This Urgent Appeal, drafted by the General Manager of MWEB Zimbabwe, was forwarded it to us by a Sokwanele supporter. Please circulate the information widely. We will post further information as soon as we have it.

Urgent Appeal

I am taking this opportunity to write personally to all MWEB subscribers. MWEB has recently completed its year-end and as General Manager of MWEB I would like to thank you for your loyal support throughout the years. It has been a year fraught with challenges for the telecommunications industry, but also a year in which we saw a significant upgrade in bandwidth provision by TelOne. However I am writing to you today to appeal for support of a different kind.

Yesterday a tragedy unfolded, a tragic event that could have been avoided, one that led to the unfortunate loss of life. I overheard a conversation at lunchtime at Royal Harare Golf Course. A woman was on her cell phone and was looking for a person whose blood group was B+. My blood group is B+, so I approached her. She said that someone desperately needed surgery, but there was no B+ blood available. The operation, unfortunately could not take place until a donor with that particular blood type was found. I went to the Avenues and rushed up the stairs to ICU to donate my blood. As I arrived on the 3rd floor I was met by the family outside ICU and was told that the person needing the blood transfusion had passed away 3 minutes ago. The family had been desperately searching for a donor since 10h00 that morning.

3 minutes! That is tragic!

If I had known about this desperate need for blood, I could have arrived at the hospital sooner, and managed to save a life. Instead I was eating lunch, entertaining clients, when someone needed my blood less than 2km away!! I could have made a difference if only I had known, more to the point – if only someone had known how to get hold of me.

The country is desperate for blood. Even if one is a regular donor, this does not guarantee that there will be adequate stock when it’s needed most.

The young man in need of blood had been involved in a car accident on Harare Drive earlier that morning. He had been hemorrhaging and they needed to operate to save his life but could not do so without blood. What I wish to propose is a three-point plan, which needs your support and action in order to make a difference;

1. Blood Donation Day. MWEB will arrange a blood donation day at Meikles next week. MWEB will provide you with free parking, tea and biscuits and a 10% discount on one month’s subscription if you come and donate blood. Any new subscribers joining and donating on the same day will receive 1 month’s service for free. So tell someone and bring them along!

2. Database. MWEB will collate a database of people’s contact details, landline, cell and blood group, as well as their residential area. If ever the urgent need for blood arises, this web-based database can then be logged into and the type of blood can be searched for. The database will come back with a list of all the people with that particular blood group in the area nearest to you, and all their contact details. This facility could be the difference between life and death. Anyone with Internet will have access to it.
3. Capture your details online. Once preparations for a website dedicated to this blood donor database are complete, (a week from now) you will be able to log onto http://www.mweb.co.zw/bloodbank and capture your details online. All you then have to do is be available and prepared to donate blood to save a life in an emergency.

We will send out another email to let you know at what times and in what room at the
Meikles Hotel, the blood donation exercise will be carried out. We hope to have this database up and running within the next 10 days, and we appeal to you to please help us to help save lives.

Lets make a difference through making this work. If you have any queries or require further information please contact us at MWEB on (04) 25 33 33

I look forward to your response and action.

Regards
Mike Ehret
GENERAL MANAGER
MWEB Zimbabwe

I was on a bus from Bulawayo to Harare the other day and sat next to a girl who had just come back from South Africa. She told me that she was coming back home for a holiday from university in South Africa. She said that she was on a full government scholarship (they pay for tuition and her living expenses for the whole time she is there for her degree – four years!) along with several hundred other Zimbabweans. I realise that this is good in that they are getting educated, but what is wrong with our Universities in Zimbabwe? We have paid millions in taxes to build them and now they spend even more money sending people out of the country to get educated and for their living expenses the whole time they are there. This raises the question – who are the people being sent over? Government officials children? I am very angry that we are paying more and more taxes to send people on holiday in South Africa while we have perfectly good schools here.

My voice on the blog has been inert, silent, saddened and more than anything overwhelmingly depressed. Intellectually, of course I knew the elections would be stolen and rigged, but in my heart of hearts I harbored foolish hope – I so prayed for a bright future for our bedeviled nation and our impoverished people.

