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Archive for March, 2007

Blogging for Sky News - our Friday entry

Friday, March 30th, 2007

The Insider Blog - Sky News, Friday 30 March 2007 March 2007 Sokwanele was invited to blog for Sky News this week on The Insider Blog. The Sky audience is much wider and far more diverse than ours, so we encourage you to visit The Insider Blog and please participate in the comments and discussion being generated there.

Our Friday entry for ‘The Insider Blog’

There is only one possible thing I could write about today, and it’s the looming stayaway planned for next week - I am writing this with real hope in my heart. I believe that the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions’ stayaway (nation wide strike) called for the 3 and 4 April might be successful.

I am hoping for the shops to be closed, the fuel queues gone, and the streets to be empty of cars and bicycles.

The stayaways called in the past have never been as visibly powerful as the vision I have just described.

Every stayaway is preceded by a lot of talk and soul searching on the part of both employers and employees. Everyone wants to support the stayaway, to stand united, but some people are scared. Some people have certainty about what they will do, but for others it’s more difficult.

Listening to someone talk about what to do on a stayaway is like watching a baby bird tremble on the edge of a twig: if it jumps, will it know that it can fly or will it tumble to the ground? You can almost see people nervously considering their odds.

There are many small signs that this stayaway might be different.

A very good friend of mine (who demanded I refer to him as a REAL war veteran in this blog) said to me yesterday that past stayaways presented employers with a “damned if you don’t” and “damned if you do” set of choices.

“Damned if you don’t” close your business and tell your workers to stay at home, because it means you’ll be passively accepting the terrible conditions of life in Zimbabwe. And “damned if you do”, because it means as an employer that you are publicly defying this regime and risking repercussions.

Make no mistake; those risks are still there. Even now, we are hearing stories that the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) is going around to factories and businesses in our town and threatening owners who close their businesses and warning them that they will be held responsible.

But we are also hearing that the police are abducting our leaders at gunpoint, and no one knows where they are being taken; and that the police are visiting the ZCTU offices and threatening and intimidating them; and we have fresh memories of the way Mugabe unleashed his vicious thugs on our leaders when they tried to attend the Save Zimbabwe Campaign rally.

This cannot go on anymore. We are angry and we have had enough.

My friend the real war vet has always honoured every single stayaway called and he has survived them all: his business has not been closed and his employees still work with him. He very strongly feels that the fear we all struggle with is mostly in our heads, and that Mugabe and his bullies are master manipulators of the state of fear.

The person who owns the business next door to his has never closed his business on a stayaway, but he does experience shame and guilt because he knows that fear has prevented him from supporting a cause he believes in.

My real war vet friend argues that our individual choices are different for this stayaway; they have changed to two options: “damned if you don’t” and “damned if you don’t”.

Zimbabweans are realising - just like that little bird - that the only way they will ever be able to fly free in our country is to take the risk and jump. The twig we stand on offers us no security anymore, because we can feel it breaking under our feet.

I was encouraged to hear today that the person who has the shop next door to my real war vet friend has said that this time he plans to close his business and join the stayaway.

He is still fearful, but he has no choice. His employees are talking about giving up their jobs because they can’t survive on their wages and he can’t afford to pay them more. He says he has to try and do something.

The fear he once felt for the thugs and bullies is now far outweighed by the fear he feels at the thought of losing his business and being unable to feed his family and his children.

I believe that the tide is turning and options are running out. The day when Zimbabweans all realise that they have no choice but to stand shoulder to shoulder and demand a new better government is not that far away any more.

I can feel the change in the air, and it really excites me.

Thank you for reading my blogs this past week. Please watch over us closely next week and in the weeks to come; pray for us, and stand with us in spirit.

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Blogging for Sky News - our Thursday entry

Thursday, March 29th, 2007

The Insider Blog - Sky News, Thursday 29 March 2007 Sokwanele was invited to blog for Sky News this week on The Insider Blog. The Sky audience is much wider and far more diverse than ours, so we encourage you to visit The Insider Blog and please participate in the comments and discussion being generated there.

Our Thursday entry for ‘The Insider Blog’

Zimbabweans are in the dark and powerless, and I mean that literally: we often have no power and the lights are often out.

Last year we’d have a power cut about once a week depending where you lived, and we had a vague idea when they’d be coming.

‘Load shedding’ as it is called, was staggered across different areas on a more or less regular basis. If Tuesday was the night the lights went out for two or three hours, you could plan ahead and cook in advance.

This year the power cuts come with no warning and several times a week.

I rent a two-roomed cottage on a larger property. I have candleholders and matches in all the rooms, including the toilet. When the cut comes I walk around lighting candles.

The quality of the candles we get in Zimbabwe is appalling. Cheap Chinese imports that foam and froth rather than smoothly melt down like our Zimbabwe-made candles used to do.

The matches are just as bad; they break off and spit out a spark rather than strike and burn. It can take ten matches to light one candle.

As well as lighting the candles, I also (and this is very important) go around switching off all the lights at the wall, and I disconnect my TV from the wall. There is nothing worse than being woken up in the middle of the night by a sudden blaze of light when the power comes back on!

The only thing worse is when you find your TV no longer works because a power surge blew out its delicate electrics.

My mother has stopped going to her Bible Studies group because the power cuts are unpredictable. The church cannot afford to pay for candles.

She said that at her last meeting, when they were forced to stop reading their Bibles, her group sat and talked in the dark, mostly about how much we needed our government to be changed so solutions could be found.

When I heard that, I thought to myself that that was a true sign that God was on the side of the people! I have started to pray for more power cuts at meetings so people sit and talk together about the need for change.

When the electricity goes off during the night there is a sense of stillness and total silence that is hard to explain.

I am not a brave person during power cuts, so rather than enjoying the silence my ears strain for the sounds of burglars who I am convinced like to use the blackout to creep about undetected!

Last year my ears would be trying to hear thuds and clinks of burglar tools in between the loud clatter of someone’s petrol generator a few blocks down. But I’ve not been hearing as much of the generator recently - I suspect the price and scarcity of petrol has put an end to that solution.

Power cuts are a supermarkets’ worst nightmare. The shop where I buy my groceries stopped stocking certain kinds of groceries a long time ago. Ice cream - a luxury I couldn’t afford anyway - was the first to go. Essentials like milk are a bit risky. Sometimes the shop leaves them in the fridge and just waits for it to re-chill when the fridge comes on.

I buy it and often don’t know that it’s sour until I get home. Forget about refunds in this economy; besides, how do you prove it was the power cut in the shop fridge that made it go sour rather than a power cut affecting your fridge?

We have had three power cuts so far this week. My aunt’s son works at ZESA (Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority) and he told me yesterday that South Africa have not supplied electricity to Zimbabwe for three weeks now.

