His Excellency Abdoulaye Wade
President of the Republic of Senegal
c/o Embassy of the Republic of Senegal to the United States
2112 Wyoming Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

Dear Mr. President,

Following the brutal beating of two Senegalese journalists by police after a soccer match on Saturday, we are writing to express our alarm at an increasing pattern of physical attacks and threats against independent journalists in the line of duty in recent weeks and months. Thorough, transparent police investigations or prosecutions of these abuses have seldom taken place. We are deeply concerned about an ongoing culture of impunity for crimes against journalists. Sports editor Babacar Kambel Dieng of Radio Futurs Médias (RFM) ad reporter Kara Thioune of bilingual station West Africa Democracy Radio, are still recovering from injuries inflicted by policemen following a World Cup soccer qualifier match against Liberia on Saturday evening.

Plainclothes officers from the police’s Multipurpose Intervention Brigade attacked Dieng and Thioune while they were interviewing Senegal defender Pape Malikou Diakhaté, according to local news reports. The journalists told CPJ the officers used tasers on them, then punched, kicked and handcuffed them after they refused to obey an order to immediately leave the area and proceed to a post-game conference hall. They were dragged to a secluded room, and further beaten while handcuffed, they told CPJ. Dieng’s voice recorder accidentally captured the sounds of the beating, which was later broadcast on a local radio station.

We demand the unconditional release of our patriotic colleagues in the civil society who were brutally manhandled and arrested this morning as they exercised their constitutional rights to demand the resignation of Amos Kimunya as Finance Minister.

Their right to freedom of peaceable assembly was brutally violated by members of the Kenya Police. We demand their unconditional release for they have committed no crime. The Police officers who directed the assault on Ann Njogu and her colleagues must be subjected to appropriate discipline by the Commissioner of Police.

Kenya is not a Police State and Kenyans will not surrender their constitutional freedoms or their right to complain against wrongdoing, or to speak against grand corruption and impunity.

The arrested members of the civil society must be released. In any event the man they were protesting against, former Finance Minister Amos Kimunya has resigned his office and stepped aside to facilitate investigations into the subject matter of the protest of civil society.

In the spirit of a transparent enquiry into the role played by numerous public officers and institutions in the grand corruption saga that is the Grand Regency Hotel ‘handover’ and sale, it is morally and legally right that no one should be punished for speaking out for the Kenyan people in their time of need.

* For more information, please visit -

As a Zimbabwean it is really encouraging to see and hear fellow Pan -Africanists differentiate between Mugabe 's ideals and his actions and the quest for freedoms for African peoples.

The article, , is great but it really needed to show that cunning and foxy Mugabe only moves with the tide and does all this only to keep himself in power and for his own selfish interests. One only needs to look at the Mugabe who worked for and was a darling of Western interest soon after independence and went on killing not only the Ndebeles whose leadership was pro-Soviet Union at the times but also dumped every freedom fighter who fought for Zimbabwe' s independence.

He never attended any local cultural event but went into every cricket match and would go shopping in the UK I do not know how many times. It was only when the freedom fighters held him captive that he paid them the Z$50,000 gratuities. Even the land issue was not Mugabe idea but the freedom fighters. Mugabe only followed suit. Doing otherwise would have weakened him.

On Tsvangirai being labelled a puppet of the West, again Mugabe was always one good western puppet because he would come to the west to blackmail Nkomo and Zapu and accuse them being pro-communist and wanting to grab land. This is why Nkomo was called 'child of the soil.'

One would like to believe that is how Mugabe became a darling here and was awarded degrees and knighthoods. He then fell out with his western masters when he could not dance to their tunes and protect their interest. A close look at even the recent events would reveal some of Zanu' big financers are British.

So who is the really is a puppet here? Is Mugabe not just playing fox. Finally, liberators should not be sole owners of that liberation. Mugabe must understand that even my grandmother in Chipinge fought for the independence of Zimbabwe but she cannot hold on to it as if it is a private unlimited.

Pan -Africanist need a bigger, in depth discussion on such issues -otherwise the likes of Mugabe will hijack all this for their own selfish agenda. And to criticise or differ in views with Mugabe is still Pan African.

