lines through the central business district. Businesses are closed. Thick clouds of off-white teargas fill the sky. An old, grey-haired man who is left behind by the fleeing crowd is kicked in the ribs by two police officers and dragged by his side. A young man who tries to assist the stricken woman is arrested and bundled into a police truck. Elsewhere, Red Cross volunteers attend to an old woman who has suffered injuries to her head after being beaten.
The protesters had gathered on Friday to express their anger at Mnangagwa’s rule. People are increasingly dissatisfied with the impact of failing economic policies, a broken public health system, the soaring prices of basic goods and the collapse of public services. They had been waiting in preparation for a protest march organised by the Movement for Democratic Change at Africa Unity Square, a garden in the heart of Harare. In this same garden, just a few years ago, Itai Dzamara stood as a lone protester calling for Mugabe to go.
The protesters could not access the square because the police had cordoned it off. Instead, they congregated on a main road adjacent to the square, patiently awaiting the outcome of a court challenge mounted early that morning. The court challenge sought to overturn a police ban that had been instated using the notoriously repressive Public Order and Security Act at the 11th hour, the night before the planned demonstration.
Protesters chanted songs similar to those sung during the liberation struggle. They sat in the middle of the road, in an act of peaceful protest. As they sat, a wave of baton-wielding riot police charged at them in an attempt to disperse the growing crowd. Many, including older people and women, who could not run away as fast as the more youthful protesters, were badly beaten.
The violent police clampdown is just the latest action in a tale of unbroken state repression that continues from Mugabe’s era. In the aftermath of the July 2018 election, the military killed at least six civilians as it drove army tankers through the streets of Harare to quell a protest. Similarly, in January this year, the army fired live rounds at civilians in the wake of a protest against the rising cost of living. At least 12 civilians lost their lives. The perpetrators have yet to be indicted or held accountable for the loss of life, despite a theatrical commission of inquiry launched by Mnangagwa in a bid to repair his already crumbling international image.
In addition to thwarting the freedom to protest, the repression by Mnangagwa’s government has been characterised by the partisan use of security services, tampering with judicial independence, the surveillance and intimidation of activists, sham trials of human-rights defenders, impunity for human-rights-violating security forces – and targeted beatings and abductions of human-rights activists and members of the opposition.
Mnangagwa’s promise of change and reform, much lauded by the UK and Europe at the time of Mugabe’s ousting, has proven to be a mirage. It was argued by the UK and some in Europe that Zimbabwe needed a “strong man”, a Paul Kagame-type figure, to drive economic reforms. However, on this front too, Mnangagwa has failed amid several negative economic indicators: official statistics claim that annual inflation surged to 175.7% in June, although economists project that the real inflation rate is much higher than this. The government has since suspended the official publication of inflation statistics. There have been shortages of food and fuel. There has also been a return to acute, daily power cuts, which often last for 18 hours, with power returning in the dead of night.
The government’s mantra that “Zimbabwe is open for business” has proven to be a hollow epithet, as foreign direct investment remains extremely low and local businesses continue to close shop in the face of a confidence deficit. Corruption remains rampant with little commitment to deal with the perpetrators and recover the looted funds.
Mnangagwa has failed at the most basic political reform. The mask has fallen away leaving in its stead a man more brutal and devoid of character than his predecessor. In the wake of his stewardship lies a country where individuals cannot afford a decent life and are punished for trying to register their growing discontent. It is time for the UK and Europe, who backed Mnangagwa, to stand with democratic forces and innocent, brutalised citizens – not a corrupt authoritarian regime incapable of reforming politically and economically.
Only then can the winds of real change sweep across Zimbabwe.
• Fadzayi Mahere is a Zimbabwean lawyer and politician.
The decision by Sadc member states to declare a day of solidarity with Zimbabwe in its drive against illegal sanctions is a significant victory in the fight against the embargo that has been in place against the country for close to two decades now.