He said we used to get about 40% of our electricity from them, but because Zimbabwe can no longer pay its bills and we owe them a lot of money, they have started to switch us off. Is this about money or is it maybe ‘quiet diplomacy’ in action?

My ‘freezer’ is a tiny compartment over my very old fridge that has managed to keep going through it all. If the power cut is longer than a few hours, and it often is, I’m mopping water off the floor. Any longer than that and the meat defrosts and starts to smell funny, especially during the hot months. So I don’t store meat and perishables anymore; I can’t afford to throw things away.

I was moaning about this at the butchery where I occasionally buy meat. The person serving me just laughed and pointed to their large freezers: only one out of the three they had was working. Two had ‘blown out’ due to power surges and they can’t get spare parts to repair them. The third stocked frozen chickens and cuts of meat packed in plastic. “How do you think we feel when all that goes off?” he said. He has a point.

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Blogging for Sky News - our Wednesday entry

Wednesday, March 28th, 2007

The Insider Blog - Sky News, Wednesday 28 March 2007 Sokwanele was invited to blog for Sky News this week on The Insider Blog. The Sky audience is much wider and far more diverse than ours, so we encourage you to visit The Insider Blog and please participate in the comments and discussion being generated there.

Our Wednesday entry for ‘The Insider Blog’

More people die in Zimbabwe every day than in Darfur or Iraq, but we are dying silently and the world doesn’t seem to know how bad it really is.

Zimbabwe’s HIV/AIDs statistics are among the highest in the world and this terrible pandemic, combined with a lack of drugs in our country, corruption by government ministers, food shortages and 1,800% inflation, makes it a swift killer in our society.

Life expectancy in Zimbabwe is 34 years for women and 37 years for men.

I would really like you to think about that for a moment. How old are you? How much longer would that leave you to live or have you already exceeded our life expectancy?

Attending funerals is a regular occurrence in Zimbabwe.

I know many people who have died over the last few years.

Last year two of my work colleagues died within the space of a couple of months of each other. I go to funerals, I experience the awfulness of funerals, and then I come home.

But even though this is ‘normal’, I am sometimes woken up and stunned by something, and I am left horrified and shocked and very sensitive to how extreme life is in Zimbabwe.

For example, a couple of days ago I attended a child’s funeral. This is hard enough as it is, but through my tears I noticed how many freshly dug graves there were in the children’s section of the cemetery, clear evidence that lots of children are dying.

Even worse, this is a new cemetery and it’s already almost full.

I saw two women digging a child-sized grave on their own, and I was told that this was because they could not afford to pay a gravedigger to do it for them.

I was told they were alone because their men were probably out of the country working in South Africa.

The painful reality of what I saw in that place was emphasised by our Zimbabwean tradition of leaving some of the possessions belonging to the person who has died on the grave.

For children this means I was looking at a scene of small graves with bottles, toys, baby baths and other plastic pieces of childhood treasures piled on them. It is wrong, very very wrong, to see these sort of things.

I felt overcome with grief and anger at what I saw. It is like being trapped inside a horror film - a truly terrible thing to see.

I want to bring a chair to this section of the graveyard, and make Robert Mugabe sit in it for a day.

I want him to sit there for hours looking at the graves and the toys. I want the message of what this means to wash over him, for him to know he’s destroying our country’s future.

He is stripping the joy from parents’ lives, and he is creating a legacy where he will be remembered for many years as the man who inflicted misery and pain and suffering on a nation.

Most of all, I want him to step out from the security of his Mercedes Benz and his soldier patrolled mansions, and I want him to stand here in the blazing sun in that dusty graveyard surrounded by bright plastic toys that testify to the lives of children and babies.

I want him to talk to the parents, to be forced to explain to them - face to face - why he is doing nothing to help them save their children’s lives.

Sometimes I can go through a day and just live my life like everyone has to - that’s surviving - one step at a time. Then there are days like that one, where I am consumed with rage and grief and pure frustration. I am still furious and torn-up two days later, and it makes me very ready to march for change and to defy this regime.

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…. they’ll understand sign language!

Wednesday, March 28th, 2007

Well now! What have we here? Another admission of failure by the zanupf government? Or another act of paranoia by bob?

‘What is it?” you may ask, and indeed, well you may.

These days, the zanupf government seems to alternate from shooting itself in the left foot, then the right, then the left…… ad nauseum!

Well, I’m talking about the latest news that Angola is supposedly going to be sending 3000 of their “ninja” police militia to Zimbabwe, and that, in fact , these guys are due here any minute now. So - is it true? Have bob’s thugs been busy behind closed doors, making careful strategic plans to rescue mugabe from the stewpot?

I really wonder if this is true, or just another figment of the propaganda monster’s well-fertilised imagination. I recall, over the past few months, huge business deals with the Russians and the Chinese that were reported by government ministers, only to have the so-called partners, denying it within days.

So - should we be shaking in our boots? Should we lock ourselves in our rooms at night? Should we underfeed the dog to make sure that he is extra hungry and ready to attack strangers on sight? I’m not so sure myself.

One problem I foresee is that the average rank and file militia man is neither well spoken in his own language, nor fluent in others. Are these portuguese-speaking demons, coming with their own translators, or have they all been issued with the Angolan militia’s standard Portuguese-to-English/English-to-Portuguese camouflage mini-dictionaries? I posed the question to my brother: “That’s easy to solve”, he replied, grinning, holding up his right hand in a familiar (and rather impolite) gesture. “I’m sure they’ll understand sign language!”

Another thought - I wonder how the National Youth service will feel about these guys – (lets not be too formal – lets call them the “ninnies”) having earned their title of “green bombers” (let’s call them the “greenies”) by unleashing well trained, drug and alcohol heightened assaults with blunt weapons on unarmed, untrained and unsuspecting civilians, whilst backed up by armed police and army (ooh – that takes a lot of bravery that does!).

Are they about to be knocked off their perch? Are they going to be upstaged? Beware the backlash bob!

Then what about you mr gideon gono – financial wizard and saviour of our bankrupted nation? Has bob told you that he is bringing these guys in? Has he told you what it will cost to feed and maintain them? You can bet your collection of silver teaspoons that Angola will not be sending them at their own expense.

Yes sir, the “greenies” get Z$1.2 million a month. What will the “ninnies” be paid, seeing as they will not be on home soil and will need danger pay? I’ll bet my collection of beer cans that they won’t want Angolan rupees (or whatever they use in that part of the world). Nope, I bet they’ll want US dollars. So remember! When you next trade your forex on the street - that buyer may well be gideon in disguise, buying up all your US dollars to pay the “ninnies”. Sorry, “greenies”, but you’re no longer going to be flavour of the day!

