Sokwanele applauds New Zealand’s Prime Minister Helen Clark who has said she is personally opposed to the national team’s proposed tour of Zimbabwe.

Clark told New Zealand radio Newstalk ZB that in deciding whether a tour should go ahead New Zealand Cricket (NZC) usually assessed the issue on security reasons, rather than political ones.

“I have to say that, if it were me, I would not be going on either ground,” she said.

The people of Zimbabwe need the international community to unite against the war of terror that is being waged by the dictatorship upon its own people, and it takes a brave commitment by the democratic nations of the world to state the truth about Zimbabwe.

The captain of New Zealand’s cricket team has indicated that he will consider boycotting this tour. Should the tour be cancelled, we believe it will provide a strong moral statement against the oppression that exists in our country. Sokwanele supports the boycotting of sporting tours to Zimbabwe as an ethical statement against tyranny.

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It’s been two weeks since the elections were stolen from us, but it feels much longer. My mind is still struggling to engage with the reality of what happened. I’m still trying to work out how on earth the SA and SADC observers can get away with declaring these elections as ‘legitimate’. How do they manage this, and not hugely discredit themselves?

I remember watching slow motion footage of Sept 11th with my mouth open, not quite grasping the enormity of what I was seeing. But when the realisation did hit me, it came with the force of a sledgehammer.

I’m stuck in that moment again: so far it has been two weeks of being trapped in a twilight zone of incredulity and disbelief. I am numbed to my core, and wishing the sledgehammer would drop so I can move forward in some way.

Is it fair to compare Mugabe and his policies to the tragedy of 9/11? On a human scale
, what we’re experiencing is far worse - we’re not talking in terms of thousands of people dying here, we’re talking about millions starving slowly and invisibly to death. In practical terms, that means people wondering which of their children will die first? We’re an entire nation of peaceful people living in a state of fear. I call that terrorism – terrorism on a grand scale.

But, in a very strange way, it isn’t Mugabe’s terrorism that sinks me into a zombie-like state of shock. I can accept that there are people in the world who are as evil as some of those in zanupf. I can believe that there are people in the world who have no problem with starving and intimidating people to achieve their own ends. I know this, because I’ve lived in Matabeleland my whole life and I know just how bad zanupf and Mugabe can be.

It’s the lack of will that I perceive of ordinary ‘good’ people in the rest of the world to do anything to help us that appals me. I feel that I can fight and withstand anything when it’s against evil, but I honestly don’t know what to do in the face of world indifference.

Mugabe is appalling, he is cruel, he is awful. He has taken so much from us, and left us in a daily fight for basic survival. But we’ve always found the strength to kick against the injustices of his regime. And then the Southern African ‘liberation mafia’ rocked up. It feels like Mugabe stole the elections, but that the liberation mafia are doing all they can to rob us of our hope for a better future. I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve that, and I don’t know which action is more criminal.

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I recently received an email from a friend who lives in remote area, saying ‘what’s happening in the towns, are people accepting the vote?’

I gave him the standard reply that I did not know what was being done, but we can be assured by the fact that the MDC said that they would not accept these results and our President was quoted on the day after the figures were announced saying ‘we will not go to court’.

Satisfied with my reply, I carried on reading my mail and checking out the online news. To my horror, the first headline I read was ‘Zimbabwe Opposition to Challenge Poll in Court”.

I am an avid MDC supporter (along with most of the population). We know we won these elections. In the period of just one week, we are feeling the effects of mugabes new era. No food, no fuel and increased prices. How long will these court cases take and who will preside over them? Realistically, the only people who will be around when the time does eventually come are going to be the zanu fatcats.

We cannot overcome starvation in the courts. We all know that the legal route is a road well travelled. Zimbabweans await the call.

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I heard a story today about someone who fell ill and now needs an emergency operation. She has been quoted a fee of $50 million - operation only. This does not include the hospital fees, aftercare or medicines prescribed. Without this operation, she will die.

