Zimbabwe: Outpost of Tyranny

Gordon Brown to Boycott the Euro-Afrique Summit in Lisbon if Mugabe Attends?

The European Union, under its newest revolving President, Portugal, is eager to put Europe-Africa relations high on its agenda, in part, it has been observed by some Africa-watchers, to counter the growing influence of China.

A fine aspiration, we say, except if it includes (which it does) an invitation to the man who is responsible for, oh, one or two million excess deaths during the past 10 years as a result of his disastrous policies and his ruthless targetting of dissenters.

That man would be Robert Mugabe, of course.

The Portuguese Prime Minister, Jose Socrates, currently president of the EU, said that he is "leaving it up to the African Union" with regard to whom "they" will invite. 

Come on, Socrates, this is your event, not the A.U.'s and no amount of sleight of hand--such as giving the invitiations for all of the African heads of State to A.U. chief John Kufuor in Ghana and telling him "to decide"--can relieve you of your responsibility as host to make sure probable future war crimes defendants are not on the invite list. 

Nor will such maneuvers obscure his essentially invertebrate, gutless position.  Talk about the soft underbelly of Europe.

Three cheers, however, to Gordon Brown for showing some backbone.  According to an article in today's Times of London, Brown warned his Portuguese counterpart against a Mugabe invite during a recent meeting at 10 Downing Street. 

Brown apparently will do the only thing he could do if Mugabe does attend, and that is boycott the December summit himself.

Who Gives a Damn about Mugabe?

The editors of the Taipei (Taiwan) Times rightly call the Vatican on the carpet for not being more vocal in its criticism of Mugabe (who is a Catholic, by the way), while the editors salutes the courage of one Zimbabwean prelate:

"Yet there is one courageous Catholic, Archbishop Pius Ncube, who has shown himself to have the stuff of heroes -- unlike his religious masters and most of the rest of the world's governments -- by putting his life on the line in calling for international intervention to remove Mugabe and his thugs from power."

Pope Benedict did speak about Zimbabwe in his Easter Epistle, following the release by the Zimbabwean Bishops of a pastoral letter that was a stern indictment of Mugabe and his henchmen. 

Parting Shot from U.S. Ambassador Christopher Dell to Mugabe's Rogue Regime: We Will Expell your Children from the U.S.

All I can say is that it is high time the children of senior regime officials were expelled.  The Standard (Zimbabwe) has the story this morning:

"It is estimated that more than 300 children of government and Zanu PF officials are enjoying "First World" health services and education abroad.

In contrast, their counterparts, mostly children of poor, often unemployed and marginalised Zimbabweans, are dying in hospitals because of an acute shortage of drugs."

Give 'em Hell, Dell!  You will be missed!

Update on our Injured Night Guard

He went to a downtown clinic today to have an x-ray of his skull/head.  His son is back in school.

Brother aganist Brother, Locking Kids out of School, Physical and Psychological Abuse.

Those are among the effects of Robert Mugabe's war against his own people.

Three vignettes illustrating the human cost of Mugabe's war on the poor:

1.  A friend and gardener/handyman who works for us approached me on Monday to inform me that when he came back from Church on Sunday, he found his savings ($140.00 U.S.), 3 pairs of trousers and 2 pairs of shoes (his only ones) missing.  Sunday evening, he got a call from a friend of his brother--the brothers had been living together at the gardener's place but he, too, had gone missing--to tell him "not to be too upset when he finds something missing at home".  According to the garderer, he could hear his brother telling the friend what to say over the phone.  The friend explained that the brother had taken the money and clothes in order to attempt to flee Zimbabwe, via Beitbridge and across the Limpopo river, to South Africa.

2. Two separate examples of children being locked out of school: the person who guards my house at night told me yesterday that his eldest son (age 11) was barred from school on Monday becasue the "top-up" (periodic increases in tuition necessitated by the hyer-inflationary environment) of $1.5 million Zimbabwe Dollars (around $12.00 U.S. at prevailing parallel market exchange rates) had not been paid.  A colleague at work, who is raising the two children of his wife's sister (both parents of the children are deceased), was suprised to see his wife's 16 year old niece show up at his door step last week (she attends a boarding school around 120 KM outside of Harare). That child, too, had been barred from school for non payment of the "top-up" for tuition.

3. The same night guard mentioned above, and about whom we blogged in March (after he was brutally beaten in the township area where he lives, Chitungwiza, when he was unable to produce on demand a ZANU-PF membership card for a gang of youths in the pay of the ruling party) told me when I arrived home last night that he needed to see the doctor again because the left side of his head where he was beaten with a metal bar had begun swelling again and blood had been pouring from his nose.  Tendai (the name I'll give him, not his real name) has also been subdued and depressed-seeming since the attack on him, probably collateral emotional damage.

