[This article is being mailed to our subscribers today. Click here to subscribe to the Sokwanele mailing list. ]

December 10th is Human Rights Day, but in Zimbabwe human rights are grossly abused, and the poor, in particular, are ridden over roughshod by the Mugabe regime. 26 years after Independence, there is no respect for human rights in this country.

The American Declaration of Independence written at the end of the eighteenth century, states “….all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. These are the most fundamental human rights of all.

Today on Human Rights Day, we take just three basic human rights – perhaps the most important ones: food, health care, education - and look at how they fare as we mourn what has become of life in Zimbabwe.

Food

The average life expectancy in Zimbabwe has fallen to 34 years for women, and 37 years for men – the lowest in the world. This is due to the combined impact of poverty, Aids and malnutrition.

Zimbabwe used to be the bread-basket of Southern Africa, before Mugabe and his regime embarked on an ill-thought out land redistribution exercise. The majority of the previously highly productive farms were snatched from the mainly white owners and given to landless peasants without access to finance or the necessary skills and inputs; the other beneficiaries were Zanu PF bigwigs, who practice weekend farming using methods akin to slave labour. Since 2001, the country has relied on food imports and donor aid to supplement domestic output. Predictions for the last agricultural year 2005/6 were that farmers would harvest only 62% of the country’s annual cereal requirement.

Zimbabweans are dying. Bulawayo City is the only city council that regularly reports deaths due to malnutrition: in the five months up to May this year, they reported 155 deaths. Health officials there reported that most of those who had died of hunger-related illnesses were children below the age of five. Shockingly, in that same city, five deaths due to malnutrition were recently reported at Ingutsheni, the government mental hospital. Even government itself reports that stunting, a measure of chronic malnutrion, is reported to be 29,4 percent in 2005-06 compared to 26,5 percent in a 1999 survey, and the mortality rate for children under five has dwindled from 102 per 1 000 births in 1999 to 78 in 2004, and is no doubt far worse now, two years further on in 2006.

A report approved by senior government officials estimated that 1.4 million rural people (about 17% of that sector) are food insecure in the current season. This does not include a few million more hungry people in Zimbabwe’s towns and cities. The situation is desperate: workers arrive at work inadequately nourished and will often save the highly subsidized lunches received in factory canteens, taking them home in the evening to be shared amongst the entire family.

In summary, we leave the food issue with the following recent quote from former Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander Vitalis Zvinavashe (a Zanu bigwig if ever there was one!): “What independence is that when people are hungry 26 years on? …It is the system. We say we are now independent, independent with no food. Go back to historical structures. Open the archives and see how they used to do it, …They are saying we are going to have a good harvest, but there is no diesel. Should there be an agricultural Bible of Ten commandments on what must be done?”

Health Care

The Zimbabwean health system has collapsed: there is serious understaffing, lack of morale, lack of essential drugs including ARVs, critical equipment is old and not functioning, and HIV infection levels are running at 24% of the population.

Doctors and nurses battle with low wages and without critical equipment such as rubber gloves, saline drips, syringes and painkillers – not surprisingly, many of them emigrate for greener pastures, leaving a still greater load on those remaining. One province, Matabeleland South, recently reported that it had only one doctor, based at Gwanda Hospital, to service 4 million people; its full complement of doctors should be 12, with a further 9 specialists.

Even pharmacies battle to obtain critical drugs, supplying their clients in dribs and drabs as they are able to get their hands on 10 or 15 or 25 tablets at a time; a large percentage of drugs are imported and the pharmacists have to do battle with the Medicine Council’s import requirements, as well as with the Reserve Bank for the sourcing of the forex to pay for them. Medical aid subscriptions increase by 25% per month, notwithstanding the increasing shortfalls that are passed on to the patient, and probably only 10% or so of the population is fortunate enough to have access to private medical aid in any case.

The country has only two radiotherapy machines, at Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare. They broke down five months ago, having gone well over their 10 year lifespan (one was bought in 1987 and the other one in 1992!), and are yet to be repaired. The Deputy Minister of Health and Child Welfare Dr Edwin Muguti said the country was not offering any radiotherapy services now, “Patients who need radiotherapy treatment now either go to South Africa or any other place where the facility is available,” he said.

It is the same story for all other critical medical equipment including dialysis machines.