I understand that inflation has made the price of drugs skyrocket, and I appreciate that in a theatre you have to take into account the anaethetist, nurses, oxygen and whatever medicines. Obviously, the doctor himself is a specialist surgeon and has his
fee.

‘IF’ this operation lasts for 5 hours (which I doubt very much it will), they are quoting $10 million per hour. $166,666 per minute. Almost $2800 per second. I would like to see the breakdown of costs, and how this is calculated, wouldn’t you?

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Gogo, our domestic worker, is unhappy - you can see that. The usual smile has gone from her face - all because of a cheap political trick that zanupf played to try and gain votes in the recent (sham of) Parliamentary elections. And she is not alone - hundreds of thousand of workers have been directly and negatively affected by this.

Just before elections, the government rammed through a Statutory Instrument (Domestic Workers: Pay Increases, 2005 (No.2)). This designated about a 900% increase in Domestic Worker’s wages across the board. There was major confusion and panic amongst employers, as many are unable to pay such enormous increases, particularly in the case of pensioners (who depend on these workers to care for them). To add to their dismay, they found that they are also unable to find the money to pay their workers off (legally). They would have to pay a month’s salary for every year worked - in a lot of cases, a quite impossibly enormous figure if the worker had been with them for many years (as is often the case).

But then what about the workers? Their anger and frustration is huge! They were not stupid enough to believe that this was anything more than cheap politicking by a desperate regime. But on the other hand, they are the lowest paid workers in the country. They need increases - but most of know their employers can’t give it to them (not at the new rates). Many won’t give it to them. If the increases had been within reason, there would have been no problems.

But many have already been summarily dismissed, and will have an enormous battle to get what is due to them as retrenchment packages, and there will be little help available from their (totally self-serving) Union or the Ministry of labour, as the backlog of cases will be huge!

The spin-off in other industries is already causing labour unrest, as the increases now put domestic workers earning more than factory and agricultural workers! This is causing huge problems for these industries at a time when they are battling for survival.

And what do the Ministry say? They are obviously confused, as they are unable to issue a firm statement - negotiations WERE under way with the unions, but the matter appears to have been completely taken out of their hands. It is openly rumoured that the planned increases were to be less than half of what was gazetted. To add to the confusion, it appears that this Statutory Instrument is not law yet, even though it has been gazetted. It is said that it was illegally gazetted to get in before the elections. It is understood that the date on the gazette is a public holiday and therefore not possible. Employers are being told to hold back on paying the increases while the matter drags on.

So where does that leave Gogo? Not happy - to be sure.

But you ARE a part of our family Gogo, and our children are your children too - heaven knows, you have brought them up together with us. We might battle to pay you and we may have to cut a deal, but we’re not going to abandon you - certainly not over zanupf and their unfeeling, uncaring tricks!

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Apparently Blair and Howard swiftly swapped seats when they realised who they’d be sitting next to at the Pope’s funeral. I haven’t been able to find much reference to this, but Th
e Horrid (the state controlled Herald newspaper) have quoted unnamed sources saying they did, and Mugabe himself has been regailing all with the tale (again, reported in The Horrid).

President recounts Blair’s hasty retreat

PRESIDENT Mugabe sparked laughter in the aisles at the 61st session of the Zanu-PF Central Committee yesterday when he narrated how British Prime Minister Tony Blair fled from his seat at Pope John II’s funeral in Rome last Friday and how subsequently a handshake with Prince Charles sent the British media livid.

“Pope John Paul II was a revered Pope,” he started off. “It was a very moving ceremony, quite long. I’ve never seen such a multitude of people.”

He told the Central Committee that the event had attracted a galaxy of world leaders and clerics from various denominations. Among them were United States President George W. Bush and his two predecessors – his father George Bush Snr and Bill Clinton.

Cde Mugabe had the delegates in stitches when he chronicled how he came face-to-face with a perplexed Mr Blair.