In its communiqué at the just-ended 39th Sadc Heads of State and Government Summit in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, the regional body declared October 25 as solidarity day against illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe and resolved to conduct various activities in their respective countries on that day to resoundingly call for the immediate removal of the sanctions.
The Sadc secretariat was also tasked to take up the matter with the current African Union chairperson, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who will be expected to raise the issue at the upcoming 74th United Nations General Assembly in September this year.
Political analyst and Journalism and Media Studies lecturer at Harare Polytechnic, Mr Alexander Rusero said it was a positive development for Zimbabwe to have the whole bloc speak with one voice against the sanctions.
“It is in the nature of regional and international organisations to work through recommendation, cooperation and consensus as opposed to coercion and compulsion,” Mr Rusero said.
“It’s a diplomatic victory for Zimbabwe for the whole bloc to sing from the same hymn book as much as the anti-sanctions crusade is concerned. You have to realise that this milestone is happening 18 years after ZIDERA, which could mean that maybe the consensus on sanctions wasn’t there for almost two decades.”
MDC-T vice president Mr Obert Gutu echoed similar sentiments saying it was a welcome development that Sadc was singing in unison.
“Zimbabwe is a member state of the 16-nation Sadc bloc.
“As such, it is a huge and major diplomatic victory for the Government of Zimbabwe to obtain the total and unequivocal support of the entire Sadc bloc in calling for the removal of sanctions against Zimbabwe,” he said.
“Sadc has got a combined population of more than 250 million people, which is about a quarter of the entire population of Africa.
“What this basically means is that Sadc as a bloc and Africa as a continent are both in agreement that sanctions against Zimbabwe are unjustified and uncalled for and as such, these sanctions must be immediately removed.
“October 25 is thus going to be a historic day for all progressive and patriotic Africans not only on the African continent, but even for those living in the Diaspora.
“Sadc is speaking with one voice against sanctions that were imposed against Zimbabwe by the Western world, particularly the European Union and the United States of America. Sanctions have caused serious and untold socio-economic suffering to the majority of the people of Zimbabwe and as such, all sovereign nations of Sadc have agreed to escalate the fight against sanctions on Zimbabwe. Anti-sanctions Day on October 25 brings a clear and unequivocal message to the entire universe that maintaining sanctions against Zimbabwe is tantamount to gross human rights abuse and transgression against the innocent and toiling masses of Africa.”
Political analyst Mr Goodwine Mureriwa said the solidarity was a sign of Sadc member States to deal head-on with imperialism.
“Sadc’s unity and solidarity is unique in Africa since it has five out of seven countries (Algeria and Guinea- Bissau being the others) that fought bitter liberation struggles to dislodge colonialism.
“The collective declaration against sanctions is reflective of greater resolve to take action against the imperialist onslaught against Zimbabwe and all,” Mr Mureriwa said.
“The West cannot be seen to call for reforms here when it is them who should reform to align their foreign policies to the fundamental UN principles of non-aggression, non- interference in the internal affairs of other countries, respect for national sovereignty, equality and harmonious international relations.
“The rest of Africa and other progressive forces should add pressure to make it a global statement against the bullying of the weak by the powerful. These are acts of State terrorism, violation of human rights and international law and, therefore, a serious threat to World peace, stability and efforts towards development.”
In its communiqué of the Summit, Sadc said the embargo was militating against economic growth for both Zimbabwe and the region.
“Summit noted the adverse impact on the economy of Zimbabwe and the region at large of prolonged economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe and expressed solidarity with Zimbabwe, and called for the immediate lifting of sanctions to facilitate socio-economic recovery in the country,” reads part of the communiqué.
“Summit declared 25 October as the date on which Sadc member states can collectively voice their disapproval of the sanctions through various activities and platforms until the sanctions are lifted.”
It’s not yet clear whether the opposition MDC will push on with its planned protests after a Bulawayo Court upheld a police ban on demonstrations.