I stand to be corrected and if need be, to be humbled.

comments on the resignation of Kenyan Finance Minister, Amos Kimunya, following allegations of financial impropriety in the sale of the Grand Regency Hotel in Nairobi:

“… it is important to understand that history was made yesterday. Never in the history of the nation has parliament on its own volition or initiative caused the resignation of a cabinet minister in defiance of the executive… In the often quoted case of former Vice President and now deceased, Dr Josephat Karanja, the plot to censure him was hatched in State House as crafty former President Moi wanted to get rid of his VP without risking a fallout amongst the powerful Kikuyus whom Moi greatly feared throughout his reign. So he got some MP to move the motion in parliament and gave the necessary instructions through the house which was then a mere rubber stamp of the executive.

This was not the case this time. In fact, if truth be told, the house was packed yesterday because members were expecting fireworks. Kimunya’s hurried resignation just before parliament’s first session of the week in the afternoon was no coincidence. The timing speaks volumes and tells me that State house is getting a little anxious. And the main reason has more to do with the naming of certain names that State House does not want to see named in connection to the Grand Regency.

But Kenyans need to be even more vigilant now. Will we get to the bottom of the Grand Regency saga? That should be the top priority that we must pursue now with all diligence.

To answer that question, there is an ominous sign to look out for. That sign is who gets appointed to replace Kimunya... If the new Finance Minister is from the ODM arm of the Grand coalition government then Kenyans will need to head to the hills because that will be a ‘grand bribe’ to ‘maliza hio maneno ya Grand Regency’. We can breathe a wee bit easier if Kimunya’s replacement is from PNU.”

Expose Uganda Genocide
Reacting to praise heaped on Uganda’s national policy on the displaced by Mukirya Nyanduga, Commissioner for refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Africa, Expose Uganda Genocide argues that the camps for IDPs in Uganda have caused more deaths than the LRA, and describes the Commissioner’s statement as “Aiding and Abetting Genocide” and “Distorting History of IDPs”:

“In a stunning pronouncement this week, a visiting diplomat has hailed the IDP policy created by government officials.

In reality, an extreme lack of water, sanitation and health care has cultivated disease epidemics, caused thousands of preventable deaths and produced thousands of highly malnourished children unable to enjoy their right to protection, health and education.

Conditions in these camps have caused the most deaths in the long-running civil war been the Ugandan Government and the Lord's Resistance Army.”

Palapala Magazine a recent addition to the African blogosphere, interviews Abidemi Olowonira, a Houston-based Nigerian visual artist, about the role of artists in reviving and preserving collective memory in Africa. According to Olowonira,

“Remembrance has always been a binding factor in African societies. A lot of Africans are named after their ancestors and events that occurred around the time the child was born. So, as the child grows, he or she becomes a walking reminder of a particular incident or a particular ancestor. In contrast to the West where everything is fast, Africa retains its past.

When you consider the trauma of slavery and colonialism on Africa it is very difficult for the African artist not to make remembrance an aspect of their work. Personally, even though I address 'in-the-moment' experiences, I still pull a lot of inspiration from my childhood experiences and my parents experiences, retained through stories. In fact, I also get inspiration from my grandmother's experiences. For instance, I use the 'bush lamp' in my paintings as a symbol from a parable my grandmother shared with me: ‘The person who turns on the light is a hero but the one who turns it off is the villain.’ At night in African markets, people use the 'bush lamp' to sell their wares. I think it is a way for us to retain our humanity in spite of our circumstances. Light becomes a significant symbol in our experience. When you see a bush lamp at night it symbolizes life, security and hope. So, if those lights are extinguished, they'll be chaos because that is the only way people can identify a path on which they can walk. I use light in my paintings to illustrate its importance in the African experience.”

[email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org/

Finally the nomination process in the search for Kenyan heroes has been launched. The debut nomination form was published in The Daily Nation on 4th July 2008 and in Taifa Leo on the same day. You can also nominate your Kenyan hero.

International Women's Programs invites proposals from local, national, regional or international organizations that reduce discrimination and violence against women, strengthen women's access to justice, and increase women's role as decision-makers and leaders.

The 5th European Gender and ICT Symposium will take a closer look at the complex interdependences between gender and ICT. Analyses of current ICT use and education on a global level and under various local conditions will be presented and new constructive approaches to gender-aware software design will be identified at the conference. Innovative solutions to overcome the barriers, to encourage participation, and to equally empower women and men by means of Information Technology will be discussed.