Sitting arrangements at the Pope’s funeral were made in an alphabetical order, regardless of the differences and similarities the world leaders might have, he said.

“It was P, R, S, T, U, V . . . X, Y, Z. Unfortunately ‘V’ was not there and ‘U’ was for United Kingdom. So the next for UK was Zi (for Zimbabwe).

“So ava vanoisa machairs vanongonyora zvavo,” he said, sending uproarious laughter in the Zanu-PF Hall at the ruling party’s headquarters.

“Blair left, then came the Prince (Charles) and (Acting Finance Minister Dr Herbert Murerwa) sat close to him. Seat yaMurerwa ndoyanga iri yaBlair (Dr Murerwa’s seat had been originally intended for Mr Blair).”

“Blair felt ‘I will not be comfortable sitting with these people’. So he decided to go and sit behind my aide Moses Chihuri. He was not aware that he, too, was my aide. He did not know,” the President said.

So the drama was now left for Prince Charles who made some courteous exchanges with Cde Mugabe.

“We were discussing, you know, naPrince nezvevasikana (about girls),” he said, jolting Central Committee members into another bout of laughter.

“He told me he was in Ghana and that they were nice women there. And I said to him: ‘I married in Ghana’ and he said: ‘Oh!’

“I congratulated him and I said we wish you well because on Saturday ainochata naCamilla wake (he was being wedded to his Camilla). I said I’m sorry I can’t invite you to have a honeymoon in Victoria Falls.

“I asked him to send my regards to the Queen. I’ve respect for the Queen and I asked him to convey my greetings to her,” he said.

“Chitarira uone zvaitwa nemaBritish Press. Kunobata munhu azere neropa? Handizivi kuti iropa ripi raitaurwa (The British Press went completely beserk, rounding on the Prince for merely shaking my hand. They said my hands are tainted with blood. I don’t know which blood they were referring to),” he said, commenting on the stinging media criticism Prince Charles received after he greeted him.

Relations between Britain and Zimbabwe turned sour after Mr Blair reneged on his country’s colonial obligation to support Zimbabwe’s land reforms.

He spoke about the Pope’s funeral, the Pope’s personality and the coming election of a new pontiff by cardinals.

“Isu tine ma archbishop maviri chete. Iri benzi redu iri kozoti vaNdlovu vaiva kuHwange (In Zimbabwe we only have two Catholic archbishops — the crazy one we all know and Harare Archbishop Robert Ndlovu who was previously at Hwange,” he said in pointing out that Zimbabwe had no cardinals and only a few countries in Africa
had them.

In September last year, British Foreign Minister Mr Jack Straw shook hands with President Mugabe just moments after he had delivered a scathing attack on Mr Blair and Mr Bush at the 59th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

The handshake occurred at a reception hosted by South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki.

Mr Straw came under fire from the main opposition Conservative Party and the media for merely greeting President Mugabe, something which the British media described as an “amusing embarrassment”.

I’ll bet that the British opposition regret the fact that they moved seats along with Mr Blair. They’ve missed a wonderful opportunity to gather material to use against Labour in the forthcoming British elections.

But in case they still don’t grasp it, this political insight from The Chronic should help:

The move was considered very childish because it is unheard of for adults to run away from their political foe at a funeral of a pontiff. It again exposed Mr Blair’s near-obsessive fear of President Mugabe [...] The fleeing has exposed Mr Blair’s inadequancy as a world leader”.

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One of my employees was late for work today. This directly affects production because the machines cannot operate until he is on duty. He explained that he had ‘transport problems’ and could not get a lift from the high density suburbs where he lives. The reason being is that the cost of public transport has increased today.

A normal trip in an ET (mini bus taxi - ‘emergency taxi’) would usually cost him $2000. This morning we awoke to a new rate of $3000. On top of this, as a direct result of the fuel shortages, the taxi drivers have shortened their usual routes.