Aids is the largest killer in Zimbabwe, although that is rarely the cause entered on the death certificate. In developed countries, patients diagnosed with HIV can expect to live 15 years or more without developing full-blown Aids, providing they have access to good nutrition and anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs. In Zimbabwe, about 600 000 HIV-positive people need treatment, but the regime’s ARV programme only caters for a tiny 42 000 of them. The rest have to source them from pharmacies (where the cost has increased by 65% in just 3 months) or the ultimate death sentence is passed, and they must go without.

Education

Zimbabwe’s workforce was once the envy of all other African countries: they were well educated and had a good command of English, Maths, Geography, Science and History on leaving school, often armed with other subjects as well. The University of Zimbabwe was well-respected, offering degrees which could hold their own against those of any other country on the continent, and abroad too.

As with other public services, though, the man-made economic crisis has bludgeoned the education sector into a shadow of its former self, with headmasters fighting to preserve standards with virtually no financial provision from the state. Teachers are poorly paid, and regularly resort to running “tuck shops” in break or lunchtimes, to augment their income by a few miserly bank notes.

Rural schools in particular are quite literally falling apart, with no provision for repair work to buildings or infrastructure: windows are smashed, desks and chairs are broken, often irreparably, and one text book is shared between an entire class.

With the increase in school fees this year, (and do please remember that as government schools, these are supposed to be free) many children have had to drop out of school. Where families have had to choose which child would be the unlucky one, the girl child often suffers first. Children, too, are arriving at school without adequate nutrition, resulting in falling concentration levels, or even falling asleep during class.

Even the private schools are not exempt, and have been subjected to sustained attack by the Minister for Education, Aeneas Chigwedere, doing everything within his evil power to force sub-economic fee levels that would lead to their closure. This has generated ire from his fellow ministers, most of whose children attend the best private schools in the country, but his aim appears to be to level all educational institutes to the lowest common denominator.

Finally on this subject, we mourn for the school leavers who have battled the odds to get good O and A level grades, for there are no jobs for them to go to. They are forced into economic exile or back to the streets or their rural homes to scratch a living there.

Our mourning turned to hope

So today, on Human Rights Day, we mourn. We mourn the current situation, the hopelessness, the deaths, the sores and scabs of Aids patients, the unemployment.

But we also have cause for hope, if not for rejoicing. For hope is kindled knowing that a change in just a few things would bring transformation.

Firstly, to have a government that is democratically elected by the people of the nation; secondly, the will to end corruption, and to prosecute offenders at all levels. Next, a redirection of government expenditure to critical areas, and away from the defence and intelligence forces; also in accord with this, a paring away of the bloated civil service and bringing in a culture of service, efficiency and value added. Finally, with these remedies successfully applied, a return of skilled professionals to the country, which would happen naturally if the fundamentals were put to rights.

How ironic that Zimbabwe currently holds a seat on the Council of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights. Mugabe is the chief criminal when looking at human rights abuses, and he has inculcated his value system into his cronies. They are afraid of losing power, because their crimes will become known and they will be held accountable.

We at Sokwanele want to hold them accountable, and this is part of our brief: to diligently record the gross abuses of power in this land, so that a contemporary record stands, ready for the time when they leave the corridors of power and are made to account for what they have done.

[This article is being mailed to our subscribers today. Click here to subscribe to the Sokwanele mailing list. ]

Technorati Tags: December 10th, Human Rights Day, Zimbabwe, food, health care, education, Mugabe, Zanu PF, malnutrition, Aids, ARV, University of Zimbabwe, Council of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights

Does the Zanu PF government expect Zimbabweans to believe that sanitary ware for women is now an issue of national security – that tampons and pads are lethal weapons?

Or perhaps the government can’t bear to see civic society having the capacity to address the problems which are caused by the government’s incompetence.

Or is this simply a question of ugly intimidation, designed to de-humanise and deliberately humiliate Zimbabwean women further?!

Press Release from the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU)

Dear colleagues,

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions has just received news that state security agencies last week seized a consignment of sanitary pads meant for distribution to farmworkers in Zimbabwe’s farming areas of Concession and Mvurwi.

The pads were allegedly seized by police and later the dreaded Central Intelligence Organization was drawn into the matter. The ZCTU had given the General Agricultural and Plantation Workers’ Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ) its allocation of the pads sourced with the help of international partners.

