Syrian Violence: How can it end.

The West want Bashar to end violence in Syria. Yet they know very well that Bashar can not stop them from arming the rebels to continue the violence!! It is like accusing a fireman of failing to put out a fire while pouring petrol on it.

There is no way people who are arming one side of the conflict can be said to want an end to the violence. If the West want the violence in Syria to end, then my foot is growing on my forehead. It can simply not be true.

One possible explanation is that the West is trying to distabilise Syria as much as they can in order to leave her weak and less of a challenge to Israel. Other than that there is completely no logic to their actions. Syria is not a major oil producer, like Libya or Iraq, where having a weak government can make it easier to loot the oil.

Where violence has not been fanned by outside sponsorship, like Jordan and Egypt, the governments have largely been able to maintain order. Even Bahrain was able to restore order despite spirited protests by an oppressed majority. Where governments have lost control, it is because of Western sponsorship of the violence. It is a classical tool and imperialism and colonialism - divide and rule.


The countries that have faced serious instability, Libya and Syria have only done so because of outside sponsorship of the violence. These are also the countries were the ordinary populations have suffered the most from the effects of violence. Therefore it would be farfetched to think that those sponsoring the violence care about the ordinary people of those countries. They don't.


Perhaps the worst hypocrisy is when Western governments accuse Russia of arming the government while they themselves are busy arming the rebels or encouraging those arming the rebels. As the 25 year civil war in Angola showed, pouring arms into either side of a conflict only prolongs the conflict, multiplies the number of deaths and inflames the social and ethnic divisions that would be the primary cause of the conflict.


Just looking at the Arab spring, the largest number of civilian deaths have been suffered in those countries where the West sponsored rebels. Given the large number of think tanks and analysts advising Western governments, it is difficult to imagine that they are not aware of this fact. It is more likely they just don't care. Rather they care more about achieving their political ends.


They ignore the human suffering that is a by-product of their tactics.


The violence in Syria can be significantly reduced today, if the West decide to end their proxy sponsorship of the violence through Sunni governments and Turkey.

Kirsty Coventry not the only white person in Zimbabwe sport

It is astounding when some people choose to wear their ignorance on the sleeve like a badge of honour.

Yesterday some obscure never-heard-off journalist named Mark O'Toole penned an article in which he claimed our beloved Kirsty Coventry was the only unifying force in Zimbabwe. He of the Toole never bothers to make it clear why he considers Kirsty a unifying force.

I could only imagine that somewhere in the recesses of his mind, Mark had this racist idea that there was some huge divide between blacks and whites of which Kirsty was the last tendon holding things together.

That is the point where Mr O'Toole's parade of ignorance begins. He obviously has little or no knowledge of Zimbabwe's recent sporting landscape. Otherwise he would have known that Zimbabwe's current national cricket team is captained by a well loved white lad name Brendan Taylor.He might also have known that the same team has long list of white players Charles Coventry, Malcolm Waller, Craig Ervine, Sean Williams, Greg Lamb, Keegan Meth, Kyle Jarvis, Ed Rainsford, Ray Price and Graeme Cremer.

I wonder what these lads will think upon learning that they are busy tearing Zimbabwe apart and Kirsty Coventry is the only one holding things together.

Mark also mentions some of Zimbabwe's recent cricketers who fell out with the authorities after bringing political activism to the sport. I would suggest that he go and ask Peter Norman, Tommie Smith and John Carlos what happens when you make a political statement, at a sporting event, that the authorities of the day don't agree with.

Note that I am not passing judgement on Henry Olonga and Andy Flower. All I am saying is that it happens, and only time will tell on which side of history a particular act will fall. I am sure Mark O'Toole knows what judgement the passage of time has bestowed on the three participants from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico. I not saying time will pass the same judgement on the two Zimbambwe cricketers. Sometimes time does not even bother to pass a judgement, only letting things pass into the realm of the forgotten.