On Thursday the 3rd of July the Supreme Court of Uganda finally heard the constitutional appeal concerning the imposition of the death penalty in Uganda, three years after the constitutional court gave its original judgement on the case.

The Journal of Muslim Mental Health is seeking an Editorial Assistant in Cairo, Egypt who can offer approximately 10-12 hours weekly of professional service to the journal in close collaboration with the Editor-in-Chief starting August 1st, 2008 for a period of one year.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/387/49363betweenrock.jpgAt the summit of the African Union in Ghana in July 2007, Robert Mugabe was given a standing ovation. Later he went outside the conference to deliver a roaring anti–imperialist speech at a huge public rally. At the Nkrumah square Mugabe was hailed as one of the most steadfast revolutionary leaders in Africa. One year later, at the African Union Conference in Cairo, Egypt, Robert Mugabe was shunned by most leaders and condemned by those who opposed the authoritarian and dictatorial methods of rule. One day prior to the conference Mugabe had been sworn in as President after a non-election where he was the only candidate. This was a far cry from his initial inauguration in April 1980 when he was sworn in as Prime Minister before a throng of hundreds of thousands. Bob Marley had led the popular anti-racist and anti-imperialist forces to this celebration and had sung, Africans a liberate Zimbabwe. By June 2008 Robert when Mugabe was sworn in his regime had degenerated from a party associated with the legacies of Patrice Lumumba and Kwame Nkrumah to an organization associated with the militarism and repression of Mobutu Sese Seko and Hastings Banda. Working peoples all across the region led and inspired by the Congress of South African Trade Unions opposed the Mugabe government and called for its isolation. Nelson Mandela was moved to declare that one was witnessing a “tragic failure of leadership in Zimbabwe.”

It is this failure that needs to be contextualized not simply as a Zimbabwean phenomenon, but as one of the forms and content of politics and political engagement in an era of economic depression and discredited neo-liberalism. All over the African continent the poor and oppressed have borne the brunt of the food crisis, the energy crisis, the health pandemics, and the crisis of the financial markets. This is the cataclysm that is being termed the worst capitalist crisis since the depression of the 1930’s. While spokespersons for capitalism such as Alan Greenspan have noted the depth of the contradictions between capitalist wealth and the impoverishment of the peoples of the globe, the G8 discourse on increasing aid flows block serious analysis of the impact of the capitalist depression in Africa and other parts of the downtrodden world. Food riots and other forms of spontaneous expressions of resistance have been taking place in the absence of clear organizational forms to respond to this capitalist depression. It is in South Africa where the workers are organizing against the high food prices with marches.

Inside a country such as Zimbabwe the internal political contradictions and the dire economic conditions serve to compound the oppression of the Zimbabwean peoples. It is this oppression that calls for both clear analysis and action on the part of those who want support the oppressed and are not accessories to their oppression by overt and covert support for the Mugabe regime. The Zimbabwean working peoples have been well organized and it is in part the quality of their organization that exposed the Mugabe government and the ZANU-PF party. These organized workers and human rights activists exposed a clique of political careerists and militarists that represented itself as an anti-imperialist force in Africa. From among the ranks of the working peoples emerged various political organizations. The political party that emerged out of this alliance of working peoples is the Movement for Democratic Change. (MDC).

African Lens,The Story of Priya Ramrakha commemorates the work of a remarkable photographer who defined his career by embracing the people and events of Africa as a personal subject. One of Africa's first international photojournalists, Ramrakha traveled the continent, documenting the lives of ordinary people for the world press.

This study investigates the role of men in reproductive and contraceptive changes in urban Mozambique by analysing man-to-man communication on family planning issues. According to the author, the literature on issues related to family planning in sub-Saharan Africa does indeed recognise male partners' opinions and choices as an important factor in shaping couple's reproductive and contraceptive practices.

Gender Links, a dynamic Southern African NGO that promotes gender equality through its media, justice and governance programmes, seeks to fill the following senior posts: Research manager, Training manager and Gender and media diversity centre manager.

