Reminder that there is a Tibet, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Burma combined protest in London tomorrow. Details here.

This from Avaaz.org. Visit their website and virtually shake hands with someone. There is also an animated map showing the handshake’s journey around the world. Please visit the site and participate, and encourage others you know to do the same.

As the Beijing Olympics begin, the world looks on with mixed emotions. It’s a moment which should bring us closer together, and Chinese citizens deserve their excitement — but the Chinese government still hasn’t opened meaningful dialogue with the Dalai Lama, or changed its stance on Burma, Darfur and other pressing issues.

Even worse, extremists in China are promoting the view that Olympic activism like ours is anti-Chinese. We can’t stay silent, but we also can’t let our efforts be abused to divide people. So what can we do? The answer comes from the Dalai Lama himself, in an unambiguous gesture of Olympic spirit and friendship: a handshake.

(more…)

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Via ZimOnline (click image to enlarge) (more…)

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A guy I know who lives in one of Zimbabwe’s smaller towns is chortling with delight. Being in a small town, business was always a bit languid, but during an economic crisis like the one we’re enduring, business had all but dried up. This once-upon-a-time-I-had-my-own-business guy has done just about everything he can to earn a living over the years including diversifying into all sorts of bizarre products and trades - some legal, some not so legal - and always keeping his sense of humour intact.

“I am in the Import Business,” he grandly told me when I saw him last year, exaggerating the word ‘Import’ as if it really meant something. It turned out he had started employing a couple of guys as runners to bring in whatever people in his town needed from Botswana and South Africa - soap, toilet paper, toothpaste.

“Ja, you and everyone else,” I retorted.

That business came to an end when the runners ran but didn’t come back, as he put it, taking with them some forex he’d given them to buy products. “I hope the crocs in the Limpopo bit their backsides,” he said at the time, half-seriously I think. Like so many they had decided to stay in the greener pastures of South Africa. (more…)

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Ben Dalby has written this song titled Chinese Friends, uploaded to YouTube today. The Olympic opening ceremony is due to take place this Friday in Beijing, and Chinese Friends offers this suggestion:

Let’s take that torch down to Harare,
We can give it to Robert Mugabe;
he needs a light - he’s got to burn,
a few thousand boxes,
with the wrong crosses on.
But even he must please,
His Chinese friends.

This, sung in a disconcertingly neutral tone against a simple melody. Ben Dalby is out to make you think, and I am guessing he is annoyed: provocatively, lyrically annoyed. It’s a great song, beautifully sung and Ben has a lovely voice.

Ben Dalby’s MySpace profile describes him as an “Eclectic singer songwriter with intelligent lyrics”:

Ben Dalby has been writing and performing his own songs for nearly twenty years. His music is eclectic, covering a variety of styles, but his lyrics are invariably intelligent and thought-provoking, written with the perspective of a humourous but unsentimental natural philosopher.

More about Ben Dalby on his website, and on his MySpace profile. More music from Ben on AmieStreet.

Use the ‘Share this’ feature below to share the song with everyone else.

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This press release from the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force:

Conservancy animals shot

On Friday, 25th July, a Zimbabwean Air Force helicopter marked with a red cross was seen hovering around Midlands Black Rhino Conservancy and shots were heard.

The following day, the helicopter returned and a kudu bull was shot. When the conservator arrived at the scene of the shooting, a soldier dressed in army uniform and carrying an AK rifle was seen running from the dead bull towards the helicopter which uplifted him and flew off.

(more…)

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This photo mosaic via ‘We Are ZCTU’

This is a photo mosaic of Lovemore Matombo and Wellington Chibebe, the President and General Secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). They were arrested on 8 May for speaking out about the state-sponsored violence in Zimbabwe - or as Robert Mugabe’s government put it “spreading falsehoods prejudicial to the State”.

Lovemore and Wellington are due to appear in court on 27 August, to defend themselves against these charges. The mosaic is made up from the pictures of over 2,000 trade unionists from around the world, who have come together to make this public demonstration of support for the ZCTU leaders and all unionists in Zimbabwe.

Visit the website to browse the mosaic and to learn how you can add your support.

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Last week the BBC had a report that groups of MDC supporters returning from South Africa were carrying out reprisal attacks against Zanu PF war veterans who had beaten up their relatives. The link to the piece was emailed to us by a few people with different messages ranging from “It’s about time someone did this”, to “I hope Sokwanele will condemn this as much as you do Zanu PF-led violence”.

The incidents, close to Zimbabwe’s border with South Africa, followed accusations of torture and arson attacks by war veterans.

Youths loyal to the opposition have now launched retaliatory attacks against the veterans.

Sokwanele campaigns for non violence, and that includes all forms of violence so we condemn these sort of actions completely.

I delayed my response to this because we’ve been adding more violence data to our map and I wanted to see if this latest sample included violence against civilians perpetrated by MDC supporters. It does: out of the total of 2094 cases mapped so far, there are four cases in Harare denoted by four bright pink map pins. These were not, as you might imagine, all MDC reprisal attacks against Zanu PF thugs - three of them are cases arising out of infighting between the two MDC formations and only one was of a Zanu PF supporter who came forward to report his experience at the hands of an MDC supporter. (more…)

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Food shortages and hyperinflation are forcing people to take desperate measures to survive. Some extremely hungry people have taken to buying animal feed intended for cattle and chickens by the cupful  (because a full bag is too expensive) for their own consumption. It’s a worrying development because there is no telling what additives might have been added to the feed. For example, if hormones have been added, what would the long term impact be on humans or on child development?