On seizure, the farmworkers were told that the pads had been poisoned by former white commercial farmers, which is a blatant lie as the ZCTU, with the help of international partners and friends sourced for the sanitary ware.

However, the ZCTU is disturbed by this development because the sanitary pads were meant for women who cannot afford them. We deplore the actions of government, done through its security arms.

Efforts are currently underway to locate where the consignment of pads was taken to.

Please see this post for more information on the Dignity. Period! Campaign. It includes background information on the shortage of sanitary ware in Zimbabwe, and instructions on how to use our button to support the ZCTU and ACTSA campaign for Zimbabwen womens’ dignity via your website or blog.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, sanitary pads, police, Central Intelligence Organization, ZCTU, Dignity. Period!, Zimbabwe, gender, womens’ rights, freedom, justice

A feature of the golfing calendar is corporate sponsors, often by leading banks. This is despite Zimbabwe achieving the worst economic indicators in the world. Life goes on.

However, I played the other day and settled into discussion following the game. Most players were businessmen and a good number from the commercial sector earning a living from the supermarket business.

The talk was about who had been visited by the CIO (Secret Police) CID and also Reserve Bank personnel.

Virtually everyone had been threatened and intimidated by these people most of whom were rude and aggressive to them. In one case, a business was visited three times in one day!

In another, a store keeper was threatened with closure if he didn’t sell sugar at the controlled price which, incidentally, is 25% below the purchase price from the refinery’s distributors.

Then there was another who had his cash confiscated because he had “too much in relation to his business” !

This was the same week that two bakery executives were jailed for four months for putting up prices “without Government approval”!

This is in an environment of doing business with an inflation rate of around 27% PER MONTH and rising!

In such cases, there is little or no recourse to law and everyone simply becomes a victim of state thuggery.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, CIO, CID, Reserve Bank, law, economy, mugabe, inflation

WOZA Update
Press Release: 10.40 am Monday 4th

Sokwanele Note: Images were published last week in our post entitled ‘Zimbabwe police viciously attack women and children’

40 members released on Friday into the custody of their lawyer for the weekend have reported back to Bulawayo Central this morning. It is still not clear at this stage when police will take them to court, if at all.

The two members rushed to hospital on Friday afternoon finally received treatment late on Friday evening once they had been transferred from the government facility to which they had been taken to a private clinic. Magodonga Mahlangu was referred to a specialist on Saturday due to the fact that she had fallen to the ground and blacked out after being beaten with a baton stick. She was further kicked whilst lying passed out on the ground. Both are feeling considerably better having received medical treatment and neither’s condition is serious.

The woman with the broken ankle continues to receive specialist treatment and her condition remains serious. The specialist admitted that, given the severity of the break and her age, many other doctors would have simply amputated. He is continuing to attempt to save her leg but the next two weeks remain critical. The woman, in her sixties, admitted that she was beaten by police whilst lying on the ground. They were telling her to get up and run. When she tried to do so, “she could not find her foot to stand up”.

Further stories of horror have emerged over the weekend. The woman who was kicked in the breast and collapsed outside the police station was actually going to the rescue of her sister who was being beaten on the back of the neck by a baton stick and kicked in the stomach. When her sister begged them to stop, the same officer kicked her in the breast. This attack later caused her to collapse. Both sisters received medical treatment and are recovering from their brutal attack.

One of the young girls taken to the start of the demonstration and assaulted whilst being made to pick up flyers testified: “We were ordered to pick up all the flyers that we had strewn on the roads for passers-by. We were also ordered to pick up litter besides the flyers and this included picking up dirty material, even from stagnant water. They also forced us to pick up litter from beneath parked cars, which required us to lie prostrate on the ground, at which time they would beat us with baton sticks and kick us.

We were most pained when workers at Express Mart (the shop outside where we had kicked off our demonstration), joined hands with the police in insulting and even cheering on the police, who they ordered to force us to sing in the same way we had had been singing as we were distributing the flyers.”

You can contact Express Mart on +263 9 889997 to ask them why they find such delight and pleasure at the sight of policemen assaulting young girls with impunity in broad daylight.

More details will be given when they become available.