In these cases, the victims were able to hunt down the money necessary from family or friends to get new shoes, pay the "top-up" or see a doctor but many victims are not.

Genocide (Silent and Invisible to Most of the World) is Well Underway in Zimbabwe.

We posted last January in this blog on R.W. Johnson's devastating article in the Times of London on the human impact of Mugabe's policies, in particular, of the impact of his campaign of repression against anyone who dares to raise his voice in opposition.  The title of that post was "Two Million Person Missing in Zimbabwe", a reference to Johnson's estimation that there may be that many Zimbabweans (he admits that we lack the hard data to be sure of the exact number) who have died prematurely--what epidemiologists call "excess mortality"--during the past 10 years or so as a direct or indirect result of Mugabe's policies.

Other bloggers also noticed Johnson's shocking piece and commented on the "Invisible Genocide."

Then in March, we posted on a second article by Johnson, published in the London Review of Books, in which, as we said at the time, "the Cape Town-based writer expands on the argument he made in a January article in the Sunday Times of London, which consisted of saying that there is a silent genocide underway in Zimbabwe."

A few days later, we posted on the James Kirchick piece appearing in the American magazine, "The New Republic," entitled "Killing Them Softly; Africa's Other Genocide."  We said that:

"The author follows the same line of reasoning presented by R.W. Johnson in his recent essays (and he quotes from Johnson), and one that the authors of this blog also adhere to, which is that as a result of what we have called a combination of "malign neglect" and repression (destruction of the agricultural sector; denial of food assistance to opposition areas of the country or those that are perceived to be hostile to the ruling regime; destruction of the homes and businesses of at least 700,000 urban dwellers--affecting "indirectly" another 2 million persons; pursuing a campaign of repression including arrests, intimidation, organized violence and torture against pro-democracy movement; and driving at least 3 million persons into exile), Mugabe's policies have directly resulted in increases in mortality rates that translate to at least 2 million extra deaths since 1999."

Today, another Times of London reporter, Christina Lamb, reporting from inside Zimbabwe, picks up on Johnson's (and our) argument in an article entitled "Zimbabwe's Silent Genocide."

Lamb echoes Johnson's assertion that even if we do not have the data to know precisely the numbers of "missing" Zimbabweans, that we do indeed know that the results of undernutrition, psychological stress and mental illness, forced relocation and the resulting homelessness, have been catastrophic increases in mortality during the pst 10 years, especially among those suffering from other illnesses including HIV and AIDS.

"Nobody knows how many have died of hunger. But doctors in Zimbabwe say the population’s chronic malnutrition, combined with HIV, leads to the onset of full-blown Aids far faster than anywhere else in Africa..."

"There are other effects too. All the children I speak to are much older than their size would suggest, and a recent study found that more than one in three people in Harare suffers mental disorders. The main reasons were inability to find food and having belongings taken away by the authorities."

Read the whole article on the invisible, silent genocide in Zimbabwe.

"The Crushing Stampede for Basic Commodities."

The Financial Gazette Newspaper has an article this week describing the impact of price slashing on the availability of basic commodities, comparing the effects to those of the Great depression in the U.S. in the 1930s:

"During the American depression in the 1930s, which hit after the United States had become a rich and powerful nation, millions were out of work and according to one account, 'Falling prices and incomes all added to mass misery'.

An observer wrote: 'One vivid, gruesome moment of those dark days we shall never forget. We saw a crowd of some fifty men fighting over a barrel of garbage which had been set outside the backdoor of a restaurant. American citizens fighting for scraps of food like animals ...'

Until last weekend I had never thought a scene like that would ever be seen in Zimbabwe, let alone involve me. I also never fathomed that Harare, the country's once gleaming capital city, would be the setting for such a degrading experience. But alas, after the government embarked on its populist but totally unrealistic clampdown on supermarkets and service providers to slash prices, which have been escalating in tandem with the record-breaking inflation of almost 5 000 percent, I and fellow cash-strapped Zimbabweans found ourselves behaving like animals. We pushed, shoved and shouted, all in a bid to get our hands on items whose prices had been slashed.

It is a degrading way of shopping for basic commodities for which ordinary Zimbabweans still pay through the nose even after the "robbing Paul to pay Peter" government decrees. It was only once I was out of the shop clutching the two packets of rice for which I had thrown all decorum and dignity out of the window to obtain, that I realized this heavy-handed state approach was not sustainable. I am not an economist, but even I can figure out that the shop owner who was forced to sell me two packets of rice at a loss will not have enough capital to make his next order of the commodity and it will disappear from the shelves. This is an objective economic reality that the government seems determined to alter by decree."