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Blogging for Sky News - our Tuesday entry

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

The Insider Blog - Sky News, Tuesday 27 March 2007 Sokwanele was invited to blog for Sky News this week on The Insider Blog. The Sky audience is much wider and far more diverse than ours, so we encourage you to visit The Insider Blog and please participate in the comments and discussion being generated there.

Our Tuesday entry for ‘The Insider Blog’

People are talking about the recent news that Angola had agreed to send 2,500 police militia to boost the Zimbabwean Police Force.

The Angolan government has denied this, but no one believes they’re telling the truth.

Zimbabweans have lost trust with governments in the SADC region, and we think they might lie for Mugabe and secretly help him keep us oppressed. The memory of the stolen elections, which were declared free and fair by South Africa, still feels very fresh. How can we trust them to help us?

In my area, Matabeleland, around 20,000 civilians were killed in the early 1980s during Mugabe’s military operation code-named ‘Gukuruhundi’. Many more were brutally tortured.

The Fifth Brigade who carried out the vicious murders were trained by the North Koreans. The cruelty and types of things they did to people defy civilised imaginations.

I know people who are still psychologically scarred by witnessing atrocities and living with fear. I have a friend whose mother still suffers from pain caused by torture injuries inflicted on her more than twenty years ago.

So when we hear talk of foreign forces coming in to ‘help’ Mugabe, that’s the first thing that comes to mind for those of us who live in Matabeleland. We are even more alarmed when we hear that the Angolan police militia are referred to as ‘ninjas’ because of their brutal tactics.

I should be objective about this and say ‘it has been denied by the Angolan government so it’s probably just a rumour’. But like most of the people in my area of Zimbabwe I don’t trust the regional leaders to stop an injustice BEFORE it happens, so I regard any comment by regional leaders with suspicion.

Like everyone in Matabeleland, I know it as an absolute fact that Mugabe is capable of murdering civilians on a mass scale. It has happened before.

I hope the world is wiser now than it was decades ago, and I hope it doesn’t react too slowly on this issue. If Angola does send militia police to Zimbabwe, I hope the world knows that that means bloodshed for innocent people.

Blogging for Sky News - our Monday entry

Monday, March 26th, 2007

The Insider Blog - Sky News, Monday 26 March 2007 Sokwanele was invited to blog for Sky News this week on The Insider Blog. The Sky audience is much wider and far more diverse than ours, so we encourage you to visit The Insider Blog and please participate in the comments and discussion being generated there.

Our Monday entry for ‘The Insider Blog’

Hello.

My day begins with a 30 minute walk to a place where I wait for a work colleague to pick me up.

Sometimes I have to walk further because we change the pick up spot every week. If I stay in one place too long, other people in the area soon learn that I have a lift organised and start waiting with me.

My work colleague doesn’t mind an extra one or two squeezing in, but objects to five or six trying to sit on laps to fit in the car.

I am extremely lucky to have a lift. Other work colleagues who rely on the ETs (Emergency Taxis - mini-bus cabs) are in a terrible situation. The country’s annual 1,800% inflation has forced the ET fares from $3,000 to $5,000 overnight (£6-8)- and that is just one way.

ETs divide their routes into sectors so the costs can sometimes be double that if you have to catch two ETs to get home.

An average commercial worker clears around $30,000 a week (£60). So if a person is spending $10,000 a day on ETs their transport bill comes to nearly twice the amount they earn in a week. What about food, school, fees, and rent?

Last week the employees of a major department store refused to go to work because their earnings didn’t cover their transport. The government’s solution at the beginning of this month was to force employers to give their employees an extra $60 000 (£120)on top of their wages as a transport allowance.

But before the month has even ended, inflation has made the figure nonsensical. This is why we see so many people walking these days.

Walking 15km to work is bad enough, but worse when you have to factor in Mugabe’s thugs trying to enforce an illegal curfew by intimidating and beating up civilians out on the streets at night.

One of my friends described how his walk home is taking him twice as long as it should because he is choosing back roads to avoid the patrolling thugs. He says he’s feeling exhausted all the time now because he can’t afford to eat three meals a day anymore, and all the walking is sapping his energy.

People are talking about having to make a choice; most of them are thinking about whether it is even worth working any more.

So I am incredibly lucky to have a colleague who gives lifts to us. In return, we share the cost of his fuel. The price of fuel goes up almost daily: it was $8 000 a week ago (£15)and today it is $18 000 (£35)in most garages.

We also help him by taking it in turns to sit in his car when he needs to queue for fuel (a person can queue for days to get hardly any fuel). But the impact of inflation tells me that it won’t be long before the whole country is walking a very long tiring walk to work every day - the whole country with the exception of the Zanu PF elite.

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We’re blogging at Sky News this week

Monday, March 26th, 2007

The Insider Blog - Sky.com

Sokwanele was invited to blog for Sky News this week on The Insider Blog. The Sky audience is much wider and far more diverse than ours, so we encourage you to visit The Insider Blog and please participate in the comments and discussion being generated there. We’ll post up our Monday blog on ‘This is Zimbabwe’ at the end of today.

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Is Mugabe losing the support of his closest allies?

Friday, March 23rd, 2007

This news footage fresh from South Africa (22 March 2007)

UPDATE:Channel Four News has uncovered a secret meeting between the Zimbabwe vice president - Joyce Mujuru, a leading contender to take over from Robert Mugabe, and the South African vice president, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, in Johannesburg. Watch the report here. It includes footage of an interview with Archbishop Pius Ncube

And this from Business Day today:

THERE are signs that regional leaders are growing impatient with the way SA is handling Zimbabwe’s political crisis.

There is a danger to SA that our Southern African Development Community (SADC) partners may begin to move in way that could dent Pretoria’s diplomatic image in the region.

Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa’s assertion this week that quiet diplomacy has failed to solve the political chaos and economic meltdown in Zimbabwe is just an illustration of this. There is frustration and a little malice in the remark. Mwanawasa must have known his words would sting President Thabo Mbeki. But they are also heartfelt, bemoaning as they do the sight of Pretoria missing out on a wonderful opportunity to finally abandon quiet diplomacy in favour of a more direct approach on the issue.

Observers thought that Pretoria would, finally, emerge from its diplomatic torpor in the wake of last week’s savage clampdown on the Zimbabwean opposition. Its silence, however, has been deafening and it is interesting that not only did Mwanawasa say his piece, but that he said it in Namibia, which has increasingly been viewed as a close Zimbabwe ally. This might have prompted former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda — historically a potent supporter of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe — to say that what was needed most was the creation of a committee of eminent persons to mediate Zimbabwe’s worsening political crisis.

Mwanawasa’s and Kaunda’s statements were made at a crucial time in young SA’s diplomatic history — just days after SA completed its tenure at the United Nations Security Council by blocking discussion on Zimbabwe and ahead of next week’s SADC summit.

It is quite possible that regional leaders looking at the Zimbabwe issue next week could outpace SA on the issue and leave Pretoria looking both isolated and ineffectual.