Another staff member told me how the shorter routes meant he had to change ETs three times to get to work. Each trip cost him $3000, so yesterday he paid $4000 return, and today he will pay $18000 return. How is this reasonable?

My business cannot afford another pay rise, so what is the solution? I will be forced to close, and more families will go without food. Well done bob!

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So they’ve put the minimum wage for domestic workers up to just under a million bucks! Who can afford this? Certainly not the pensioners, nor many middle-class people. And who will suffer? The domestic workers themselves… they’ll find themselves jobless and out of their free accommodation with electricity and water provided. More suffering.

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It pains me to say it, and it makes my skin crawl to think about it, but I have to say that I think that I too would have shaken Mugabe’s hand at the Pope’s funeral; or at least, I hope I would have been able to do so despite everything I think and feel about Mugabe. I like to think that I would have done so out of respect for the Pope, to honour the spirit of the funeral and the Pope himself. After all, the Pope was in the business of forgiveness and reconciliation, a force for good. What would he have thought if I had rebuffed a handshake? The Pope, as a human being, was far greater and more significant than Mugabe could ever be. It’s important to recognise and pay tribute to that.

Having reluctantly said that, I also know that any handshake with Mugabe would be ruthlessly exploited by him and used and manipulated in an attempt to con people in Zimbabwe that all is well and OK with Mugabe and the world. It’s a serious point beca
use we don’t have independent daily news in Zimbabwe so the state controlled media has an almost free reign in controlling information. As expected, the front page of yesterday’s The Chronic revealed the product of Mugabe’s PR efforts in Rome: a front-page picture of him being ‘welcomed’ by Archbishop James Harvey.

However, The Chronic deliberately didn’t tell us that Archbishop James Harvey’s duties on that day, as Prefect of the Papal Household, was to greet every single visiting dignitary, including despots and dictators. Nor did The Chronic describe the revulsion that Mugabe’s obvious attempts at self-promotion invoked in people overseas. One newspaper commented that the “curse of the Robert Mugabe handshake struck again”; another referred to the “handshake from hell”. A third marvelled at Mugabe’s “gall” and “temerity” for showing up in the first place and at his “bald-faced hypocrisy”. Someone within the Vatican was quoted as saying that the Vatican “was hard to put Mugabe anywhere where he would not cause embarrassment”.

What is interesting to me is that The Chronic chose that picture to trumpet out its message to the home audience, and not the one of poor Prince Charles shaking Mugabe’s hand. I think there are two reasons for this.

First, the picture of Charles and Mugabe shows Mugabe clearly leaning over and going to a huge effort to grasp the Prince’s hand - it doesn’t show the Prince warmly receiving it or even leaning forward to make it easier for Mugabe to reach him. The Prince’s household have confirmed that the effort was all Mugabe’s: “From what we understand, Mr Mugabe manoeuvred himself and leant over at a point in the service when people shake hands. The prince was caught by surprise and was not in a position to avoid it.” I was listening to swradio africa the other day and TK was laughing - he thought it was hilarious that Mugabe would go to such extreme lengths to shake the hand of his ‘colonial master’. I have to agree.

And that’s the second point why The Chronic wouldn’t choose that picture. How could they feasibly use a picture like that as propaganda for Mugabe in light of Mugabe’s whole anti-British election campaigning? How can they explain to a Zimbabwean audience, that Mugabe himself would want to shake hands with the Prince after everything he has said about ‘imperial British colonial masters’? How would a picture of Mugabe shaking hands with the Prince sit alongside an incomprehensible article and meaningless graph (both of which appeared in the same issue of The Chronic) that boasted headlines and figure captions like these?

Had Prince Charles refused to shake Mugabe’s hand, as many in Zimbabwe and Britain wished he had, it would be quite a different matter altogether. I suspect The Chronic would have revelled in the opportunity to portray a member of the British household as a ‘white imperialist master’ refusing to shake the hand of a beleaguered ‘black liberation hero’. I can almost hear it, can’t you?