The military, however, are not eating animal feed. They have been seen buying animals for slaughter in some rural areas. Reports we’ve received say that the soldiers are using foreign currency to buy the meat. The big question is, where are they getting the cash? In addition to the ‘forex’ clanger, we’ve been told that the Bakossi shops are being used primarily for Zanu PF card holders. So Mugabe loyalists receive privileged treatment yet again. (more…)

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Wilson Jori (65) from Ward 28, Jori Village, Headman Chimombe, Chief Nyashanu in Buhera South was fined 8 goats and 18 chickens for being an MDC sympathiser before being severely assaulted and tortured after he was forced to attend a ZANU PF rally on 17 July 2008.

Jori said ZANU PF militias forced all people in Chimombe Village to attend what they termed ‘victory celebration meeting’ at around 10.00hrs. It was during the meeting that the militias demanded the goats and chickens from all MDC sympathisers and later beat them severely on their back and buttocks using electrtric cables, wire, logs and sjambocks ‘to be certain that they have rejoined ZANU PF’. (more…)

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This article in The Sunday Times outlines the agreement that the paper claims will emerge from the talks  currently going on between leaders of Zimbabwe’s main political parties:

… The Sunday Times has learnt that Mugabe, who has vowed that Tsvangirai will never be in government and that “only God can remove me from power”, faces humiliation over the terms of the deal that he will be forced to sign next month.

He will remain as president in name only and all real power will be held by a 20-member cabinet under Tsvangirai as prime minister. The opposition MDC will have 11 cabinet posts to nine for Mugabe’s Zanu-PF.

Apparently Sydney Mufamadi read the riot act to Zanu PF officials to force them to engage in talks:

According to the officials who were present, he told them bluntly: “You don’t have a government. You can’t summon your parliament. You have no legitimate president and thus you can have no cabinet. You cannot behave as you have been doing. Real talks have to start right away.”

The article also claims that Thabo Mbeki warned Robert Mugabe that he could no longer protect him from the threat of prosecution for crimes committed against the Zimbabwean people.

We recommend you read the full article here.

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This film about HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe was featured on the front page of The Zimbabwe Times website today. It was uploaded to YouTube in September last year.

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UPDATE: We’re going to launch an action alert tomorrow, asking people to take action against Jura JSP (see Deepyarn’s comment here and the link to the The Guardian article (below) for more. Please add any ideas for this to the comments in the meanwhile. And if you have contacts we can use for the Jura JSP, appropriate people in the EU, key journalists in the Austrian media etc, please submit them via our form here.

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Do you remember we asked you join us in a campaign, asking stop Giesecke & Devrient to stop supplying the Zanu PF regime with bank notes? We argued that the steady flow of money to Zimbabwe was funding the Zanu PF terror regime who were relying on it to pay the militia and soldiers to intimidate, torture, and murder civilians. Under pressure from the German government, Giesecke & Devrient decided to stop supplying money to Zimbabwe on 1 July.

The Guardian today has this article, titled Soldiers await pay as Zimbabwe runs out of paper to print money:

The Zimbabwean government was today struggling to find enough cash to pay its workers, and more importantly the military, after it was forced to severely cut back on printing money because sanctions severed its supply of banknote paper from Europe.

[...]

But the problems became acute after the Bavarian firm that supplied the watermarked banknote paper - Giesecke & Devrient, which printed worthless cash for the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and supplied Rhodesia’s white minority regime with currency - cut off deliveries last month, under pressure from the German government.

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“So, this ‘MOU’…”, a friend who usually isn’t interested in politics asked me today, “What exactly is it?”

“I believe its an agreement which will guide the talks all the parties will be having”, I responded (hoping I was correct).

“So these talks they’ve been having up until now, they were basically all just talking about the rules of the talks they might have if they ever get to actually talking about the talks we want them to be talking about?”

“Something like that”, I replied vaguely, deliberately avoiding a forensic description of exactly what was going on because I wasn’t sure I could provide one.

“So tell me”, my friend wickedly said, “When are they going to start talking about what everyone else is talking about, and that is the fact that there is no food in the shops anymore?”

I had no response to that, as she knew I wouldn’t, and thankfully she didn’t slap me with her usual parting quip which is, “…and you wonder why I can’t be bothered with politics!” (more…)

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Via IOL:

A reference group consisting of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN) with which President Thabo Mbeki will liaise on an ongoing basis has been set up to mediate in the Zimbabwean crisis.

This is according to a statement released by the Presidency in Pretoria on Friday.

(more…)

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This is an update on the SADC Tribunal case. More information on the tribunal, and  details of the violence perpetrated against Ben Freeth (pictured above with his father) and his in-laws, can be found in the links to our earlier posts below:

• Zimbabwean farm hearing due tomorrow in Windhoek: considered a test case for the rule of law in the SADC region
• Abducted and tortured while Mugabe was being inaugurated
• Updated 30 June ~ 10.15 - Action Alert : Farm attacks taking place in Chegutu today

This via The Namibian:

The whole legal team of the Zimbabwean government yesterday walked out of the hearing of a regional tribunal, refusing to listen to an urgent application brought by the lawyers of three badly assaulted Zimbabwean farmers - part of a group of 78 farmers seeking relief to prevent their farms being expropriated by that government.

(more…)

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