Putting big and powerful Pretoria in its place would be an appealing prospect for our poorer northern neighbours.

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Lists at the border

Friday, March 23rd, 2007

A few days ago, someone who was travelling through a border by road reached the border control to find officials with very long lists of passport number and names. When asked what was going on, the official told him that the names were of opposition leaders and members. Looks like there is a concerted effort by Mugabe to stop opposition members from leaving the country.

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Talkin’ about a revolution

Friday, March 23rd, 2007

This Sokwanele article was published yesterday on Pambazuka News. This article is being mailed to our subscribers today. Click here to subscribe to the Sokwanele mailing list.

A week ago, Zimbabwean pro democracy activists, campaigners, political leaders and supporters tried to attend a rally in Harare, organised by the Save Zimbabwe Campaign. Their purpose was to come together and collectively, peacefully, protest against the terrible conditions in Zimbabwe. The government’s forces were lying in wait for them.

Riot police surrounded the venue and many of those trying to attend were arrested en masse. Gift Tandare, a young NCA and MDC activist was killed, shot by the police, whilst running to escape. Those taken to Machipisa were viciously tortured and many suffered serious injuries. In fact, the attacks were so brutal and callous, that those being beaten struggled to comprehend the enormity of what was actually taking place. Tendai Biti, who witnessed the attack on Morgan Tsvangirai, described the experience as ‘like being in an old bad violent movie, surreal, but where you find that you are one of the actors’.

International audiences learned of all these atrocities within a relatively short space of time, the news spreading like wildfire through the international media; images and interviews prompting analyses, comment and endless interpretation. By the time the news - our news - filtered through Zimbabwe, it was already ‘old news’ in neighbouring countries and abroad. Zimbabweans held hostage by Robert Mugabe’s repressive AIPPA laws (Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act) struggled for information and updates.

Tracey Chapman famously informed us in song that ‘Talkin’ about a revolution sounds like whisper”. Zimbabweans could add that ‘talking about a revolution looks like an sms message’. The first message I received from Harare read ‘mass arrests @ rally. 1 killed. lots beaten by police. v v bad. r u ok where u r?’ It was the first of many sms messages that day. The details of our collective experience filtered down slowly via texts, emails, and phone calls from concerned family and friends in the diaspora who have blissful access to extensive information.

Those involved with, or on the fringes of, activist work benefit from a network of trusted friends who freely share their information among themselves. Those outside the network, occupied with the daily business of trying to survive in Zimbabwe, exchange the information they have in guarded language - eager to find out more, but careful or fearful of whom they can trust. The majority of people in Zimbabwe do not have the luxury of an internet connection or a cell phone, and they rely on second or third hand information, constantly re-cycled and checked. On their way to work they walk past newspaper billboards broadcasting disinformation and blatant lies. If they are lucky enough to have a radio, the state controlled media brings more of the same to their ears.

On Monday 12 March, the day after the torture and assaults, The Chronicle’s headline was ‘Mugabe ready to stand in 2008 poll’. On Tuesday, as the news started to trickle down, the headline changed to ‘State warns MDC against lawlessness’. The article emotively and deceptively informed its readers: “Tsvangirai and Mutambara were actually commanding (hooligans) using children as shields”. Wednesday’s headline: “Suspected cop killer appears in court.”

On Thursday, the propaganda machine kicked in with an article titled ‘Govt warns MDC on violence’. A lengthy article consisting mostly of quotes by Zanu PF Minister of Information and Publicity, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, ducked all mention of torture by deftly sweeping it under a sentence that described the police action as an “appropriate response from officers of law and order”. The images of Morgan Tsvangirai with a swollen battered face, so widely circulated in the international media, have still not been seen by the majority of people in our country. But by Thursday, a tiny minority of Zimbabweans with DSTV subscriptions had seen the footage and images on their screens of the government’s barbarity - most notably in the 24 hour news programmes (BBC World, Sky News and CNN International) - and detailed descriptions will have started filtering down. Note the channels that horrified Dr Ndlovu the most; note too how any condemnation of violence and brutality is re-written in the Zanu PF lexicon to be an ‘unconditional statement of support’ for the opposition:

”Government has noted with utter dismay the unconditional statements of support to the violent MDC by a number of western governments, including those of Britain, America and New Zealand. It also notes the role played by big western media networks, led by the British Broadcasting Corporation and Cable News Network, in seeking to absolve and whitewash the MDC from obvious and inescapable blame of public violence.”

Information threatens Mugabe. Days after the attacks, Grace Kwinje and Sekai Holland were prevented from leaving the country to receive specialist medical attention on the spurious grounds that they required a letter from the ministry of health granting permission to leave Zimbabwe; Arthur Mutambara was arrested while trying to leave Zimbabwe to visit his wife in South Africa. Violence was shamelessly used to stop Nelson Chamisa from attending an EU-ACP meeting in Brussels - he was viciously attacked at Harare International Airport by men with iron bars.

This is the Zanu PF regime’s way of silencing their voices. Kept within the country, their first hand accounts of torture and brutality can be moderated by limited access to the international media. Outside the country, the press would be queuing up to interview and speak to them.

The fight for information is key to the looming non-violent revolution in Zimbabwe. A colleague described how she had watched the BBC News footage with all her friends and associates assembled together. The footage concluded with a statement by one of the opposition leaders that Zimbabweans were angry and ready to take action. There was silence in the room until someone said, ‘I’m ready, but how?’

‘How’ to get the message of the revolution to the people is one of the biggest challenges facing the Save Zimbabwe Campaign, how to synchronously organise and mobilise a nation from within an information vacuum. Information will also help ensure a non-violent revolution; chaos is Mugabe’s friend and his excuse. Ordinary Zimbabweans can help too. The message to them is to be less careful, to share information more freely. If you have not signed up to mailing lists delivering information by email, then do so now. Share with others. Print out articles and images and leave them in a public toilet as reading matter for the next occupier of the cubicle. Think about how we can collectively fill the silence with sound.

Zimbabweans are ready. The initial shock at the brutality is wearing off and has been replaced with outrage and anger at the regime’s vicious tactics. Perhaps the single most important outcome from the recent events are the strong messages of unity emanating from the opposition movement. Morgan Tsvangirai has said: “They […] brutalised my flesh. But they will never break my spirit. I will soldier on until Zimbabwe is free”. And Arthur Mutumbara has said: “I can assure Robert Mugabe that this is the end game. We are going to do it by democratic means, by being beaten up and by being arrested - but we are going to do it.” Unified messages like these reinvigorate hope and bolster flagging spirits.