The Chronic can manipulate and distort information as much as it likes, but rest assured, Mugabe must have sen
sed people’s revulsion; he must have know that he was there like a bad smell, that his presence, at best, was tolerated out of respect for the Pope by people who have more dignity than he does. Zimbabweans should take comfort from that.

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I was at the Bulawayo airport a few days ago and the new terminal is still in construction. How absurd it is to be building a mammoth terminal when tourism in the southern part of the country is down to a trickle. The people of Matabeleland starve whilst the regime builds great inefficient monuments to itself.

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As millions of people around the world mourned the loss of Pope John Paul, robert mugabe did what he always does. He used the funeral service for his own devious agenda. This is something that bob is quite familiar with. As the old man’s support dwindled to next to nothing before elections last week, he had to resort to funeral gatherings to make his statements instead of rallies. On ZBC you would see him ‘addressing’ a crowd of mourners. He never spoke about the deceased, but about his ‘anti-blair’ campaign, his so-called successful land policies, the opposition party etc. The next day, the newspaper would carry quotes and pictures of HIM on a podium.

The man has no respect for the living and no respect for the dead. Shame on him, again!

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Once more, the queues for petrol and diesel are to be seen around town! It seems that the ET (emergency taxi) and bus drivers had used up all their fuel over the holiday weekend, and on Tuesday and Wednesday they were jamming the roads as they squeezed into the fuel queues. Now, towards the end of the week, the ordinary motorist is in the queue with them. Running a car has become so expensive, let alone the time wasted in queuing for petrol.

Plenty of people I have talked to have cancelled their fully-comprehensive motor insurance policies, and are down to the bare minimum cover required by law; if they have an accident, that’s the end of their car, as they will never be able to afford another one.

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I was walking down the street this morning with a friend when I saw some graffiti, scrawled on the back of a road sign. The numbers “94/26″ had been scrawled in bright red letters. When I looked a little puzzled my friend said, “You know what that means, don’t you?”

I confessed to being rather ignorant and he explained, “That is the size of the MDC victory. The MDC actually won 94 of the 120 elected seats in parliament, and ZANU PF only 26. ZANU claimed a two-thirds majority but that is a sham. Leaving aside the massive vote rigging that went on, they only won 26 seats.”

“I knew about the vote rigging,” I said, “but I didn’t realize it was on that scale. So MDC in fact thrashed the ruling party?”

“Exactly!” said my friend said with a broad grin and a five-fingered salute for the party.

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After the election I feel like someone who has been punched to the ground. A knock out blow which has completely winded me. My friends are all the same. We know MDC won a big majority but the ZANU PF cheats have stolen it again. Things are so desper
ate and we had been hoping and praying for change. On Sunday many of us women just could not help weeping as we came out of church together. We just embraced, the tears streaming down our faces. And everyone understood. No one asked us what the matter was. It’s like a bereavement. We all feel the same.

Why does God allow the suffering to continue? When is he going to deliver us from this evil dictator? I know Archbishop Pius says “God helps those who help themselves”, but what can I do?

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Robber Mugabe is utterly unbelievable. Is there anyone in the world who has a bigger ego than he does?

Today he jetted off to Rome to attend the funeral of the Pope, defying EU travel sanctions and thereby rubbing the world’s noses in the fact that he has recently stolen elections - again - and apparently managed to get away with it - again. Zimbabweans are condemned by SADC and South Africa to more years of the same misery under ZANU-PF rule: poverty, unemployment, inflation, hunger, violence and political reprisals.

Here we have someone who uses democratic processes to varnish his twisted political aims with a transparent coating of legitimacy. A Dictator attending the funeral of a Holy man - a man who is currently being held up as an icon because of, among other things, his resolute stance against totalitarianism and people like Mugabe himself.