I am also not sure why he of the Toole, does not mention other white sports persons who were fetted by the Zimbabwe in recent years. The tennis playing Black siblings - Byron, Wayne and Cara - come to mind.

Yes I will agree that Kirsty brings some very positive news for herself and for her country, Zimbabwe. It seems Mark made a very concious effort to be negative about Zimbabwe even when the situation that presented itself was positive.

Such an overly negative drive by some journalists, is part of the problem in Zimbabwe.

Foreign travel cost outstrips service delivery

Recently I posted, on this blog, my reasons why I believe that the EU should extend travel sanctions to ALL of Zimbabwe's politicians. According to Zimbabwe's finance minister, the travel bill far outstrips service delivery bills from health and education ministries. Now that we have it from the horse's mouth I hope people will understand how serious the problem is. This amount is enough to give each of Zimbabwe's 235 000 civil servants a salary raise of $50 a month for 12 months. Alternatively the money is enough to invest about $3 million in each of Zimbabwe's districts, improving roads, schools, health services and fighting crime (the scourge of stock-theft has nearly wiped out some rural livelihoods) Remember this is only the cost of travel. There are other numerous unnecessary cost imposed on us by our bloated executive, filled by people with the 'let me eat with my friends' mentality. Zimbabwe is not a poor country. However us ordinary people can only benefit from her wealth, if it is utilized responsibly by those we elect into power. Using $157 million for lackadaisical sojourns to foreign lands is the furthest thing for responsible use of our abundant resources.

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http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-8539-Foreign+travel+bill+tops+US$157+million/news.aspx

Foreign travel bill tops US$157 million

Foreign travel cost ... Tendai Biti THE coalition government has spent some US$157 million on foreign travel since coming into office in 2009 but Finance Minister Tendai Biti admitted Wednesday that they had precious little to show in return by way of benefits for the country. Biti revealed the cost of the government's globe-trotting as he presented a mid-term fiscal review to Parliament that downgraded growth prospects for the economy and included spending cuts of up to 10 per cent as well as a jump in tax rates. He said a major factor in the government’s budget going off the rails was the cost of foreign travel with officials spending more than $157 million on international trips since 2009. "Another elephant in the living room is foreign travel. This is an area where we have to take action,” he said and admitted that the benefits of the foreign trips did not match their cost. Biti said spending on foreign travel outstripped the non-wage budget allocations for essential ministries like health and education. "Expenditures on foreign travel remain disproportionate to expenditures on more essential services such as health, education, social protection, infrastructure development and support to agriculture,” he said. Over the six months between January and June this year, the government used US$20 million on foreign travel while spending on education and health not related to salaries for state workers was just over US$5 million and about US$13 million respectively. “While it is necessary that Zimbabwe is represented at regional and international events, essential services will have to take priority, while foreign trips will need to be further managed downwards,” Biti said. “I, therefore, re-emphasise the importance of containing the foreign travel expenditures within allocations in line with measures announced in the 2012 National Budget, which include managing foreign trips, limiting the size of delegations and adhering to Treasury per diem rates. “(However I would like to) acknowledge the support from the Principals and further count on their assistance in this area. Measures are also being considered towards containment of costs of airfares, including forward purchase of air tickets.”

No Mr Hain, not your kind of sanctions

Just a week ago I was busy calling for EU travel sanctions to be extended to all of Zimbabwe's ministers. My reasoning was simple, try to curb government expenditure on travels in order to save more money for services.

Barely a week later a British minister is calling for more sanctions but not of the kind I envisaged. Peter Hain wants to place international companies that do business with Zimbabwe under sanctions. The last thing we Zimbabwean people need is for such threats to investors to be bandied about with such abandon.

These sanctions have the express aim of hindering Zimbabwe's economic activities on the global market and have absolutely no value except to throw as much spanners as the British can into the works of Zimbabwe's economy.