This South Centre Analytical Note looks at the donor-driven agenda in the reform of public procurement – the rules that guide government purchasing of goods, works and services – as one of major components in the good governance agenda being incorporated by donors into their aid programmes. It further stresses that such an agenda vis-à-vis government procurement not only restricts the flexibility of developing country governments to use public procurement as a policy tool for development, but also has significant consequences for local firms that rely on government contracts.

Portugal has cancelled $393.4 million of Mozambique’s debt. An additional loan agreement of $148 million was promptly signed. Mozambique gained its independence in 1975, after 500 years of Portuguese colonisation. The new government inherited an economy that was under-developed and poor, with 90% of its population illiterate. To reverse this situation, the government embarked on ambitious development programmes with the view to reducing poverty and developing the economy.

A Security Council measure intended to impose sanctions against Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe failed when two of the 15-member body's permanent members –- China and the Russian Federation –- voted against a draft resolution that would also have imposed an arms embargo on the country, as well as a travel ban and financial freeze against the President and 13 senior Government and security officials considered most responsible for the violent crisis there.

The Federal Government has announced the suspension of the Policy Support Instrument (PSI) designed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for the government of former President Olusegun Obasanjo for poverty reduction.

Villagers that have lived in Southern Zambia for over 50 years did not expect to experience 13 straight days of rainfall. In the village of Magoye, houses, food, crop and livestock were all washed away by the floods.

Niger Delta Militant group has threatened to end its two weeks cease fire on Saturday midnight in the region following a statement made by the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the just concluded G8 summit in Japan that he would end violence in the region.

Aid agencies in Sudan have been tightening security and preparing for a violent backlash if, as expected, the International Criminal Court indicts Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity on Monday.

South Africa’s more standardized HIV treatment approach in the public sector is as effective as the more individualized approach in Switzerland a comparative study has shown. However, the study, published in Plos Medicine this week, did find that more patients died in South Africa than in Switzerland, particularly during the first three months of therapy. This is mainly due to HIV patients not being able to access treatment when needed or trying to access help when they are already desperately ill.

The UN refugee agency said on Friday it was concerned that people fleeing political violence in Zimbabwe were not being properly screened at the South Africa border, raising fears that people with a genuine fear of persecution could be deported.

For Kenya's police force--struggling to keep the peace in a nation traumatized by post-election violence that tore open ethnic fault lines--a handful of middle-aged mothers from the slums of Nairobi make a strange sort of target. "We are Kenya's four most wanted," said a 43-year-old woman who sells traditional wrap skirts for a living. She called herself Mary, saying the police would come for her if she gave her real name.

Participation has now become an established orthodoxy in development thinking and practice. But what exactly is it and how best should be pursued in development interventions to improve the livelihoods of the poor remains contestable. This document outlines two studies conducted in two World Vision rural development programmes in Central Tanzania to analyse the effectiveness of participatory development processes.

International aid workers have temporarily suspended their work at a village in eastern Chad following attacks on their compounds and ethnic violence, British aid agency Oxfam said on Friday.

Computer literacy is a prerequisite for many jobs today, but students in Sierra Leone often have to seek out computer schools to gain the necessary skills. There are many issues that can inhibit the opening of a computer center in a school here, not the least of which is funding.

Three years after it was first proposed, preparations for an African 'wall of trees' to slow down the southwards spread of the Sahara desert are finally getting underway. The 'Great Green Wall' will involve several stretches of trees from Mauritania in the west to Djibouti in the east, to protect the semi-arid savannah region of the Sahel — and its agricultural land — from desertification

At least 15 African migrants, most of which are children died of hunger and thirst aboard an overcrowded boat trying to reach southern Spain, Spanish officials have said. The migrants were aboard a small craft that was attempting to make crossing from Africa to Spain. Spanish police said of the 15 reported deaths, at least nine were children, aged from nine months to four years, according to rescued survivors.

The newly appointed Mauritanian Prime Minister has ruled out the inclusion of selected opposition parties in his new cabinet line-up. Yayha Ould Ahmed El Waghf, who had recently lost the parliament's confidence, learnt bitter lessons for giving excessive powers to the minority parties. A no-confidence motion against his government has to do with his inclusion of political kingpins associated with the former President Maaouya Ould Taya in the government.

