Zimbabwe: Outpost of Tyranny

Pathos and Misery in Mugabe's Zimbabwe

I was visiting some of the township areas yesterday morning with colleagues who work on community mobilization and providing social assistance to poor urban residents, especially to victims of "Operation Murambatsvina". Many of the estimated 700,000 persons whose homes were destroyed under that government operation in 2005 (Murambatsvina means "Clean out the Filth" in Shona) are still, 2 years later, living in the open in abominable conditions.  In Mbare, while we were chatting with a group of Murambatsvina survivors (mostly women and widows), one woman told us that she had discovered the body of a neighbor that very morning, 2 or 3 hours before our arrival. 

The woman proceeded to flip open the "door" to the shanty (which was nothing more than a piece of old tattered cloth), to reveal the body of a young woman on the ground.  The woman had no family members (not uncommon according to our colleagues) and her neighbors were afraid to report her death to the police, and had no money to have her body transported to the mortuary or for a burial. 

So they had just left the body inside the plastic and scrap covered shanty.  The woman, a neghbor, who'd discovered the body was the last to see the deceased woman alive, the night before around 8 PM.  She had said that she had not eaten in 3 days. Her neighbor did not have food to offer her but gave her water to drink.  When she looked in on her in the morning, she found her dead.

The neighbors of the woman said they were afraid to inform the police because they said the police considered them "criminals" and would beat them or even accuse them of killing the woman.

We organized the money to have the body taken to the mortuary and for a funeral and burial (the equivalent of $75.00).  Our colleagues said that there is usually a 2 to 3 day wait to have a plot at the cemetery (for which one must pay) because there are so many deaths happening each day.

This is the cost of the Mugabe regime's ruthless and sanguinary policies...

"He Fought the Regime and the Regime Fought Back."

Leaving aside the fact that I have been doing a terrible job of blogging with anything like my usual frequency during the past 3 weeks, I had been unable to bring myself to post on the resignation of the former Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, because it is such a wrenching story.

I have gotten to know Pius some during the past year, attended a memorial service for victims of torture on the U.N.'s International Day in Solidarity with Torture Victims, over which he presided in Bulawayo, in June, etc.

He is a man of uncommon courage and committment, to the poor, to the victims of state-sponsored violence, torture and reporession.  He is to be compared with another great Catholic Archbishop who fought, and gave his life, for social justice in his own country, El Salvador, Oscar Romero (of whom, incidentally, Pius Ncube had a photo in a prominent place on the wall of his office).

The Global Development Briefing (www.DevelopmentEx.com) weekly newsletter this week was entitled "King Takes Bishop" and opened with this well stated summary of the current state of affairs:

"He fought the regime and the regime fought back."

-- Tendai Biti, the secretary general of one faction of Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Change, on the resignation of Pius Ncube, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, a prominent critic of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, over an adultery scandal. Zimbabwe's state media in July published photographs of what it said was Bishop Ncube in bed with a married woman who worked for his parish. His lawyers called the allegations an orchestrated attempt to discredit him. He said he would work with ordinary people and would not be "silenced by the crude machinations of a wicked regime." In March, Bishop Ncube said he was prepared to stand in front of "blazing guns" at the front of street protests to bring down the government and urged other Zimbabweans to do the same. The news comes as the EU debates whether or not to invite Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to a planned summit with Africa. The EU and Africa want to hold their first summit in seven years this December in Portugal, but must first overcome the problem of whether to invite Mugabe, who is accused of human rights violations. Plans for the summit were on hold because some EU countries have refused to attend if Mugabe is there, while African countries have refused to come if he is barred.

Leading Mugabe critic forced to resign as archbishop but vows to keep up campaign against Mugabe's Tyranny.

That is the title of an article on AFP.

As an Archbishop and before, as a Parish Priest, Pius Ncube was one of the most relentless voices denouncing Mugabe's policies of state-sponsored violence and torture--including the Gukurahundi massacre of the 1980s during which 20,000 persons were mowed down by Mugabe's forces.

Several months ago, he called for a humanitarian invasion of Zimbabwe to liberate its dying people from Mugabe.

In June he presided over a memorial service, which we attended, to mark the U.N.'s day honoring victims of torture. 

A couple of weeks later, he presided over the launch of a report by Solidarity Peace Trust, of which he is the Chairman, entitled "Destructive Engagement: Violence, Mediation and Politics in Zimbabwe." (Download destructive_engagement_solidarity_peace_trust_july_2007.doc )

A few days after the report's launch, the state-owned newspapers launched their attack on him.  The timing was no accident. 

University of Zimbabwe Opens for New Year: Thousands of Students Evicted from Campus Housing Still Homeless.

(Apologies for the light blogging these past two weeks...more regular posting in the weeks to come)

The University of Zimbabwe (UZ) opened its doors on Monday for the new academic year while there still has been no resolution to the plight of the thousands of students who were evicted from university housing during the last exam period.  Student activists estimate that between 4,000 and 5,600 students were affected. The Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU), in a report issued last week (“It’s Politics Stupid: A Report on the Mass Evictions of resident Students at the University of  Zimbabwe, July 2007.”) stated that hundreds of students were injured when the vice-chancellor of the university, Levy Nyagura, sent riot police in on July 9th to evict the students, charging that they had destroyed university property on the 3rd and 7th of July during student demonstrations against tuition increases. Student leaders charge that the government has targeted students as a part of a political strategy to demobilize and disperse their forces.  Not only are these students out of a place to live, but they no longer have an affordable option for food since all dining halls were also shut down;  many of the students formerly housed on campus come from comparatively poor families, have no relatives in Harare, and therefore have few alternative options to cover lodging and food expenses.    Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) has brought a court case against the vice-chancellor, charging unlawful eviction but there has been no redress to date.  Student leaders predict that there could be further unrest and clashes with authorities if the problem is not resolved.