I had a similarly degrading experience on Thursday when I went to the local garage to pick up my car and pay for the new battery I needed.  I had been told earlier in the week that the battery would cost 14 million Zimbabwe dollars (around $100 U.S.) but I was presented with a bill for 7 million ZImbabwe dollars.  The garage had been visited by the price police during the week and the owner warned that he would be shut down if he also did not slash his prices by 50%. The garage owner told me that he, also, would not have sufficent capital to make his own next order if the pricing regime continued to be enforced. He had procured the battery from a supplier in town who had also had imposed on him the price controls.

The whole"FinGaz" article is here.

Overheard at a Restaurant Last Evening: "I am Really Afraid for the First Time."

Since there is no meat, bread, eggs, milk, salt, sugar, rice cooking oil to be had in the supermarkets, and since I have the possibility to pay, last night, I went out for dinner to a local restaurant called "Mama Mia's", an Italian-Greek place situated in the northern suburb of Newlands.

A trio of middle-class white Zimbabweans were seated adjacent to our table and I overheard the middle-aged woman confiding to her 2 dinner companions that she was "really afraid for the first time."

She recounted how she had spent the morning sojourning from one grocery store to the next across the city looking for bread and meat (unsuccessfully), and how, the week before, she had been witness to a grocery store melee led by armed soldiers forcing the shop owner to slash all prices by 50%.

"A Warning" from Eddie Cross on What May Come as a Result of the Economic Crisis: Not Business as Usual Anymore.

A Warning

I hope nobody thinks that next week will be business as usual. This week the private sector has gradually wound down its operations. The retail sector – most retailers carry stock for a month approximately, are the last to shut down but already you can see empty shelves and shortages of all the fast moving basic items are now widespread.

Butcheries and bakeries that work on stock levels of about a week are already closed as their stocks ran out. The same with filling stations. Manufacturers must work with quite significant stock levels – especially of imported items and they will run these down and then close unless there is a U-turn on the part of the government and new directives which are half reasonable.

There are no signs as yet as to what the State will do when this shutdown occurs. But all that we are seeing and hearing right now are threats and an insistence that this situation is going to be maintained for some time.

The most immediate problem is the very basics – fuel for transport and the essential foods, maize meal, rice, bread, meat and milk. By Monday all of these will be virtually unobtainable. Farmers with pigs and poultry are pondering what to do with their animals as they run out of stock feed, dairy farmers also face huge problems as they cannot pay their feed bills and must start winding down – how do you tell a cow in milk, used to being milked three times a day, that she must stop producing?

Hundreds of thousands of workers and non-formal sector businesspersons are being faced with no work and are being forced to stay home – at present on full pay, but in a few weeks what then? There is no law to turn to; there are no political leaders to go to with any sort of sense and authority. We are in the hands of a madman who has nothing to loose but his life and has his back to the wall and is using the only tools that he knows to try and stay afloat while the country drowns.

How will the average Zimbabwean respond? Friends of mine are doing a day trip to Francistown in Botswana – just 200 kilometers away, today. They will buy what they need for next week and return. A few will do the same. Others are going on holiday, unable to stand the specter of seeing all that they have built up over the past decades swept away. They are the lucky ones – what about the rest?

There is only one way out and that is across the Limpopo. I must warn South Africa that they will now face a huge upsurge in economic refugees and they had better brace themselves for that if nothing effective is done to halt this madness. I mean hundreds of thousands of new, desperate, hungry Zimbabweans flooding in and disappearing into the vast urban slums that surround all South African cities.

The alternative is a military coup led by the junior officers with the compliance of some in the ruling Party who see that this situation is not sustainable and that it is creating a regional crisis of substantial proportions. Such an event would close the door to the SADC process under way today in South Africa and plunge the country and the region into a huge political crisis that would require military intervention. Am I being alarmist? I do not think so. The actions of this rogue regime in the past week have been enough to tip us over and into a state of crisis we have never faced before.

Irreparable damage is being done to the country and if this is not stopped in its tracks by immediate and radical measures taken by regional governments very serious consequences are going to follow.

The humanitarian and economic crisis that is about to break out in Zimbabwe is simply staggering and certainly way beyond the capacity of the country to handle on its own.

Eddie Cross Bulawayo, 7th July 2007

Eddie Cross on the impact of Government Imposed Price Slashing.

A friend of mine writing from Belgium today and following the stories of the Mugabe regime's desperate gambit to slash prices in order to curry favor with some said: "the old man hanging on is a classic study in irrationality... hope you are taking notes!"