Journalists in Botswana are up in arms over the draft Media Practitioners Bill. Quietly published in the Government Gazette on June 27, the Bill would give the government greater control over the media. Botswana’s media bodies say the news media are already regulating themselves through the Press Council, which was established six years ago, and that the government is seeking to impose itself on the media sector.

Metro Police on Firday arrested and forcibly removed more than 190 foreign refugees who had camped at the back entrance of Durban City Hall for two days. The group, which was made up predominantly of children with their mothers, had been trying to get some sort of assistance from the council but after a last warning to disperse, some began handing themselves over to police. Others were forcibly removed and all were taken away in Metro Police vans.

Only 15% of Kenyan tax money goes into the Kenyan Development Budget; a country where 80% of the population is poor by United Nations standards.

Civil society organisations (CSOs) held, from June 22 to 23, the third Citizen’s Continental Conference in Sharm El Sheikh ahead of the Eleventh African Union (AU) Summit. The Continental Conference provided space for African citizens, the Diaspora, CSOs, and other concerned parties to discuss the summit agenda including the AU audit and the peace and security situation in Zimbabwe, Darfur and Somalia, among other issues. The eleventh ordinary session of the Assembly of the AU Heads of State, convening under the theme of water and sanitation, will also consider the merger of the Court of Justice and the African Court on Human Rights of the AU, the current food crisis, the appointment of the members of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.

As the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in Zimbabwe announced its pull out of the run-off election scheduled for June 27, the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) observer mission, one of only two official observer groups in the country, confirmed acts of violence perpetrated by government supporters against opposition members.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/385/49176mugabeout.jpgIt may be too early to speak of a positive response to calls for a government of national unity. It would be most encouraging to conclude that both parties are agreed on the essence of a GNU. But this would not be an accurate or even remotely hopeful analysis of the scenario. First, there is the violence in which unarmed citizens have been victims of mayhem. Secondly, there is the unresolved question of who should head this GNU - Tsvangirai or Mugabe. If this were going to turn out to be a defining moment for Zimbabwe, you could argue, with good reason, that both men would lower their own personal expectations in favour of their country’s and their people’s. But would that be realistic? asks Bill Saidi.
====

In essence, what came out of the African Union summit in Egypt, which presumably ventilated the Zimbabwean imbroglio thoroughly, was to leave it to the people to gird their loins for what might turn out to be a bruising or an amicable struggle to rescue the country from the brink of a disaster.

The mildly critical declaration for a call for a government of national unity contained no muscle that one could detect from a distance. Its politeness, as with everything the AU has attempted on Zimbabwe, must have been greeted by huge yawns of boredom by both combatants in the struggle.

It was Zanu PF, rather than the MDC, which appeared to react with a degree of animation to the proposal. Sikanyiso Ndlovu, the Minister of Information, sounded so upbeat it was as if the AU had responded specifically to his government’s call for a government of national unity (GNU). The MDC, almost predictably, introduced the rider that such an arrangement ought to be headed by Morgan Tsvangirai, who beat President Robert Mugabe to the presidency in the 29 March presidential election. Zanu PF would probably engage in a fit of gnashing of teeth before responding to that proposal - just as predictably – with the rejoinder that its leader ought to be the head of such a government.

This will be on the nebulous basis of his so-called victory in the 27 June farce which Zanu PF insists was a free and fair affair in which 85 percent of the voters, presumably, voted freely for Mugabe. There were widespread reports that some voters marked their ballots with “You will rule yourself, not us – we are fed up with you”.

How Zanu PF reached the conclusion that all voters turned up at the polling booths willingly shouldn’t surprise any objective analyst of the Zimbabwean situation. From the beginning, Zanu PF wanted it known throughout the world that it would not accept an arrangement which it had not controlled. The 29 March elections produced results which showed the party being resoundingly trounced by the opposition. But almost all that was overturned: the government took its own sweet time to announce the results. By that time, according to the opposition, “certain things” had been “doctored” and Zanu PF had suddenly performed quite creditably in all the polls.

Yes, it had lost its parliamentary majority in one fell swoop and had performed less than spectacularly in the presidential stakes, but it would live to fight another day – in the run-off of the presidential election.