The excessive violence was designed to instil fear in the population and to intimidate the opposition leaders. But by being so extreme, Robert Mugabe also revealed his fragile position, and for the first time looked weakened. Rather than being his usual despotic self, using dirty tactics to stay one-step ahead, Mugabe looks increasingly like a crazed dictator cornered and fighting his last fight. He is a man surrounded by battles and by enemies he has created for himself. They are coming at him from within his own party, from the opposition, from Zimbabwe’s civil society, and from the international community. His biggest enemy is the economy.

People who are struggling to survive, talk openly and endlessly about their daily battle to feed, educate and care for their families. People who are careful about ‘talkin about a revolution’ are less careful about talking about the internal succession battle within the Zanu PF party. We are looking for someone to be accountable for our misery. The combination of poverty, Zanu PF conflicts and outrage at the torture inflicted on our leaders has left ordinary Zimbabweans feeling a little more emboldened.

Mugabe is famous for once saying: “absolute power is when a man is starving and you are the only one able to give him food”. But what happens to the person holding the reins of power when the food runs out and the cupboard is bare?

Mugabe is on the brink of finding out.

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

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Happy Human Rights Day to South Africa! (and thank you South African bloggers)

Wednesday, March 21st, 2007

Zapiro's take on Mbeki's 'Quiet Diplomacy'

21 March is Human Rights Day in South Africa. 21 March also marks the anniversay of the Sharpeville Massacre, when, in 1960, between 5,000 and 7,000 protesters converged on the police station and offered themselves up for arrest. Their crime? Refusing to carry pass books. This description of the killings taken from Time in an article published in 1960:

When police tried to seize an African at the gate to the compound, there was a scuffle and the crowd advanced toward the fence. Police Commander G. D. Pienaar rapped out an order to his men to load. Within minutes, almost in a chain reaction, the police began firing with revolvers, rifles, Sten guns. A woman shopper patronizing a fruit stand at the edge of the crowd was shot dead. A ten-year-old boy toppled. Crazily, the unarmed crowd stampeded to safety as more shots rang out, leaving behind hundreds lying dead or wounded—many of them shot in the back. It was all over in two awful minutes.

This attack galvanised international reaction against the totalitarian apartheid regime. It’s hard not to draw comparisons between the South African experience and ours in Zimbabwe. The history of human rights abuses under Robert Mugabe is immense, beginning a mere couple of years after he took office with the Gukuruhundi, where an estimated 20,000 civilians were murdered.

Zimbabweans are well aware of Thabo Mbeki’s police of ‘Quiet Diplomacy’ on Zimbabwe. The world has learned that this absurd policy could easily be re-titled read ‘Say Nothing at all’. Zimbabweans experience it either as ‘I don’t give a damn’ or ‘Robert Mugabe, you’re my pal’. Sokwanele published a cartoon, drawn especially for the G8 meeting held in Scotland in 2005. I think this conveys our sentiments on the subject quite well:

Thabo Mbeki and 'Quiet Diplomacy' - cartoon drawn for G8 meeting in Scotland 2005

I’ve written about this before, because the South African position of ‘Quiet Diplomacy’ rattles me almost more than anything else. Bizarre, you may think, given all we undergo in Zimbabwe. But a year ago I wrote about ‘hope’ - the name I choose to blog under - and how critical ‘hope’ is to the struggle for freedom in our country. Looking back on our elections in 2004 I wrote:

It wasn’t long before we [Zimbabweans] realised that the elections had already been stolen and that the theft had taken place long before people started to queue to vote on polling day. ‘Hope’ for me at that point could have been defined as faith in the possibility that the world would read those reports and say ‘no more’ to mugabe and his regime.

But that didn’t happen. The elections were stolen and the world did very little. South Africa and Thabo Mbeki went even further and tried to make out that the twisted lie of elections in Zimbabwe was an honest depiction of reality, and in so doing betrayed every single decent pro-democracy person in this country. Hope was shattered - bludgeoned and murdered - and the despair I experienced with the loss of hope was overwhelming.

That moment, when the realisation that the South African government would do nothing - NOTHING at all - to see justice and human rights restored in our country was the lowest point I’ve ever experienced in the years I’ve been doing my small bit for democracy and human rights in our country. Mugabe can’t bring me this low, because he is evil and I expect nothing from him. Up until that moment two years ago, I’d believed that South Africa, with its history of apartheid and the way it had embraced the principles of Human Rights (they have a Human Rights Bill), would not be able to stand by and watch Zimbabwean people lied to, brutalised and beaten. But they could, and they did. And it took me a long time to pick myself up after that.

I’m afraid to say that I expect nothing from the South African government anymore, and that’s about as damning a statement I could ever make of a government; in fact, the only other government I think I would say that about is our own. I expect nothing from Zanu PF either.

But those sentiments do not apply to the South African people. I wish them a ‘Happy Human Rights Day’ today. You deserve and earned this day with pain, suffering and a long hard struggle, and it’s a day that belongs to the people of South Africa. My sense of warmth towards South Africans today is partly because I’m learning that my own incomprehension and disgust with the South African government’s position is shared by South Africans themselves. And given that South Africa is a functioning democracy (use your votes!) that knowledge encourages me.

South African bloggers who don’t usually write about politics were so angry they took the time to post on Zimbabwe: like ChampagneHeathen:

Mugabe is a tyrant. He disgusts me. The end of him, and his cronies, and possible inhumane elite successors is something, if I were a religious person, I would pray for.

And this from The Granny Wrangler:

Truth be told, I am too angry to write. Too sickened and too repulsed. [...] No, i’m sickened by you South Africa. You who stands by with your quiet ***** diplomacy, your mouth closed for fear of opening it and losing the blood diamonds you are concealing between your clenched teeth. Yes, Nkosi Sikelele you cowering sycophant. You make me sick.

And then there’s the time taken by Mark Forrester, Dale du Preez, Undefined and iScatterlings. Someamongus wrote an open letter to Thabo Mbeki. His prefatory note really touched me:

This letter has been a long time coming and in a way I’m ashamed that this small missive represents my only real effort to help my neighbors to the north. I take a bit of comfort in knowing my feelings of guilt and helplessness are not unique but are shared by many fellow South Africans. The majority of us have long realized that there are problems in Zimbabwe but have watched as people much more powerful than ourselves foundered against the rocks of seeming governmental cynicism and stubbornness.

This comes from Jonty, writing at The Fishbowl. A week ago he wrote:

I’m hoping against hope that the latest attack on Morgan Tsvangirai will be the straw that breaks the back of Thabo Mbeki’s proverbial quiet diplomacy camel. It’s simply inexplicable that after fighting so hard for human rights in this country, our government applies a head in the sand approach to some of the worst human rights offences Southern Africa has seen.

Jonty admits that he “used to give Thabo the benefit of the doubt on his quiet diplomacy policies”. Today, he said (in response to still more examples ANC complicity with Zanu PF):

The people of South Africa fought with blood and lives for freedom and its moral high ground. We are currently squashing the ability for Zimbabwe’s peoples to do the same. And that is surely shameful.