This morning, as usual, I logged on to check the international news and I was outraged that once again Zimbabwe is on the United Nations Human Rights Commission – now it is confirmed that the whole world has gone mad. Would you invite Joseph Mengele to run the WHO or Osama Bin Laden to oversee UNICEF? I long ago lost hope in the integrity of our neighbours, but one was able to maintain a modicum of hope in the United Nations – that hypocritical body should be immediately dismantled and relegated to the dustbin of history as yet another failed attempt by the world to work for peace.

How do I tell my children that this is the way of the world? How do I instill in them a sense of trust in authority and democracy? How do I face the starvation, depredation and suffering in my home city? Where do I turn to for help?

Selina laughed nervously this morning when we discussed the country’s empty grain silos, what else can she do? She suggested that perhaps her children can eat the carcasses of Chinese jets, ak47 bullets or the dirt of untilled farms.

The people of Zimbabwe are wracked with fear and misery but remain cowed by the dictatorship that clutches them in its grips. No food, no fuel, no jobs, no health, no education. The regime clings to power oblivious by trodding on the backs of starving children and turn deaf ears to the nation’s grieving voice.

I fear that the simmering pot will boil over, giving rise to anarchy and chaos, the prospect which has the regime gleefully rubbing its hands over as an excuse to exercise martial law. All I can do right now is pray – may the madness soon end.

Organised by the <
a href="http://www.zimvigil.co.uk/">Zimbabwe Vigil Coalition. Please email savezimbabwe@hotmail.co.uk if you have any questions about the protest.

The outcome of the recent parliamentary elections, have left Zimbabweans back home in a state of shock and confusion. We, in the diaspora, need to act to help those back home. Reflecting this, the Vigil has been approached by Zimbabweans in the UK wanting to become more active. Plans are underway for a demonstration outside the Embassy from 1400 – 1800 on 30th April to protest against the stolen elections and to launch a campaign for Zimbabweans in the diaspora to work together to take a more active role in helping our brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe.

What you can do

• Come and join us
• Spread the word
• Make banners and placards

Some suggestions for banners, placards etc.

1. Each day of Mugabe’s regime is a day too long. Every 24 hours 96 Zimbabwean children die of AIDS. Zimbabwe has highest child death rate in the world. (Unicef Report)*
   * reported by BBC, 17th March 2005

2. Zimbabwe’s Stolen Elections

• Huge discrepancies between votes cast and votes announced.
• Voters’ roll numbers 5.7 million, actual electorate 3.2 million – over 2 million ghost voters.
• Army believed to have filled in ballot papers for these ghost names ahead of the elections.
• Police and army in charge of manning all polling stations.
• South African President Thabo Mbeki declared Zimbabwe’s elections to be free and fair before the elections.
• No American and European monitors allowed.
• Half the electorate has fled the country and was not allowed to vote.
• Zanu-PF withholds food from suspected opposition supporters.
• Villagers warned that constituencies voting MDC would be denied food after the election.

Vigil co-ordinators

The Vigil, outside the Zimbabwe Embassy, 429 Strand, London, takes place every Saturday from 14.00 to 18.00 to protest against gross violations of human rights by the current regime in Zimbabwe. The Vigil which started in October 2002 will continue until internationally-monitored, free and fair elections are held in Zimbabwe.

www.zimvigil.co.uk

There must be worse ways to start your day, but for me, starting the day eating cornflakes without sugar is it! Yesterday, we at least had some icing sugar – yes – that’s right, icing sugar on our breakfast! Are we a bit odd? Not really – we just live in Zimbabwe. But then again, living like this is likely to make us a bit eccentric!

We have been reduced from a major sugar exporting country to a country to one that can’t even guarantee supplies for its own domestic market! We also used to produce ethanol from sugar cane to blend with our petrol to reduce the forex bill for fuel. Now, there is no ethanol to blend, and even if there was, petrol is in such short supply that it goes directly from import to distribution.

No alcohol? …… now there’s a crying shame!

If that wasn’t bad enough, we now find that sugar is being exported.

