Zimbabwe: 2007 till Mugabe resigns

**davidbfpo** · 01-27-2010

This anniversary slipped past my "radar", but Kate Hoey, a Labour MP and chairman of the All Party Zimbabwe Group has written an article 'It's time to cry foul on Mugabe and show him the red card' in the regional newspaper "up t'north", The Yorkshire Post: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/opini...-to.6012519.jp

Nothing exceptional, at least she keeps the issue alive.

**davidbfpo** · 02-01-2010

From a Zimbabwean e-mail citing German Radio last week and an item on a British parliamentary visit to Zimbabwe:

One of the key men to give evidence before the Africa All Party Group was Dennis Norman, who was President of the white-dominated Commercial Farmers Union when zimbabwe declared its independence in April 1980.

English-born Mr Norman was Robert Mugabe's surprise choice as his country's Minister for Agriculture. Norman told British parliamentarians that the Zimbabwean government is convinced that all land in Zimbabwe should be government-owned and then leased back to men and women who show an ability to produce food and thus re-vitalise agriculture with British and other donor nations support.

Dennis Norman: People are obsessed with the ownership of land. Land ownership is important but more important is productivity. Now how do you make the land productive because you can't produce any more land, so you have to produce more product off the existing land. And I think one of the ways of looking at it would be to establish something like a land tribunal which would take over the title deeds of all agriculture land, hold them in trust for the Government and then work out a scheme of land leases to that those who are productive and wish to be farmers can get on with the job of farming and producing.

The Africa All Party report says there is still resentment in Zimbabwe over the Lancaster House Conference held in London in 1979 which paved the way for one-man-one-vote elections in Zimbabwe and the victory of Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe still insists that Britain promised it millions of pounds to compensate commercial farmers when their land was needed by the government. Britain denies it ever committed itself to such an undertaking.

Hugh Bayley says that there must be a fresh dialogue on this subject that has so soured relations between London and Harare for the last 30 years.

Hugh Bayley MP: If the basic rules of land reform were changed so that it was poor people in Zimbabwe who gained access to land, poor landless people, then I would argue very strongly that the British Government should start funding land reform again and go to other big donors, individual countries like the US, the Germans and multinational agencies like the World Bank to try and get them to put money up for this process because land is still politically potent and toxic. In Zimbabwe a solution is needed and the international
community has it part to play as well as local politicians to find a solution.

Mmm.

**Ken White** · 02-02-2010

Check the LINK.

**M-A Lagrange** · 02-27-2010

Zimbabwe's Mugage defends local ownership laws

Mugabe's government passed an "indigenisation" law in 2007 to localise control of foreign firms. On Monday companies will have to provide information on shareholders and plans on how they intend to conform to the new law, which seeks to ensure locals own at least 51 percent.

"This law will enable us to examine every large company in the country and determine whether the ownership principle has been observed," Mugabe told a crowd in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city.

"If not, then 51 percent must come to our people."

Companies then have 45 days to present their indigenisation plans -- those who fail face up to five years in jail.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE61Q1T120100227

For all those who believed that Bob's craziness would never survive MDC elections...
MDC is dead and Bob alive and with him, his dream of a maoist leninst communist Zimbabwe...
To all my friends in Harrare and Bulawayo: Courage, bob is not immortal!

**davidbfpo** · 03-01-2010

From:http://www.zimvigil.co.uk/ZimVigil-D...uary-2010.html

The MDC´s chief negotiator in the SADC-mediated negotiations, Tendai
Biti, said last week: `We are going nowhere on the dialogue and therefore it is very important for President Zuma and South Africa to step in and step in quickly. We as negotiators have reached our ceiling. It should be taken out of our hands. Continuing to let us negotiate we are wasting time because we have tried. We have been negotiating since the 14th of May 2007. I think we have reached where our human capabilities can take us as negotiators. Therefore we need a bigger brain - that of President Zuma and more wisdom - that of
SADC.

Wishful thinking IMHO unless President Zuma's mind can be changed.

**davidbfpo** · 03-02-2010

A BBC report by an ex-ZANU suuporter on Zimbabwe's Forgotten Children, with three short film clips and the last lines:

The system was supposed to take care of its people, but it has failed. In less than a generation, the country has changed beyond all recognition.

Link:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8538587.stm

**davidbfpo** · 03-04-2010

On the 4th March 1980 Robert Mugabe became Zimbabwe's Prime Minister and so not unexpectedly a few articles on his thirty year rule:

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/62770

Mary Ndlovu paints a desolate picture of the Zimbabwe of now and its political future: ‘The “Unity Government” has stumbled from pillar to post, ending for the time being, paralysed in the intensive or perhaps terminal care unit of the political hospital.’ Ndlovu takes us through the events of the last year and argues that ZANU PF’s tactics have shifted from the defensive to the offensive.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/al...-misrule.thtml

Richard Dowden explains how this intelligent and charismatic man became addicted to brutality (and ends with)...there is no chance of (an election) — and no money for — a free and fair election now. Mugabe remains — for the moment.