Wayne, writing at Commentary, also wrote about the ANC government’s latest utterances on Zimbabwe. In a post titled ‘The ANC Backs Mugabe‘ he said

There’s not much else to the statement beyond that, for as blindingly obvious to many as it already is I’m still surprised that others believe that the South African government would be prepared to intervene for the sake of morality. Especially since I’m tempted to believe they would be more quick to support Mugabe and Zanu-PF.

Steve at Almost Supernatural has also spotted the irony that this type of comment should appear on the eve of Human Rights Day in South Africa. What was it the SA government said on the eve of Human Rights day? It was a clear attempt to lay responsibility for this type of brutality (here, here, and here)at the feet of the Zimbabwean opposition. Talk about blaming the victim!

The serious conflict in Zimbabwe has arisen because of the perception by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that recent elections in Zimbabwe were not free and fair, said a South African government spokesperson, Themba Maseko, on Tuesday.

“It think it is now public record that there were elections in Zimbabwe… at the end of those elections, the MDC were of the view that those elections were not free and fair.

“Based on the view of the MDC, we then had a situation in Zimbabwe where there was serious conflict arising out of the premise taken by the MDC that the elections were not free and fair.” (via News 24)

Steve Hayes, blogging at Notes from Underground, makes some really interesting observations in his post today (please read it) where he reflects on Mugabe, Verwoerd and Human Rights Day. He reminds us that one of Verwoerd’s favourite mantras when criticised for human rights abuses in South Africa was “we will not tolerate any outside interference in our domestic affairs.”

Where have we heard that before?

The tragedy for Zimbabweans is that when Mugabe utters the words “we will not tolerate any outside interference in our domestic affairs”, African leaders hear them saying “we will not tolerate an imperlialist/colonialist/supremacist/western/racist interference in our domestic affairs”, and they rally around and ignore the atrocities and violence that provoke a justifiable response from every decent person in the world. To their detriment, some leaders like Mbeki seem unable or not prepared to accept the reality that Mugabe is a vicious dictator and a master manipulator of public opinion. Kameelah, who is not South African but was writing from Johannesburg, said it best for me:

let’s not pimp black solidarity until its so crippled that it’s meaningless. i love black folks, but mugabe is a demagogue, zimbabwe is a dystopia and my patience is quickly fading.

Back to Steve Hayes: Mugabe apparently shares something else with Verwoerd; namely, the way he cries out that Zimbabwe is clearly being victimised by the west because, paraphrasing Mugabe, ‘look at the atrocities everywhere around the world and yet the world constantly picks on Zimbabwe‘. (The world does not focus enough on Zimbabwe, but that’s another article for another day). Steve describes a cartoon that appeared in the Johannesburg Star of 2 April 1960 (shortly after the Sharpeville Massacres). It showed

Dr Verwoerd surrounded by a group of world leaders preparing to throw stones at Verwoerd, with a Sharpeville label round his neck. There is an anonymous USA figure, with a label of “Little Rock, negro lynchings, Ku Klux Klan”, Nehru of India with the label “Kashmir”, Krushchev of the USSR with the label “Hungary”, and Nkrumah of Ghana with the label “prison for political opponents”. And the caption is, “‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…’ St John, Chapter 8″

There were more parallels drawn with South African history on South African blogs this week. Farrel, for Politics.za links the brutal treatment of Morgan Tsvangirai with that of Steve Biko. The correlation is made here as well at The Corner Office.

An article that appeared on zwnews.com on 20 March described the circumstances of Biko’s death as follows:

During interrogation in September 1977, Siebert and four other murderous police officers are thought to have smashed Biko’s head against a wall, causing him brain damage, before driving him, naked and bleeding, 1100 km across the country in the back of a police van, to a prison in Pretoria where he died six days later.

This is a link to a transcript of testimony from a pathologist into the death of Steve Biko. Pay attention to the bold bits (my emphasis):

Death was brought about by complications following on brain injury. Biko suffered at least three brain lesions occasioned by the application of force to his head; the injury was suffered between the night of 6 September and 7.30 a. m. on the 7 September.

It also established that such brain injury is always followed by a period of unconsciousness of between 10 minutes and one hour.

Keep that in mind, and now read Morgan Tsvangirai’s own description of what what the police did to him (again, note the bold bits):

I was pulled out of my car by heavily built men in police gear and they began smashing my head against the wall while pushing me inside the station.

[...]

The orgy of heavy beatings continued once we were all inside the station. They were mostly targeting my head and my face.

[...]

I felt like my head had been smashed open or I had been partially decapitated. I passed out three times, I was later told by eyewitnesses. I lost a lot of blood and was later injected with two pints. After passing out the last time, I can’t remember many things. Later I found myself in a crowded, hot, filthy and cockroach-infested police cell. I was told I was at Borrowdale Police Station.

There is another parallel with the South African experience: the transcript I cite above contains expert testimony from Professor Neville Proctor, Professor of Anatomical Pathology, who said that “Treatment might have pre­vented Mr. Biko’s possible death from oedema”. Like Biko, Morgan Tsvangirai and the others who were beaten and tortured by the Zimbabwean police were also denied access to their lawyers or to medical treatment for a long period of time following the beatings. Watch our video here again, and look at how slurred and dazed Morgan appears in the BBC footage. And listen to how Mike Davies describes how incredibly ill one of the other torture victims was -so ill, that Kerry Kay thought he might die in court.

How is it that South African bloggers immediately hear and see things that chime with their history of oppression, but Thabo Mbeki appears deaf to it all? Of all the people in the world, you would think his position and family’s activist background would mean the details of these atrocities would be ingrained in his memory.

Someamongus at South Africa explores what he sees as Thabo Mbeki’s unhealthy obsession with race, pointing to quotes where Thabo Mbeki has used ‘race’ as a denial and an argument to hide behind when confronted with some of the thorniest issues facing South Africa today. Someamongus says:

Although I don’t have a good quote for Zimbabwe you can almost feel Mbeki’s back bristle when Western countries criticise Bob.

There is another position taken, expressed very well by Thabo Mbeki’s own brother and discussed here on Cry Beloved Zimbabwe

[Moeletsi Mbeki] then points out what he conceives as the primary reason for the neighbours for not exerting pressure on Zimbabwe is mostly because they fear that their support for MDC and Morgan Tsvangirai would send a wrong message for Africa’s most industrialised region. Southern Africa being the most industrialised has more people working and this has given rise to trade unionism, the trade unions using their sheer size are becoming more and more political. He cites the case of Zambia where Kenneth Kaunda was ousted by a trade union leader after 27 years in power. Therefore African leaders are reluctant to be drawn into the issue of Zimbabwe for fear that they own labour movement might oust them from power one day.