It was the second protest march police have banned in less than a week under what the MDC is calling its Free Zimbabwe Campaign.
The biggest question now is what does the MDC do next? Two protests, one on Friday in Harare and another in Bulawayo on Monday, were both banned by police. Both bans were upheld by the courts.
The opposition party said it wanted to have rolling protests with a protest planned for Tuesday. But given the ban by police and the courts, support has run out of steam.
The power situation has improved in Harare since Friday. But as prices continue to rise, it is unlikely to take the edge off public anger. The nation’s economic crisis has intensified, and citizens are dealing with rolling power cuts that last as long as 18 hours a day.
State Media|ZANU-PF yesterday commended Sadc for standing in solidarity with Zimbabwe against the Western imposed illegal sanctions after the regional bloc set October 25 as an anti-sanctions solidarity day for Zimbabwe.
The ruling party also congratulated President Mnangagwa on his appointment as Sadc chairperson for the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security.
Sadc leaders held their regional indaba in Tanzania over the weekend.
The anti-sanctions solidarity day for Zimbabwe means on October 25, countries in the bloc will conduct activities to resoundingly call for the immediate removal of sanctions.
In a statement, Zanu-PF national spokesperson Simon Khaya-Moyo saluted the regional bloc for standing with Zimbabwe against the almost two decades long illegal sanctions.
“The party salutes with great pride and humility the Sadc leadership, through the incoming Chair, His Excellency, the President of the United Republic of Tanzania, Dr John Magufuli, for standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Zimbabwe in the face of adversity from hostile forces and calling for the immediate removal of western imposed evil sanctions,” said Khaya-Moyo.
“These illegal sanctions have curtailed the economic development in the country for two decades and brought untold suffering to the people of Zimbabwe. On a special note, the party is eternally grateful and humbled by Sadc’s decision to dedicate the 25th of October 2019 as a day for collective expression of their displeasure at the continued imposition of sanctions on Zimbabwe. The decision is indeed reminiscent of the solidarity exercised by the founding fathers of our region in fighting settler minority rule under the banner of the Front Line States, recasting the epitome of our regional sovereign superiority, dignity and lasting interests.”
He said the gesture is an endorsement of Government’s engagement and re-engagement drive under President Mnangagwa’s leadership.
Khaya-Moyo said the developments shame the party’s detractors led by the MDC Alliance and its Western handlers who planned a violent demonstration in Harare to discredit the President.
“However, Sadc saw through this guise and once again stood in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe and her government. Zanu-PF notes with grave concern the involvement of some western countries in the failed MDC-Alliance demonstration and their continued interference in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe. The party is aware of the MDC-Alliance’s frantic engagements with hostile forces with a view to causing turmoil in the country, thereby rendering it ungovernable so as to create false impressions of a failed State. The people of Zimbabwe should take assurance that the ruling revolutionary party Zanu-PF will employ every lawful means towards fulfilment of their wishes and aspirations,” he said.
Khaya-Moyo said instead of grand standing, the MDC Alliance should join other progressive parties in the Political Actors’ Dialogue (Polad).
Meanwhile, Khaya-Moyo has said President Mnangagwa’s appointment as the chair of Sadc Organ on Politics, Defence and Security will further propel regional peace.
“The Zanu-PF Politburo, Central Committee and the entire membership extends hearty congratulations to His Excellency, the President, Cde ED Mnangagwa for the rectitude bestowed upon him and the great people of Zimbabwe.
It is with no doubt that the assumption by Zimbabwe of this position shall steer greater advancement towards consolidation of regional peace and stability,” he said.
Vice President Constantino Chiwenga is one of those who ignored the below warning by his predecessor Phelekezela Mphoko on Emmerson Mnangagwa.