A strange story and I'm sure the UK Tory leader needs this:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...n-backing.html

**davidbfpo** · 04-10-2010

This week BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week is set in Zimbabwe, 'The Last Resort: A Zimbabwe memoir' by Douglas Rogers, a US-based journalist's account of his parents life in Zimbabwe. From a Zimbabwe email:

For many years, Lyn and Ros Rogers were the owners of Drifters, a famous game farm and backpacker lodge in the eastern mountains. But when President Robert Mugabe launched his violent land reclamation programme, everything changed. The Rogers found their home under siege, their friends and neighbours expelled, and their lives in danger. But instead of leaving, as their son pleaded with them to do, they hauled out a shotgun and stayed. The Last Resort is travelogue, adventure yarn, political intrigue and tragedy - but at its heart it is a love story about the author and his homeland.

Book of the Week is on the web:http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qftk

Amazon UK:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Resort-.../dp/1906021910and the author's website:http://www.douglasrogers.org/

**davidbfpo** · 04-18-2010

Probably not a date many will mark, let alone celebrate, but understandably some have provided a comment:

Under 'Zimbabwe's 30th birthday: how did Robert Mugabe turn hope into misery?' Zimbabwean white journalist Peta Thorneycroft: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...to-misery.html

A BBC report, with many links: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8627813.stm and a black Zimbabwean's view:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8626146.stm

**davidbfpo** · 04-19-2010

An Al-Jazeera documentary, 47 mins, with reporter Rageh Omar (ex-BBC) and concludes:

The explanations for this crisis are equally polarised. The MDC says it is the result of 30 years of bad governance and kleptocracy. ZANU PF says it is the responsibility of the international community which has, it claims, isolated Zimbabwe economically in response to ZANU PF's policy of land reform.
Both ZANU PF and the MDC appear to be in a state of denial about the true condition of Zimbabwe at 30, and this cannot be the best way for the country to start its fourth decade as a nation.

Link:http://english.aljazeera.net/program...425857194.html

Sad to watch and listen.

**davidbfpo** · 04-25-2010

The news that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been visiting Zimbabwe apepared in the press summaries IIRC. Now the real purpose beehind the state visit appears:

Iran has struck a secret deal with Zimbabwe to mine its untapped uranium reserves in a move to secure raw material for its steadily expanding nuclear programme.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...be-regime.html

A lot of details within and some coded words on how others, including Zimbabwe's neighbours might react.

A BBC News report, with a wider remit and notes the Prime Minister Tsvangirai didn't appreciate the visit :http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8639588.stm

**bourbon** · 06-16-2010

Return of the Blood Diamond: The deadly race to control Zimbabwe's new-found diamond wealth. Global Witness, 14 June 2010. (PDF)

Zimbabwe’s Zanu PF political and military elite are seeking to capture the country’s diamond wealth through a combination of state-sponsored violence and the legally questionable introduction of opaque joint-venture companies. The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, set up to end the trade in conflict diamonds, has repeatedly failed to react effectively to the crisis.

**davidbfpo** · 10-02-2010

Peter Godwin writes excellent books on Rhodesia / Zimbabwe and I've been alerted to a new book. This is a publisher write up I think:

In mid 2008, after nearly three decades of increasingly tyrannical rule, Robert Mugabe, the 84-year-old Robespierre of Zimbabwe, lost an election. But instead of conceding power, he launched a brutal campaign of terror against his own citizens. Peter Godwin, author of the brilliant memoir When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, was one of the few outside observers to bear witness to the terrifying period that Zimbabweans call, simply, The Fear. At great personal risk, Godwin returns secretly to the country that was once his home. He visits the torture bases, the burning villages, the death squads, the opposition leaders in hiding, the last white farmers, the churchmen and diplomats putting their own lives on the line to stop the carnage.

Threaded through with personal history, The Fear is the brave and astonishing record of a dictatorship gone mad. Accompanied by his sister Georgina, Godwin journeys through the ravaged, once-familiar landscape. They visit the grave of their sister, killed during the civil war. As they pour red "lucky bean" seeds from the coral tree in their old garden into the runnels of the letters on her gravestone, they call their mother, now living in exile in faraway London. `Where would you like to be buried when you die?´ he asks her. ` At home,´ she says. `In Africa. Next to your father.´

Told with a brilliant eye for detail and Godwin´s natural storytelling gifts, this is a story framed by personal loss. But most deeply, it is a moving and stunning account of a people grotesquely altered, laid waste by a raging despot. It is about the astonishing courage and resilience of a people, armed with nothing but a desire to be free, who challenge a violent dictatorship. And
in the spirit of Ryszard Kapuscinski´s The Emperor, Godwin takes us inside the dysfunctional court of Robert Mugabe as he battles to stay in power even at the cost of destroying his country. THE FEAR is, finally, an important, brilliant testament to humanity´s ability to transcend fear, to rise up, even in the face of astounding adversity.

Yet another book to add to my list.

**jcustis** · 10-02-2010

`Where would you like to be buried when you die?´ he asks her. ` At home,´ she says. `In Africa. Next to your father.´

I can only imagine what it must feel like to say those words.

Please pass on a review if you have the chance to read the book. your opinion is golden.