In other words, Morgan Tsvangirai is a threat to Thabo Mbeki because he emerged from the trade union movement in Zimbabwe. Thabo isn’t too keen for him to succeed or to give COSATU any ideas.

This brings me to my final point. Wayne at Commentary sent Zimbabwean bloggers a message:

Zimbabwean bloggers please do not waste your time appealing to the South African government; they support your foes.

Well, you may be right Wayne; in fact, I suspect you are. But maybe we can appeal to all you South African bloggers to keep doing what you showed us this week.

Keep telling the truth, supporting us, and letting South Africans know what’s up north of your border.

Help us get our message out. Ask South African radios and newspapers to start featuring blog discussion in the mainstream media, and bring the ordinary South African voice out into the open.

You have the right to write freely where you are; we don’t. You can speak out from the rooftops; we can’t. You have come through fire to achieve your freedom; we’re still burning in hell.

If Moeletsi is right, then its power that his brother is concerned with. You have the right to vote; we don’t. Use your votes to demand a government that honours human right principles all over the world, and not one that talks about them for the sake of political expediency. If you get that government, then you’ll be helping us to get the freedom and justice we deserve too.

Happy Human Rights day to all of you, and thank you for your support. If you’re a South African blogger and I’ve missed your Zimbabwe posts, please us leave a comment and a link!

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Press releases : Mr Michael Gahler MEP on situation in Zimbabwe

Wednesday, March 21st, 2007

This email, from Michael Gahler MEP arrived today, in response to the email I sent to several MEPs meeting in Brussels yesterday and today. See this post here for the context.

Dear Ladies and Gentleman,

following your mails regarding the shocking developments in Zimbabwe, please find attached the press releases of Mr Michael Gahler MEP on the current situation in Zimbabwe as well as the Declaration of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly Bureau from 21 March 2007 on the issue.

Here’s the release:

Brussels, 20 March 2007

ZIMBABWE: CURRENT WAVE OF VIOLENCE AGAINST OPPOSITION MUST COME TO AN END - MUGABE REGIME IS MORALLY DEAD

Today, the Vice-Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, Michael Gahler (EPP-ED) sharply condemned the continuing violence against the opposition in Zimbabwe. After last week’s assaults on leader of the opposition, Tsanvgirai (MDC party), Member of Parliament Nelson Chamisa (MDC) was beaten up severely on Saturday night in Harare on his way to this week’s committee meetings of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (ACP) and the EU in Brussels.

Gahler, First Vice-President of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly ACP-EU said: “The events of the recent days are shocking. The wave of violence has to end, immediately. True Europeans stand by the oppressed in Zimbabwe, today.”

Moreover, Mr Gahler demands from the German Council Presidency to take all necessary steps to prevent further participation of representatives of the regime in all EU events: “Reprisals as a diplomatic instrument telling the other side that we do not accept such behaviour are the appropriate means.”

“Mugabe and his accomplices of the ruling party ZANU (PF) must stop to make politics with iron rods. Besides the economic and political crackdown, the Mugabe regime is morally dead”, Michael Gahler commented.

The African country is economically in a severe crisis with staple food supplies being scarce. Average life expectancy of 37 for men and 34 for women is, according to the World Health Organisation WHO, the lowest in the world. Also, annual inflation of 1600% marks a negative world record.

“The Mugabe regime fears international attention. Obviously, we will bring up the issue of Zimbabwe during the meetings this week, again”, Michael Gahler concluded.

I objected strongly to Mugabe’s men being present at the meeting, but according to The Telegraph, they were permitted to attend. I’m not happy about that at all.

In the meanwhile, our efficient law-abiding police (Not!) are apparently fully investigating this mysterious attack on Nelson Chamisa:

POLICE have intensified investigations into the mysterious daylight attack on MDC legislator for Kuwadzana Mr Nelson Chamisa, who underwent an eye operation at a private hospital in Harare yesterday.

Mr Chamisa was reportedly set upon by unknown assailants on Sunday morning as he disembarked from his vehicle at the Harare International Airport parking lot. He was on his way to catch a flight to Brussels to attend the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States-European Union Joint Parliamentary Assembly. (via The Herald on ALLAfrica.com)

I wonder if they started their ‘full’ investigations by knocking on the door of State House….?

The lies and pretence is completely nauseating.

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MDC UK activists storm Zimbabwe embassy in London

Wednesday, March 21st, 2007

An email from Wilf Mbanga, editor of The Zimbabwean, alerted us to this taking place this morning. That’s all we have. Please drop us an email if you know more!

UPDATE: This via the BBC

Protesters who barricaded themselves inside the Zimbabwean Embassy have been removed by the police.

About 10 demonstrators gained entry into the building on the Strand after posing as people who wanted to renew their passports.

They went in at about 0910 GMT and said they would not leave until they had met the ambassador.

Police had earlier said they were looking for a “peaceful resolution” to the matter.

Last week about 300 demonstrators from the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change gathered outside the Zimbabwean Embassy calling for the end of Robert Mugabe’s rule.

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Action Alert: Take action against state sponsored brutality

Tuesday, March 20th, 2007

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

Member of Parliament, Nelson Chamisa, was brutally attacked on Sunday 18 March 2007 at the Harare airport. He was on his way to attend an European Union-African Caribbean Pacific (EU-ACP) meeting in Brussels. Nelson was one of three MPs representing the Zimbabwean parliament at the meeting.

Glenys Kinnock, chairwoman of the European Union delegation to the Brussels meeting, has confirmed that three lower level Zanu PF officials were expected in Brussels. These three officials are NOT on the EU travel ban and have left for Brussles already; they are arriving tonight (Monday 19 March).

A statement from the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum describes the attack yesterday as follows:

Reports indicate that he was assaulted with an iron bar by approximately six to eight male persons who took his luggage, computer and cell phone and made off in two unmarked cars, one of which was described as a Peugeot 306. Chamisa suffered a fracture to the bone surrounding his eye and massive lacerations to his forehead and face.

While not being able to identify the perpetrators, it is clear that the attack was intended to stop the participation of the outspoken member of Parliament at the Brussels meeting in his capacity as a representative of the Parliament of Zimbabwe. In the process, he would be in a position to give first - hand report to the Bureau of the brutality of state agents towards those with differing political views, and the increasing impunity, which accompanies their actions.

Glenys Kinnock has also said: “It is clear that the participation of ZANU-PF delegates in the ACP-EU meeting would send a terrible signal [...] We owe it to Nelson to take a strong and unequivocal position at this critical time for the people of Zimbabwe.”

Nelson was among the many opposition activists brutally tortured last week. This is his account of the attacks, published yesterday in The Observer (UK):

… a gang of about 35 very rowdy police came in. They told us to lie on our stomachs. They beat us with truncheons, metal bars, rifle butts and a sjambok (a short whip).’