About 70 people, most of them opposition supporters, were killed in the run-up to the run-off. Mugabe declared publicly that “only God could remove him from office”. It was the kind of contemptuous statement Mugabe has recently made to emphasise his utter disregard for even the elementary requirements for a free and fair election.

Why he would expect the opposition to participate in such a poll is beyond comprehension. Nobody, not even Thabo Mbeki, with his mealy-mouthed stance on Zimbabwe, could speak of the poll as anything other than what others thought of it: a travesty and a sham.

Mbeki would not use those words, but even he must have been frightened at the temerity with which his political idol seemed to regard that charade. Mugabe was swiftly sworn into office and just as speedily flown off to Egypt for the AU summit. Television footage of his reception by his colleagues at Sharm el-Sheikh suggested most of them were a little embarrassed, if not ashamed, at his presence. He may have met some of them privately, but there was notably no TV footage of such tête-à-tête meetings.

What we did see, though, was his media spokesman, George Charamba, almost foaming at the mouth as he shooed off reporters from the president. It was amazing that Charamba found it necessary to tell the West, on camera, “to go hang”. At some time in the future, that portrait of him may return to haunt him time and time again.

Mugabe himself was shown as if he was about to lunge at a reporter who apparently had asked him a question which he evidently found “cheeky”. All in all, it was not at all a worthwhile public relations exercise for Zimbabwe: the president, a man generally regarded as being unfriendly to the media, could only have sent that reputation plunging to the pits of notoriety.

The performance of the AU at the summit was once again as shameful as that of its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which somehow agreed to hold a summit in Idi Amin’s capital of Kampala, at a time when that odious dictator had displayed the worst traits of a megalomaniac, with a touch of cannibalism thrown in.

Only Raila Odinga seemed courageous enough to speak on camera of a call to expel Mugabe from the AU until free and fair elections are held in Zimbabwe. This is crucial for any future debate on the Zimbabwean situation by the AU or by any other regional or international blocs.

Elections in the country have generally contained an element of farce which most African leaders have refused to acknowledge as such. One good reason for this is that there are only a handful of African countries which could boast of truly free and fair elections since their independence. Many are led by people who achieved power through the barrel of the gun.

Although Mugabe has recently boasted that Zimbabwe’s independence was won solely through the armed struggle, it should not be forgotten that there were protracted negotiations in London – with not an AK47 in sight - at which all the players took part and had to sign an agreement.

Angola and Mozambique, which became independent after a 1974 coup in Portugal ended that country’s colonial adventure in Africa and elsewhere, were handed their independence, virtually, on a platter. Incidentally, that did not ensure a smooth transition. Hundreds of lives were still lost in the internecine bloodshed that followed this orderly handover of power.

In Zimbabwe, 20,000 were killed in a virtual civil war after 18 April 1980. After the AU summit, there appeared to have been noises of conciliation emerging from both Zanu PF and the MDC. It may be too early to speak of a positive response to calls for a government of national unity. It would be most encouraging to conclude that both parties are agreed on the essence of a GNU. But this would not be an accurate or even remotely hopeful analysis of the scenario.

First, there is the violence in which unarmed citizens have been victims of mayhem. Secondly, there is the unresolved question of who should head this GNU - Tsvangirai or Mugabe. If this were going to turn out to be a defining moment for Zimbabwe, you could argue, with good reason, that both men would lower their own personal expectations in favour of their country’s and their people’s. But would that be realistic?

The 27 June election was described as a “joke”, which would sound ghoulish if you considered that people were being killed even as the voting got under way or when the president was being sworn for another term of office. Why most people do not dwell on the bloodstained nature of the election campaign is probably an “African thing”. Most election campaigns on the continent feature a certain amount of bloodletting, witness that in Kenya.

Many Zimbabweans, observing from afar the TV footage of the gory situation in Kenya, swore it would not happen in their country. But it did and most were thoroughly disgusted that they had allowed themselves to be duped by Zanu PF into believing that the party had turned over a new leaf and would exit the political arena quietly, having been thoroughly humiliated by the MDC.

Mugabe was in competition with nobody, Tsvangirai having pulled out and being holed up in the Dutch embassy in Harare. Tsvangirai has been criticised for not standing firmly alongside his supporters in their time of greatest need. He has spent time in exile in Botswana and South Africa, apparently fearing for his life.