Technorati Tags: WOZA, Zimbabwe, gender, women, violence against women, gender violence, police brutality, ZRP, Zimbabwe Republic Police, human rights, protest, activism, activist

We have had beautiful rain in Zimbabwe recently, and I thought of the thousands of derelict farms where over twenty thousand commercial farmers were evicted from their homes, and over two and a half million people, many of Malawian origin, have lost their livelihoods and their futures. It was a beautiful sunny day, and there was something really eerie about it, as the main roads are getting quieter and quieter, and the workers walking to work get fewer and fewer.

It struck me that I was living in one of the richest countries in Africa with vast Mineral resources, and yet, most of us live below the poverty line. Every month even those with jobs leave the factories and go to neighbouring Countries where they can earn well over five times the wage they get in Zimbabwe. It seems as though we are steadily grinding to a halt, and yet, there was a strange calmness about the day as it unfolded. It was eerie in that just below the surface lay a relatively simple solution to this stagnation and decline, and yet it eludes us. I then thought of what a reasonably sound National Management program could easily do to turn Zimbabwe into land of smiles, freedom, and prosperity.

I thought of just how simple the equation, and yet, a country is being forced to endure, through circumstance, and selfish exploitation by a miniscule minority whose only means to retaining power is through the weapon of fear. If we can only break down that barrier, we will be free and be able to take our country back and share it again when there will be enough for everyone to prosper and guarantee their children a secure future.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe

From The Independent on Sunday (UK), 3 December:

‘At home I am an enemy of the state, here Anna is a shoulder to lean on’

Thabitha Khumalo is the vice president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and this year won UK Woman of the Year. Khumalo, 46, has just launched the campaign Dignity.Period! with Action for South Africa (ACTSA). She lives in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

The moment I saw Anna’s face I recognised her from the movies. My stomach was churning, but as soon as she sat down she was warm and friendly. Our first meeting was at a coffee shop in London. ACTSA had contacted Anna in order to help raise awareness of some of the health issues affecting women in Zimbabwe. We sat down together and I explained to her that the average minimum wage for a woman in my country is £12 per month, and yet a box of 10 tampons costs £3. What woman in her right mind would rather spend money on tampons rather than on basics like food? The female life expectancy is now 34 years: and they are dying from preventable infections. Anna was horrified. Anna told me that when she was in Zimbabwe she got very sick, and the couple she was staying with looked after her until she got better. They became good friends, so I think she felt she wanted to give something back. It so happened that I also knew the farm where she had stayed, and when I told her that it had been repossessed and all the people displaced, it broke her heart. She started crying and I did too.

From that moment our friendship blossomed. Every time I came to the UK I would call her and we would go to the theatre, or just chat over the phone. Eventually we managed to organise a fundraising event with her friends from the film industry. It was beyond words. The lights, the decorations, the most beautiful women in the most beautiful gowns – it was a different world for me. I was mesmerised. Although our lives are very different, Anna and I have a very strong connection. We are both go-getters with a lot of determination and energy. Like me, she is also a single mother, which can be a huge challenge. So even though we come from different environments, we are sort of in the same boat. When I compare our two worlds, it amazes me that they can co-exist and I think that is why our friendship is so important. I come from a place where I have no rights, or freedom of speech. It’s survival of the fittest. I have to learn from what I have seen of Anna’s world so that we can work towards a better Zimbabwe. In the UK I feel like a human being again, whereas at home in Zimbabwe I can feel isolated. At home it’s difficult for me to have friends because I am an enemy of the state and people are petrified to be seen to be talking to me. Here, you have no time to cry because you have always got to be strong, but when I come to the UK I know that in Anna I will always have a shoulder to lean on.

Anna Chancellor is widely recognised for her role as Duckface in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), and on television as Caroline Bingley in Pride and Prejudice. More recently Chancellor, 41, has made appearances in Spooks. She lives in London and has a daughter called Poppy.