You may be thinking that Mugabe, a Catholic schooled by Jesuits, is deeply moved by the Pope’s death and wants to be there. I don’t think so.

Let’s not forget that Mugabe was very anti-Catholic for a long time. Why? Because those dastardly Christians had the audacity to criticise him for horrendous human rights abuses in Matabeleland during the 1980s. In fact, the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) even went so far to draft a report , one of the few that records those horrendous days, chronicling in detail the crimes that Mugabe’s 5 Brigade committed against the people of Matabeleland – crimes that can only be described as pure evil. (The Zimbabwean has been doing a good job recently of reminding us of that time period). Mugabe’s outrage at the CCJP report was such that he apparently persuaded his friend, Archbishop Patrick Chakaipa, to suppress the report for a while - the Archbishop obliged.

But lets put things like torture, state sanctioned starvation, rape and near genocide aside for a moment. Mugabe’s alignment to the Catholic faith is also heavily undermined by his very ‘un-Catholic’ behaviour.

This is a Catholic who had a long-term adulterous affair with his secretary - a woman 40 years his junior - while his wife, Sally, was gravely ill with a kidney ailment. In fact, he married his secretary, Grace, in an African ceremony two years before Sally died, claiming that traditional law allowed him to take a junior wife. The couple already had two children despite the fact that Grace was still married to another man, Stanley Goreraza, by whom she had a son.

After Sally died, Mugabe and Grace got married, in a Catholic Mass, presided over by, you guessed it, Archbishop Patrick Chakaipa! You have to marvel at Mugabe’s cheek. He has an adulterous affair, while his wife is dying, and two illegitimate children, but he can still convince a Catholic Archbishop to marry him to a divorced woman, in a Catholic Church?! Incredible - almost as incredible as persuading Thabo Mbeki and SADC that the recent election in Zimbabwe were totally free and fair.

Back to the Pope though, a man who fought totalitarianism. What would he have thought of Mugabe jetting off to attend his funeral as if all was well and normal?

I think the clues are there in what the Pope did after Archbishop Patrick Chakaipa died two years ago from cancer.

The CCJP quote the Pope Paul VI on their site: “lf you want peace, work for justice”.

The Pope did just that when he appointed Robert Ndlovu as the new Archbishop of Harare. Archbishop Robert Ndlovu was born in Matabeleland, more particularly, in Lupane, an area that saw some of the worst atrocities committed against it during the Gukuruhundi. He was ordained a priest in 1983, at the height of the Gukurhundi. At his installation speech in August last year, the new Archbishop affirmed his position with regards human rights atrocities: he said “The role of a bishop and of the church in general is to stand up for human dignity, and from human dignity flow human rights.” He also confirmed that free expression, association and assembly were rights the church supported.

The Tablet wrote at the time:

In a signal that he wants the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe to take a firmer line with the country’s dictator, Robert Mugabe, the Pope this week appointed a member of the Ndebele people as Archbishop of Harare. The appointment means that the country’s two leading Catholic bishops are linked to the Matabeleland provinces which Mugabe has done most to alienate.

The Pope had peace and justice in mind, and Zimbabweans thank him for it with all our hearts.

When Robber Mugabe attends the Pope’s funeral, he’ll be fooling nobody. The Pope knew what he was, and Zimbabweans know what he is: a moral lightweight who lies and steals and hurts innocent people. Apparently all-powerful, yet at the core of his being craving respectability and legitimacy in the eyes of the world.

He’ll leave the same person he was when he arrived, an aging dictator with his nose pressed up against the window of the world, longing to join in, but never accepted: an isolated outsider.

But while he’s trying to be the big-guy at the Pope’s funeral, let all Zimbabweans remember Pope John Paul II’s simple truthful words and take them to heart:

Violence is a lie, for it goes against the truth of our faith, the truth of our humanity, the life, the freedom of human beings. Violence is a crime against humanity, for it destroys the very fabric of society.

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