One point in his favour is that there is no denying that, if an opportunity was presented to his enemies to liquidate him, the chances are that they would grab it with both hands. He has been severely brutalised in the past, by the war veterans and by “men in dark glasses”, officers of the murderous Central Intelligence Office (CIO).

In 1990, one such officer was charged, found guilty and sentenced to a term in prison for his part in the attempted assassination of Patrick Kombayi, then a candidate for the opposition Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM). The two men were pardoned by Mugabe. Officers of this same clandestine unit have reportedly participated actively in the so-called “retribution” campaign launched by the government and Zanu PF after the 29 March elections.

The impunity with which this campaign was carried out convinced many people, previously unable to believe such brutality could be carried out in the name of a government professing to be democratic and a respectable member of the international community, that Zanu PF was in a real bind. Its chances of winning the election had been eroded by an economy so tattered and derelict its likelihood of ever recovering seemed almost non-existent.

It is this tottering economy which the government has said has been the target of Western economic sanctions. The government, in fact, blames the sanctions for all its economic woes. But an influential British commentator has dismissed sanctions as an effective tool against what he calls “brutal rulers” of Mugabe’s ilk.

Simon Jenkins says in an article in The Guardian newspaper this week: “Economic sanctions are a coward’s war. They do not work but are a way in which the rich elites feel they are ‘committed’ to some distant struggle. They enjoy lasting appeal to politicians because they cost them nothing and are rhetorically macho.” Jenkins refers specifically to the decision by the supermarket group Tesco to stop buying produce from Zimbabwe, “while the political crisis exists”. He contrasts this with the stance of the company’s competitor, Waitrose, which has decided not to stop buying from Zimbabwe. “It believes withdrawal would devastate ‘the workers and their extended families.”

There has never been any universal applause for economic sanctions against recalcitrant nations. Jenkins makes the point by referring to sanctions imposed on a number of nations which he claimed had no effect whatsoever. “In almost every case, sanctions make the evil richer and more secure, and the poor poorer.” Jenkins quotes the dictionary meaning of sanctions “as a specific penalty enacted in order to enforce obedience to the law”.

While he suggests that only an invasion would be effective, he refers to the invasion of Iraq as being considered as “a step too far.” “We toss gestures that will not bring about Mugabe’s downfall, only make the poor less able to resist his thugs. And all so that Tesco can feel better for a day.” "Yet there are many who believe that “every little bit helps”. In other words, even the mildest inconvenience to the people of an offending nation is likely to have an effect on their attitude towards the government.

Zimbabwe’s economy is in the proverbial doldrums, some of it totally unrelated to sanctions, but caused by malfeasance and maladministration. For instance, Mugabe himself has railed against his own cabinet ministers over the corruption involving the land reform programme. Some of them have two, three or even four farms, when he has decreed that they should have only one. Moreover, others have not developed these previously white-owned properties to their previous level of productivity, using them for speculative purposes, instead.

In insisting that the sanctions have hurt most ordinary, average-income earners, the government had hoped to persuade voters not to continue with their support for the opposition. The idea has been to paint them with the same brush as the West, which the government alleges launched its anti-Zimbabwe campaign after the land reform programme.

All this has failed to impress most voters, because, for a majority of workers, the luxuries accorded to cabinet ministers and the heads of parastatal companies are so lavish, they cannot imagine the country suffering any real pain from the sanctions – unless there is a political reason for making the workers the main targets and sufferers.

And since the opposition draws most of its support from the workers, that conclusion is not difficult for them to arrive at. Tsvangirai once said he believed if the South Africans imposed any kind of sanctions on Zimbabwe, they would have such a devastating impact on the economy Mugabe would soon rush to Mbeki on bended knees to beg him to reverse the decision, in return for anything he wanted – including the immediate re-opening of direct talks with the opposition.

Recently, the MDC leader has not been vocal on sanctions, perhaps in the perhaps forlorn hope that Mbeki, under enormous criticism for his lacklustre performance as the main mediator, would at last bend to the wishes of the Zimbabweans and make their geriatric and despotic leader the kind of deal he wouldn’t resist.

* Bill Saidi is the deputy editor of The Standard, an independent newspaper in Harare.