‘They shouted things like “Mugabe is king of this country. He will die in office. You will die first”. They lifted my legs and stomped on my testicles so hard they moved up into my abdomen. I screamed. They beat my back and my head with truncheons. Then I was hit with an iron bar on my buttocks. They used that bar on Morgan and on Grace Kwinjeh. The sjambok is terrible because it rips away your flesh.

‘Other police watched as if they were spectators at a wrestling match shouting “Hit him. Make them bleed.” They called out Madhuku and made him stand and then beat him badly. Then Grace. They used the iron bar on her head until her ear was flapping. They called my name and I was in the roasting pan. At that point they all went for Tsvangirai, hitting his head so hard his blood flew on the wall. When he fell unconscious they poured water on him and beat him some more.

This is the story that Nelson Chamisa would have told the members at the meeting had he not been viciously assaulted with iron bars and prevented from travelling to Brussels.

Nelson may be in hospital and unable to tell his story, but we are not, and we the Zimbabwean people can support him and all the people standing in the frontline of our fight for democracy, justice and freedom.

Nelson Chamisa was going to be speaking out for us. Let us now speak out for him and all the opposition activists who were tortured last week!

Opposition activists are standing up for us. We must stand behind them and support them.

We, the Zimbabwean people, need to send a clear message to Robert Mugabe and his vicious thugs that beating an opposition MP over the head with an iron bar will NOT achieve his objectives because we are standing right behind our leaders and we will speak out for them when we have to.

TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW!

The meeting is due to start today Tuesday, 20 March (this afternoon) and will end tomorrow, Wednesday 21 March.

1. Please email Glenys Kinnock and thank her for her outspoken response against the use of violence towards an elected Member of Parliament. Thank her on behalf of Nelson, who is still in hospital, and on behalf of all Zimbabweans. Ask her to please do what she can to ensure that this horrific assault is placed on the meeting’s agenda in Brussels

These are her email addresses: glenys.kinnock@europarl.europa.eu; gkinnock@welshlabourmeps.org.uk

2. Send an email to these other European MPs, and tell them what happened to Nelson. Tell them that we, the Zimbabwean people, object to Zanu PF officials being at that meeting after what they have done to Nelson.

Tell them that when Mugabe tried to keep Nelson’s voice from being heard, he was really trying to silence the voice of the people.

Please ask them to ensure that this issue features on the meeting’s agenda.

Send your email to all these addresses (copy and paste into the ‘to’ section of your email):

info@acpsec.org; michael.gahler@europarl.europa.eu; paul.verges@europarl.europa.eu; astrid.lulling@europarl.europa.eu; michal.kaminski@sejm.pl; john.bowis@europarl.europa.eu; helene.goudin@telia.com

The addresses above correlate to the details below respectively:

  • General address for the General Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States
  • Mr Michael Gahler
  • Mr Paul Verges
  • Ms Astrid Lulling
  • Mr MichalTomasz Kamin’ski
  • Mr Miguel Angel Martinez Martinez
  • Mr John Bowis
  • Mrs Hélène Goudin


Forward this message onto all your friends and ask them to do the same.

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

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Nelson Chamisa attacked by CIO agents at Harare International Airport

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

Nelson Chamisa - injuries as a result of being attacked with iron bars

Nelson Chamisa - injuries as a result of being attacked with iron bars

Nelson Chamisa was viciously attacked today at the entrance to Harare International Airport.

He said he had been approached by unidentified men as he got out of his car outside the departures’ hall at Harare Airport.

“I was suddenly surrounded by, I think, about eight men,” he said later.

“One wore a green t-shirt. The other ones had suits. Then I was hit, I think about three times… Then I fell to the ground.”

Mr Chamisa said he had seen his attackers running off towards two vehicles without registration plates. (via BBC)

Nelson has only just recovered from being tortured last Sunday. He was one of many opposition figures arrested while trying to attend a Save Zimbabwe Campaign prayer rally. An article in today’s The Observer carries his account of their horrific ordeal last week:

… a gang of about 35 very rowdy police came in. They told us to lie on our stomachs. They beat us with truncheons, metal bars, rifle butts and a sjambok (a short whip).’

‘They shouted things like “Mugabe is king of this country. He will die in office. You will die first”. They lifted my legs and stomped on my testicles so hard they moved up into my abdomen. I screamed. They beat my back and my head with truncheons. Then I was hit with an iron bar on my buttocks. They used that bar on Morgan and on Grace Kwinjeh. The sjambok is terrible because it rips away your flesh.

‘Other police watched as if they were spectators at a wrestling match shouting “Hit him. Make them bleed.” They called out Madhuku and made him stand and then beat him badly. Then Grace. They used the iron bar on her head until her ear was flapping. They called my name and I was in the roasting pan. At that point they all went for Tsvangirai, hitting his head so hard his blood flew on the wall. When he fell unconscious they poured water on him and beat him some more.

Nelson Chamisa is still in Harare, in Intensive Care, suffering from serious head injuries.

Mugabe appears desperate to prevent people from leaving the country.

Sekai Holland and Grace Kwinje, who were also tortured last week (see our YouTube video and Sokwanele posts with images here and here), both need medical treatment in South Africa for their torture injuries. They were prevented from leaving on the spurious - and never required before - grounds that they could only go with the permission of the government Health Department.

And Arthur Mutambara was re-arrested as he tried to leave the country yesterday, to visit his wife in South Africa. Arthur is still in custody as I write (via the BBC).

It seems clear to me that Mugabe is afraid of the stories these four people will tell once out of the country, more afraid of that than he is the international outrage that these senseless actions will provoke. Beyond Zimbabwe’s borders waits a press eager for first hand accounts of what happened last Sunday and during the week.

If Mugabe keeps them within the confines of our country he can, to a certain extent, limit the amount of exposure their stories will get. Stories that will inevitably turn the spotlight onto him, his thugs and his slipping sweaty grip on power.

Stories that will provoke inevitable questions, chief among them being, “When and how will Robert Mugabe be brought to justice for these crimes?”

That’s a question that Robert Mugabe doesn’t want people to spend too much time contemplating. He has his back against the wall and is fighting to regain some legitimacy amongst regional leaders who are finding it increasingly difficult to stand by him.

But the truth is a slippery fish and will come out no matter what he tries to do. Mugabe and the people who carry out these attacks will all one day have to face the full consquences for his actions.

I have a small message for Thabo Mbeki whose spokesman recently described the attacks in Zimbabwe as “alleged assaults”. He said:

The ANC is concerned about the current situation in Zimbabwe, including reports of the alleged assault of opposition leaders while in police custody

My message is this (and if I sound disrespectful it is because I am disrespectful):

Thabo - look at the pictures on this blog. It happened. Get a grip, and deal with it like a man!

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