It seems the British aim is to curb Zimbabwe's growing independence of their neo-colonial economic establishment. When British companies were busy looting Zimbabwe, they were facilitating their being listed on such international bourses as the London Stock Exchange.


Of course we know very, very well about the kith and kin factor in British mentality when comes to our rights as Zimbabweans. We witnessed it during Ian Smith's unilateral declaration of independence (UDI). It seems that kith and kin factor is still at play today - if any companies are going to benefit from looting Zimbabwe let it be British kith and kin, that seems to be their thinking.


Why hasn't Peter Hain proposed sanctions on Barclays Bank and Standard Chartered Bank which are the two biggest banks propping up the Zanu-PF run Zimbabwean economy. What about other Western linked companies such as Anglo American, Zimplats, Rio Tinto, Murowa Diamonds, etc which are major players in the Zimbabwe economy. They do pay taxes and royalties some of which find their way to the defense forces don't they? Unless of course Peter Hain has been secretly advising them to evade Zimbabwean taxes.


Even a bat, with all its blindness, can see that the sanctions being proposed by him have got absolutely nothing to do with upholding the rights of Zimbabweans. Rather they are more about putting as many obstacles as possible in the path of challengers to Western domination of the Zimbabwean economy.


Of course they know they cannot stop the process of economic de-colonisation but they obviously want to go out kicking and screaming as much as they can.


The wisdom that, for the long term, it would be better to cooperate and help mitigate against the oppression of the past is lost to them.


My opinion has got nothing to do with taking sides in Zimbabwe politics. All our politicians are crooks, cheats and embezzlers as far as I am concerned. They are going into politics not to provide services to us and uphold our rights, but rather to get rich as quickly as they can.


Our politicians by themselves, have done a lot of damage to Zimbabwe as it is. But then you do not burn down your entire village because you don't like the headman. Where will you and your on family live if the village is gone.


I will never agree to measures that destroy Zimbabwe, while purporting to be targeting Mugabe. You do not burn down the granary to get rid of the rats. We do not want to rebuild Zimbabwe from scratch after Mugabe is gone. We want to have a country fully functioning, including having a strong defense force.


We do not want a Libya scenario. With NATO help, the Libyans destroyed law and order because they didn't like Gadhafi. Aren't they being run by lawless militias now? 

The tribal undertones to the Malema saga

South Africa is made up of two major ethnic groups.

Sotho, Tswana and Pedi (also referred to as Northern Sotho) are closely related tribes of South Africa with the languages being mutually intelligible, almost like Shona dialects.

The Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi and Ndebele are the Nguni based languages also mutually intellible.

The Sotho mainly occupy the Free State province, the Tswana are in the North West (bordering Botswana) and the Pedi are in Limpopo centred around Polokwane.

The Xhosa are Eastern Cape, the Zulu in kwaZulu-Natal (as if that needs an explanation), the Swazi and Ndebele in Mpumalanga.

The Venda and Shangaani (Tsonga) are relatively small groups who many South Africans associate with Zimbabweans and Mozambicans anyway. They are unlikely to have much of a decisive impact on the South African political landscape.

Julius Malema a Pedi is backing Kgalema Motlante said to be a Tswana with roots in the North West, born in Alexandra and brought up in Johannesburg, for President. He is also loudly backing Fikile Mbalula from the Free State (Sotho) for post of secretary general.

On the other side current Secretary General is Gwede Mantashe a Xhosa allied to Jacob Zuma a Zulu.

In short the ANC leadership battle is largely split along Sotho-Nguni lines. The ANC top six are reportedly split in half themselves.

From talking to my fellow workers here I gather that there is little love lost for Zulu's as they are perceived to have been used by the dying apartheid regime in the early 90s (the so called Third Force) to butcher their fellow blacks in a bid to weaken the ANC.