Someone whose friend of a friend of a friend who works at Triangle, where the sugar is produced and packed, insists that Bulawayo is getting regular deliveries. But it certainly is not hitting the supermarket shelves. So guess where is it going? Straight to the black market! Yep – every
little Tom, Dick and Harry are peddling bags of sugar at exhorbitant prices.

But that can’t be it all? Nope – there are even more enterprising souls than that in Zimbabwe! It is being exported! Quoting another totally reliable source – another friend of a friend of a friend, it is going to Namibia. This friend was coming to work along Basch Street in Bulawayo and saw five Family Choice trucks – full rigs with two trailers – packed to the top with bags of sugar. Family Choice is a Namibian company.

And the real joke? Family Choice sugar was previously on our supermarket shelves! So maybe if we wait a bit we’ll see our sugar coming back, freshly repacked, at three times the price?

There’s nothing sweet about Zimbabwean situation at the moment!

Hey but it’s getting cold in Bullies and not much looking good here.

I went to buy smokes at the garage yesterday, you can’t get petrol, oil or even air at a garage any more, but the kiosks are still pretty good. But they run out of my brand. I couldn’t believe it – Zim the kings of tobacco and we can’t even get my favourite fags anymore.

Then I tried to get some beers for me and cooldrinks for a treat for my sister’s kids – running out of those too. Yasses, you can’t smoke yourself to death here and you can’t get pissed either. Never mind the insane price of the drinks you can get, now I been told the reason you can’t get drinks is that the bottling company has got no money to bring in the bottle tops.

Then I heard about the new zupco buses mugarbage has brought in from China, one of my mates at work told me he checked one come on its ass in Harare last week because the geniuses in our transport ministry brought in low clearance vehicles that can’t get over the capital’s speed humps never mind our buggered urban roads, huge big potholes and rural dirt tracks. What a bunch of wallies.

I used to laugh at the okes on mud island slaving away in the freezing cold, but these days it’s looking like I gotta get my skinny ass over there too.

I’m fed up! Fed up about the lies being peddled about the economy! But one good thing is that since the elections, the lies are becoming more difficult to hide. Firstly, prices are shooting up exposing the lie about the inflation rate – I don’t know what it really is, but I know it’s not the 110%-or-so published officially. Secondly, I hear that there is going to be an official devaluation – but there wasn’t supposed to be any exchange rate except the official one of $6000 approx to the US dollar – now we’re being told that actually there IS a parallel market, and that we will have to devalue by about 90% to bring the official rate to the street rate. Which brings us to a related point (number three) – 90% devaluation will hardly achieve that end – by my calculations, it should be closer to 150%….. And of course the fuel queues which are getting longer and more chaotic – that’s point number four. I’m sure there are more, but my mind can’t get round it all. All I know is that I’ve got less money in my pocket to feed my family now.

Tomorrow is opening day for Trade Fair 2005. The local rag reported yesterday that “NOCZIM has made a special arrangement with 12 service stations in Bulawayo that will sell fuel during the ZITF this week”. There are two things about this that struck me as being totally shameless.

Firs
tly, the fact that they have made this arrangement to see us through this week alone. What about after the Trade Fair? A quick fix solution to quickly disperse the daily queues so the few international exhibitors think all is well.

The second is that the owners of these twelve ‘chosen’ service stations have openly agreed to this ‘arrangement’. Why, I wonder? It does not seem to concern them that the rest of the country will see something sinister in the deal. For convenience, they are listed in the paper: Modern Motors, BP Shell (showgrounds) will be selling at the NOCZIM price. Others listed are Exor Main Street, Comoil Airport Road, BP Shell Retreat, Mobil Ascot, Total Victoria Service Station.

Oh, and I must mention something to all unsuspecting Zimbabweans here who think they may stand an equal chance of receiving some of this fuel. BP Shell (showgrounds) service station is the same garage that refused to provide service to a friend of mine when she could not produce a zanu-pf party membership card. I expect our new friends from the ‘look east’ campaign will have no problem here, so, for this week alone, we will once again be able to give the impression that all is normal – free and fair in Zimbabwe.