Thabitha is a bit like a film star: she’s very beautiful and incredibly strong and incredibly vulnerable, all at once. Her openness is characteristic of the people in Zimbabwe, which is probably why I felt very at home there and very at home with Thabitha. I met Thabitha after receiving an email that said something like, “Women in trouble in Zimbabwe – no sanitary products”. I thought that was horrendous – the idea of never being able to have a tampon when you need one. But the real reason I felt a necessity to help was that I became incredibly sick while I was working in Zimbabwe and a local woman took me to her home, fed, bathed me and looked after me until I got better. I loved her so much. In a way my friendship with Thabitha is a repayment to her. Weirdly, when I told Thabitha this, we worked out that this woman was actually her cousin’s wife. The day we met we talked and cried. Appalling things have happened to her – she’s been arrested, raped and other things that you can’t imagine. In Zimbabwe you can be arrested for holding a meeting or a banner. She hides Nurofen in her hair because she knows that they are going to hurt her. It’s life on such an extreme edge – she is like a woman at war, she puts herself on the front line.

For me it has never been a problem being friends with people from different backgrounds. Thabitha is from Africa, and I grew up in the West Country; Thabitha is a warrior and I consider myself to be a coward. When I ask her how she manages to survive she says, “You have a fifth gear; there is somewhere else you go in very extreme times.” My fear is that I don’t have the fifth gear and my hope is that I do. I wish I could spend more time with Thabitha. I still haven’t cooked her roast chicken, which is what I’d really love to do. We did have a marvellous day together once when we went to see a play about Mugabe and then walked back through Soho and we ended up in a posh hotel where we lounged around on sofas talking about men. We weren’t focusing on the big problems – just laughing at the small ones. I feel incredible affection for Thabitha – not just because of the campaign, but because I feel easy with her. In her own country many people don’t want to know her because she puts her neck out. I think it’s a lonely life for her. I hope that one day she and I could just be relaxed together. We had a brief glimpse of it very, very late at night on those sofas.

Click on the image to read more about the Dignity.Period! campaign. Help spread the word by adding the button to your blog.

Technorati Tags: Thabitha Khumalo, Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, Dignity.Period!, Action for South Africa, ACTSA, gender, women’s rights, human rights, justice, health

These pictures show the violence used against the WOZA protesters, including children (please see here for further details and for the telephone numbers you can use to express your outrage and disgust):

Via SWRadioAfrica:

WOZA spokesperson Annie Sibanda said the women, including 4 members of the Men of Zimbabwe Arise and a Presbyterian priest, are expected to appear in court on Friday. 36 WOZA activists who were arrested in Bulawayo have been charged under two sections of the notorious Criminal Law and Codification and Reform Act, although 6 of the women who were arrested with their babies were released on Thursday afternoon. They are accused of causing ‘a breach of the peace and interfering with the ordinary comforts of the public.’

Members of the pressure group were arrested after riot police violently broke up their gathering Wednesday. It’s reported that some of the arrested including the leaders, Jennie Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, were beaten. Sibanda told us that some of those in detention need medical attention but the police are blocking this. The victims lawyer, Advocate Perpetua Dube, was allegedly threatened with arrest, for “interfering with the course of justice” whilst trying to attend to her clients. The activists are being held in a courtyard cage at Bulawayo Central police station.

In an extraordinary twist Advocate Dube was yesterday able to secure the release of a baby who had been separated from it’s mother. The mother had not been arrested but the child had.

Meanwhile the 18 month old baby who was hurt yesterday sustained a broken leg. The WOZA spokesperson said the baby was sitting on her mother’s lap when police started to beat people, ‘They caused a stampede scenario where people were trying to escape from being beaten and somebody actually stepped on the baby’s leg in the chaos that was caused.”

Another elderly woman also had a broken leg while several other people had minor injuries.

The vicious attack by the police comes in the middle of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence campaign, embarked on by WOZA this past Saturday. Sibanda said although some areas have started banging pots and honking their car horns, the group is urging more Zimbabweans to join in a noise protest for two minutes at 8pm every evening during this period. She said this is to commemorate 16 days of activism against gender violence and human rights abuses.

Police continue to refuse to comment.

Technorati Tags: WOZA, Zimbabwe, women, Jennie Williams, Gender Violence, gender, violence, human rights, justice, law, torture, ZRP, police

Have you made your promise? Are you wearing a red ribbon on your site? Are you thinking red?

Have you watched Bono’s World Aids day message yet?

Whatever you do today, please don’t forget that life expectancy in Zimbabwe is 34 for woman, and 37 for men. Think about that for a second.

This is really your day, not ours. Zimbabweans don’t need ‘World Aids day’ to be reminded of AIDS.

AIDS is with us every single day of the year.