Until the election of Zuma, Zulus almost always backed their tribal based Inkatha Freedom Party. Whites backed their own tribal party the Democratic Alliance. The ANC was for everyone else. It looks like the ANC took a conscious decision to bring in Jacob Zuma to try attract Zulus. They succeeded, kwaZulu-Natal is now the ANC biggest province. It remains to be seen whether the trend will extend beyond Zuma's tenure.

Until the ANC made the decision to appoint Zuma, many people thought that no Zulu would lead SA because of the 1990s Third Force killings. While the appointment of Zuma (SA Presidents are appointed by a majority in Parliament not directly elected) seems to have brought in the Zulus from the cold, it seems they are drifting together with the Xhosas and other Nguni speaking tribes.

The first two Presidents of South Africa, Mandela and Mbeki were Xhosas. Particularly during Mbeki's later years, there were already muffled grumbles about Xhosas 'taking all the power for themselves'. Apparently the push for Motlante is driven by the feeling that it is now time for a non-Nguni after 20 years of Nguni leadership.

It looks like the ANC is headed to be split along ethnic lines over the Malema issue. The ANC structures in Limpopo and Mpumalanga have signaled that they are backing the Malema camp. He addressed an ANC Women's League meeting in Polokwane where he was referred to as 'our son' who 'will remain with us throughout' indicating that Malema is going nowhere.

To me it looks like Zuma's personal battle for survival might just exacerbate the tribal fault lines in South African society.

It may not have been wise for Zuma to pull out all the stops in his battle to silence Malema, even though he is doing it to try and ensure a second term for himself, not for tribal reasons. He also does not seem to have statesman like magnanimity and stoicism. His mocking of Malema, and by extension his backers, by quiping "it's cold outside the ANC" is a case in point.

A man who has fallen once is the one who throws the hardest punch because he doesn't want to fall again. Zuma himself is an example of how a man throws very hard punches once he gets up from a fall. Look how he felled Mbeki.

There is also a disturbing tendency which sees those who express opposition to Zuma being descended upon by government agencies. The Limpopo government headed by a key Malema ally was taken to task by the finance ministry for practices that seem to be also common in other provinces. Malema himself is now being investigated by the tax revenue services as well as an elite police unit. To me it rings bells of Mugabe opponents being investigated by the various arms of government including the CIO.

Famed for the prowess of his loins, Zuma's marriage practices may also not be good for unifying South Africa. All his wives and the women who he is publicly known to have bedded are Zulus. How could it be possible that for a man who has spend much of his time in Gauteng where Tswana and Sotho communities are numerous, has never laid his eye on a woman from another ethnicity whom he could have fancied?

For centuries the marriage practices of leaders have been known to unify or divide communities. In African culture it was quite common to exchange brides to cement ties between kingdoms or communities. Zuma seems to be taking brides from one community only.

The era of Zuma ambitions could prove to be the most damaging for the ANC. The way he challenged for leadership against Mbeki has already seen a split in the ANC. COPE was formed precisely because Zuma/Mbeki power struggle.

The way Mbeki was recalled was widely seen to have been a deliberate humiliation. The ANC was saved from loosing support in the Xhosa heartland, Eastern Cape only by Mandela's cool head. He came out in support of the ANC which was treated as a signal by Xhosas to remain with the ANC.

Now Zuma's battle to for a second term has pitted him against a popular and very loud-mouthed youngster who many see as a proxy for a powerful faction within the ANC. The ANC are extremely lucky that the power struggle that happened in COPE, after they split away, may have dampened the appetite for another split. But they should never assume that a second split won't happen.

What there can be no doubt about is that the fate of the ANC will mirror the fate of South Africa. By dint of the fact that the ANC represents the vast majority of South Africans, it's fortunes or misfortunes will rub off onto to the country in a big way. The fact that the ANC seems headed for trouble means that South Africa is headed for trouble.

There is no chance that the DA will grow from being a largely white tribal party in time to take over from the ANC, that is if the DA will grow at all. Never mind their efforts to woo black voters by elevating a rather buxom young lady whose only notable attribute is a near-perfect English accent.