Diaspora voting: Open to Manipulation by Mugabe & Co.?

Normblog has an interesting selection of articles up in a post today including analysis by one observer suggesting that Diaspora voting could actually be used by ZANU-PF to its own favor through fraud.

There are a number of international and other organizations equipped to assist in "out of country" or diaspora voting.  IOM (International Organization for Migration) is the principal one that comes to mind.  IOM has considerable experience in organising and managing external registration and voting and in support for the inclusion of refugee and displaced populations in the electoral processes. It has organized significant out-of country votes for Bosnia, Kosovo, East TImor, Afghanistan and Iraq.  According to its web site:

IOM's out-of-area voting has cumulatively reached over 70 different countries, hundreds of thousands of verified nationals eligible to exercise their right to vote, in a combination of mail and in-person procedures in the largest external voting programmes to date.

Two other American organizations, IFES (International Foundation for Electoral Support) and IDEA (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) also have expertise in the area of "out-of-country" voting.

So, with proper third party supervision, there is reason to believe that it would be possible to organize fair and verifiable diaspora voting--that would not be prone to manipulation by ZANU-PF.  This would be especially important for the 1.5 million estimated eligible Zimbabwean voters residing in South Africa.

From the Economist, yesterday: "Zimbabwe, An Imploding State."

The Economist yesterday published an article focussing on the increasing misery in Mashonaland, the traditional Mugabe rural stronghold just outside of Harare.

The opening 2 paragraphs of the piece capture the perilous future faced by ordinary Zimbabweans:

OVER 3m people are thought to have left the Zimbabwe in recent years, and the UN refugee agency says it is working on contingency plans in case the exodus worsens. There seems every chance that it will, given 80% unemployment, inflation that was said officially this week to be above 7,600% and severe shortages of the most basic goods. Zimbabwe’s situation is growing ever more miserable.

Another UN agency, the World Food Programme, reckons that 4m Zimbabweans—about one-third of the remaining population—will need food aid by next year. This year’s harvest of maize, the local staple, was meagre. Rains have been poor, and the government’s disastrous land-reform programme has turned once flourishing commercial farming into subsistence agriculture.

News Flash: The U.N. Now May Think there IS A Zimbabwe Refugee Problem (better late than never?).

The BBC reported yesterday that a senior UNHCR official completed a 4 day tour of the Southern Africa region and appears to have awaken to the glaring reality of the Zimbabwe refugee crisis.

Better late than never, I guess, although UNHCR is still not calling for the opening of refugee camps in South Africa.

More on the "non-refugees" streaming from Zimbabwe into South Africa

An eloquent letter to the editor in the Times (London).

Hundreds of Zimbabweans Queue for Weeks and Months At Ministry of Home Affairs Seeking Asylum But the U.N. Says There Are No True Refugees from Zimbabwe in South Africa.

As many as 3,000 Zimbabweans are fleeing economic and political turmoil in their country for South Africa (and as many as 600 are deported back) each day; hundreds have been queuing at the South African Ministry of Home Affairs seeking asylum.

But the U.N. refuses to open refugee camps saying that the Zimbabweans are economic migrants and not political refugees.

Child Malnutrition on the Rise in Harare

IRIN news is reporting that child malnutrition is on the rise in Zimbabwe, with one in 10 children in the nation's capital even suffering from kwashiorkor, (a severe state of malnutrition most often seen in famine or conflict zones caused by inadequate protein intake).

From the IRIN article:

Food short for employed and unemployed

Esther Shereni, 28, of Hopley Farm, a settlement established in 2005 for Harare residents displaced by Operation Murambatsvina, a government campaign that demolished informal housing and business stalls, leaving about 700,000 people without shelter or income, is one parent among many unable to provide enough food for their children.

"Before Operation Murambatsvina, I ran a tuckshop in Glen Norah [township in Harare], in which I also slept, but when it was razed down I became homeless," said Shereni, a single mother who survives by selling flowers to mourners at a graveyard.

She was pregnant at the time, and "because I no longer had a steady source of income, I failed to feed myself adequately and when the child was born, she was underweight and my inability to feed her has continued to this day and she is always falling sick," she told IRIN.

Her two-year-old daughter has an extended belly, an unusually big head and thin limbs - a clear indication of malnutrition. Sherini said it was always a struggle to get the medicines her child needed; the public clinics rarely had any, and she could not afford to buy from private pharmacies.

My dream was to have a bouncing, healthy baby, for that is is what every mother looks forward to but, because of poverty, that has not been possible. I just pray that my little daughter will not die

Shereni's home is a shack made of plastic sheeting, she fetches water from a borehole that is used by thousands of other people, and the settlement has no sanitation or electricity. v "My dream was to have a bouncing, healthy baby, for that is what every mother looks forward to but, because of poverty, that has not been possible. I just pray that my little daughter will not die," she said.

Having a job is no guarantee that the children will be adequately fed. Samukheliso Sigodo, 30, a personal secretary at a Harare consultancy, cannot feed her six-month-old baby exclusively on breast milk because of work commitments, and leaves the child with a caregiver. "That means I have to give the child formula milk and porridge, but the tragedy is that you cannot get these from the shops," she told IRIN.

"While there has always been scarcity, and I have had to rely on traders who buy it from South Africa, the situation is now worse because the shops have completely run out of the products and the informal market has also dried up."