Here is Eddie Cross's take on Mugabe's irrationality:

The Pirates and the Party

About two weeks ago Mr. Mugabe made a speech at the funeral of a General who died under mysterious circumstances and in it he attacked the private sector for raising prices in the name of regime change. He threatened the mining companies as well as everyone else and said that if they did not come into line with what the Party wanted they would be taken over.

Since then a shadowy, totally unaccountable organisation known as the “Joint Operational Command” has taken up the call and last week they summoned senior business leaders to a meeting and instructed them to roll back their prices to the level they were at on the 18th June. The meeting was held with the Commanders of the Army, the Police, the CIO, Air Force and the Prison Service.

Since then all major retailers and wholesalers as well as the majority of manufacturers have reduced their prices to the June 18th level. Remember prices were doubling on a weekly basis at the time with inflation about 15 000 percent per annum. So these price reductions were major and across the board.

Last weekend the smaller retailers were attacked – I am not sure we can really call it anything else. One by one they were approached by small groups of officials, police and militia. The messages were confused and varied from store to store and group-to-group. Some simply said they had to reduce a limited range of 18 items to the price levels listed, others said it was the roll back to June 18th while others simply said cut your prices by 50 per cent.

No opposition or arguments were tolerated. If the retailers resisted they were arrested and taken to local police stations. In other cases stores that were closed had their doors smashed open and prices reduced under supervision and then the public allowed in, buying the goods at the lower prices. Many businesses were faced with near riots as people scrambled for goods. In other cases the authorities confiscated goods, especially where they found goods stored behind shops.

Then they started on the fuel stations – systematically all stations selling fuels were visited and if they had stocks they were told to sell at Z$60 000 a litre or else. One operator in Bulawayo refused, was arrested and released when his lawyers intervened, rearrested and taken to see the senior officer in Bulawayo who told him no resistance would be tolerated and they then sent the police to force him to open up and sell. He lost Z$3 400 000 000 in 12 hours on 47 000 litres of fuel bought at Z$132 000 a litre. Today there are long queues at all filling stations still with stocks. I project by Monday that there will be no fuel at all in the City, probably in the whole country. Worse still the fuel importers have stopped buying foreign exchange and halted imports. It will take weeks to get back to “normal”.

The butchers were simply told to sell “meat” at Z$90 000 a kilogram or in some cases Z$120 000 a kilogram – there was no explanation of the difference. Since the cost of beef is well above these levels, they quickly sold out and then closed. Today there is no butchery open in the entire City. Bakers are following suit – they were told to sell at Z$22 000 a loaf and they did so but stopped buying raw materials. Today bakers are slowly closing down across the country.

In the milling industry “controlled” prices are half the real cost of production and the national staple food, maize meal, has disappeared from the stores. The prices of other carbohydrate foods such as potatoes have doubled. Rice is controlled down to half its cost and will also be in short supply by next week as stocks run out.

If supermarkets are unable to restock because either they cannot buy products at controlled prices and sell them for a margin to cover other costs, or the products are just not available, then all basic needs will start to run out next week. For some mysterious reason one product was specifically targeted – Mazoe Orange Juice. Its price was set at Z$120 000 for two litres and when all the dust had settled the manufacturers were give n an approved price of Z$180 000 per unit. So if you were to buy this product today you would have to sell it at a loss. Sugar sales from the mills in the Lowveld are Z$15 000 a kilogram – the retail price is Z$17 000. A mark up of 13 per cent – the fuel on collection of this product from Chiredzi is Z$7 300 per kilogram alone.

This morning we watched a police raid on a small “Spaza” store run by a single women who has a teenage son. A 7 tonne truck arrived with four police on board, they collected all her stocks and loaded them and then ordered her to appear at the police station at 14.00 hrs. The police officer in Charge was Inspector Banda, force number 048168 F.

There she was harangued and fined Z$40 000. Her goods were offloaded into a large warehouse that was full of confiscated goods. While we watched a well-dressed man in a new vehicle, number 807 516 J drove up and helped himself to 4 bags of sugar. He did not sign a receipt and drove away. The vehicle was a make that is driven by senior police and army officers.

While we followed this small saga being played out, we saw truckloads of police coming and going and more goods confiscated from small informal traders all over the City coming in. Its quite clear, the Party wants to show that inflation can be beaten and they are making the business sector pay the price. The people carrying out these illegal and irresponsible orders are rewarded for their diligence with authority to loot the stores they are raiding. Since the big boys in this game can defend themselves, it is the small people and the informal sector that suffers most. So much for Zanu PF socialism, or as Mugabe would put it, his personal brand of Marxist Leninism.

As one man said to me on the street, “Well Eddie, at least now you know, you do not need to campaign for MDC in March, these people are doing it for you.” He may be right but how on earth do we get there!

Eddie Cross Bulawayo, 5th July 2007