In the warning, Mphoko speaking a year before the November 2017 coup, said Mnangagwa cannot be trusted and he must be stopped. Mphoko also said after Mugabe there will not be any trust in Zimbabwe. Mphoko said not even cats or dogs can trust Mnangagwa. DID CHIWENGA LISTEN?, AND WAS MPHOKO RIGHT? – FULL NARRATION
Timothy Mtambo being confronted by a police officer
Malawi is in terror. Suspected President Peter Mutharika’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) cadets on wee hours of Thursday petrol-bombed Human Right Defenders Coalition (HRDC) Chairperson Timothy Mtamba’s house.
The Maravi Post understands that the incident happened (2:30 am) on the eve of 15th August 2019.
In what started as a stone throw, reveals that unknown thugs primely suspected to be DPP Cadets invaded the house of Mr Mtambo with 5 liters of Petro Gallons and managed to throw two petrol bombs inside the house compound which have since damaged one of his cars.
“As we speak now one car has been set ablaze. Their intention was to burn the house as whole but their plan failed to materialize following a quick alarm by the security personnel.
“Another petrol bomb was thrown outside the gate in attempt to block Mtambo and his family from evacuating,” said the source at the scene.
Attempts to get hold of the suspected cadets proved futile as they escaped upon the incidence.
The incidence comes barely few weeks after there has been hinted overwhelming threats against Mtambo and his vocal Human Rights Defenders Coalition(HRDC) which has been organizing massive and collaborative demonstrations to force Jane Ansah Resignation following her alleged unprofessional conduct of the May 21st 2019 elections.
It comes not as secret as there have been several leaked social media news of suspected DPP cadets who have been planning to assassinate Mtambo.
Mtambo has been receiving death threats for a long time and for the past weeks threats have escalated because of his noble work in defending people’s rights in Malawi.
This also follows a series of similar attacks and threats issued against Human Rights Defenders in Malawi.
Mtambo remains among the relentless Human Rights Defenders who has stood firm to challenge impunity, corruption and other governance issues which the DPP led government has failed to address.
Investigations are under way to establish what transpired in the matter.
Meanwhile,Mtambo and his family escaped unharmed. It’s been a while that the DPP cadets have been asking and searching for the whereabouts of Mtambo.
The incidence is similar to the one in August, 2018 where the office of the Activist was petrol bombed which left a security guard heavily injured following the beatings by the thugs after he(guard) failed to disclose the direction of Mtambo’s home.
Activist Mtambo, is the chairperson of Human Rights Defenders Coalition(HRDC) and Executive Director of the Center for Human Rights and Rehabilitation(CHRR).
He is also the vice chairperson of southern African Human Rights Defenders Network.
There was no immediate reaction from DPP Spokesperson Nichols Dausi on the incident.
MC Statement on the incarcaration of Chief Nhlanhlayamangwe Ndiweni
The Collective learns with deep shock the sentence granted to Chief Ndiweni. MC feels sentence is very disapproportinate and believes that a lighter sentence was supposed to be given.
MC strongly believes that the institution of traditional leadership partcularly the Chiefs embodies sacred values and customs that must be respected by any government that respects cultural heritage of its citizens.
MC therefore urge lawyers who were handling the case to lodge an urgent appeal to the sentence considering that part of the accused group was granted far lesser sentence.
MC thus, stands in solidarity with the peoples of Matabeleland and the nation at large in calling for the freeing of the Chief Nhlanhlayamangwe Ndiweni for prison. Chief has been key in working with the Collective to advance developmental issues and particularly Gukurahundi as escapsulated in Matabeleland Collective Compendium.
MC calls for more solidarity with the Ndiweni family and the people from Ntabazinduna who going through this difficult time.
MC’s view is that his incarceration evokes bitter memories of Gukurahundi that almost wiped the entire Matabeleland region and Chief Ndiweni was unequivocal in calling for closure on the issue.
Issued by: Mbuso Fuzwayo on behalf of Matabeleland Collective a network of over 60 organizations working in Matabeleland.