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/385/49178zimwomensum.jpgOn March 29,2008 Zimbabwe went to the polls to elect its next government until 2013. Results for the Presidential elections were announced a month later and people in Zimbabwe maintained peace. From 2 April 2008 the government organised a retribution campaign to target those who allegedly voted for the opposition and since then there has been terror in mostly rural Zimbabwe with youth militia under the command of the army and police confirmed to have gone on to unleash terror in a campaign to teach the rural people how to correctly vote in the forthcoming presidential run off supposed to take place on 23 May according to the law but whose date remains unannounced. As a result of the terror campaign by the military and the youth militia, the most affected are women and children as 80% of Zimbabwean women live in the rural areas.

So far, over 800 homes have been burnt down, over 10 000 people have fled their homes, over 40 people have been shot dead in cold blood, over 7000 teachers have fled their schools as a number have been beaten in the eyes of parents and pupils, Doctors for human Rights report that over 2000 serious cases of physical torture and beatings have passed through their hands and a lot of those they treated have suffered serious fractures to an extent that most are permanently handicapped. The oldest victim of the post election violence is an old woman with 12 grandchildren all of them orphaned and whose son is alleged to have campaigned for the opposition.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/385/49180xenophobiaSA.jpgWEEK ONE

The sms’s came fast and furious. As furious as the fiery images we were subjected to by our television and our daily newspapers. I dreaded opening a newspaper for days - afraid of being confronted by yet another grisly product of the negrophobic xenophobic violence, which by the end of week three had claimed the lives of about one hundred people and displaced about 100 000, according to some estimates. The mind spins out of its axis, out of the normal.

As the Alexander Township burnt, I was reading text messages from my cappuccino-loving Tito Mboweni-fearing middle class friends. The messages were generally along these lines; “I’m so embarrassed to be South African right now”, or more engaging: “I’m so tired of feeling angry about this and not being able to do something about it…” . Email lists held similar messages of shame; at least Winnie Madikizela-Mandela went to Alexander and told the terrified victims cramped at the police station; “We are sorry, please forgive us. South Africans are not like this”, before hopping back into her nice car and driving back to her life.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/385/49182mugabe.jpgAfter the African Union issued a statement so tepid that it might as well as have come from a high-school student conference, low expectations have further diminished. The African Union can now be seen in the same light as its predecessor – the OAU, a drum that beats hollow when it most counts for the African citizen.

But nevertheless, Mugabe’s one-man act has irreversibly damaged his reputation. The extent to which Mugabe has misread the continental and international political climate is shocking.African people, who previously saw Zimbabwe as a metaphor of their own countries where the elite exist at the expense of the poor, are abandoning him en mass. Having lost international legitimacy to George Bush and Tony Blair - a remarkable feat considering the extent to which his two adversaries are hated - the African people became his last defense.

But there has always been the African people and their governments. In regards to the African Union statement, Bishop Desmond Tutu dismay by saying that he was "distressed that (AU leaders) have not thought it was important to declare the illegitimacy of the runoff and the illegitimacy of the Robert Mugabe administration.”

The barbaric acts of violence against foreign African nationals in South Africa over the past month appears to have drawn to a close. However, thousands remain displaced and face the daunting task of putting their lives back together. Government indecisiveness, continuing xenophobic sentiment and the bitter cold of winter remain sizeable stumbling blocks in advancing the process of their reintegration into South African society. Durban suffered mainly reverberations of the mass violence emanating from Gauteng, but reports of harassment, poor living conditions for displaced refugees and growing fear amongst immigrant communities continue to filter in. What are the underlining issues and are they new? More importantly, how do we move forward? Azad Essa speaks to Pierre Matate, Deputy Chairperson of the KZN Refugee Council, to find out more.
===

Q. What is the KZN Refugee council?

A. We try to bring back the dignity of foreigners who have been pushed down by the denial to documentation. The council is there to advocate that a person needs to be treated as a person, with respect and with dignity. We are also trying to stop the brain drain; we need to send people back home with skills so they can go back and rebuild their country. We strive to have programs to promote the dignity and pride in their homes. The South African government has failed, in all ways, to utilize the skills offered by foreigners. They leave them exposed and treat them like cows and sheep standing in a queue.

Q. What is the latest situation in Durban?