She is a member of what in Zimbabwe would be derisively referred to as the 'nose brigade', people who speak with a nasal twang in attempts to imitate European accents. South Africans are even more derisive of black people who merely mostly speak English (as I have personally discovered on many occasions) let alone with a European accent. It is considered being a show-off and pompous.

The ANC is a cross roads where they need a very skilled navigator. I don't think many people realize the significance of Mangaung as the cross roads where the ANC's, and South Africa's, future is going to be made or broken.

It is a conference where not only factions of the ANC are pitted against each other, but one where revenge and tolerance will also be fighting their own unannounced battle. If revenge wins, then the ANC and South Africa are headed for trouble.

The EU should extend travel sanctions on Zimbabwe politicians

Ever since their inception I have been against the so called targeted sanctions against Zanu-PF officials. I have made my reasons clear why I think they are far from targeted. For example they have achieved the almost total eradication of aid to Zimbabwe except for token aid meant to maintain the façade that they are targeted.


When it was announced that the EU was reviewing them with the possibility that they would be completely removed, should therefore have been good news to me.


Then it suddenly occured to me that all of the 70+ public funds leeches that I have been complaining about ever-since the day their agreement to share seats on the gravy train was announced are going to be free to travel to Europe (including the famed Ingirendi) using money that is meant to provide services for me and other ordinary Zimbabweans.

You can be guaranteed that they will take along with them huge entourages encompassing wives, relatives (vazukuru unlimited), casual forgotten liaisons (Loreta Nyathi style), casual intimate girlfriends (Jonathan Kadzura style), instantly divorced wives and all other sorts of hangers on (leeches leeched upon leeches). Kitchen cabinets, bedroom cabinets, war cabinets and even chiverevere naye kumatanga  (kraal) cabinets will all have opportunities to catch a free ride once in a while.

All that travel is going to by financed (by hook and crook if necessary) from public coffers meant to provide services to us poor Zimbabweans who have been reduced to taking each other to clinics in wheelbarrows. What does that mean to us. The cake is not growing bigger. So it obviously means less services to us.

No the EU must not lift any more travel sanctions. It must extend them to all politicians including the MDC ones in order to help us minimize the misuse of public money. And this time they better make them really targeted.

Food security in Zimbabwe: The White Farmer Factor?

Most of what Eddie Cross says in response to my earlier blog article, is in agreement with my own analysis. He confirms that even when white commercial farmers were in full unhindered operation there were seasons when Zimbabwe had to import food. He also confirms that there is a large variation in seasonal rainfall (40% is the figure he gives) which influences food security at household level.

My original post was focused on household food security. Eddie expands the picture to include commercial agriculture. Again I do not deny that farm invasions were a significant blow to commercial agriculture.

Eddie is right that living standards were low in communal areas. But it is patently false to claim that those of farmworkers were higher. Peasants had secure (though not legally recognized) tenure on their land. They could accumulate property, mainly cattle and farming implements, which could serve as a savings base or pension.

On the other hand, farm workers had scant job security. Eddie touts a figure of 2 million farm workers but forgets to mention that most of them were seasonal workers who only had jobs during the rainy season and moved to the communal lands during the dry season. Those who nominally lived on the farms had little job security and hopped from farm to farm, because of frequent firings, with barely the clothes on their backs. When they grew too old to work most had nowhere to go except the communal lands. Most became the poorest members of the communal communities becuase they would not have been able to accumulate property while working on farms.

I fully agree with the point that removing 30% of production will lead to serious shortages. However the reason why I tend to emphasize other factors is to counter the unspoken racist insinuation that blacks can't feed themselves and need whites to feed them.

I have never disputed that the decline in commercial agriculture contributed to overall decline in agricultural output, but I strenuously object to attempts to pass it off as the sole reason for 'starvation' in Zimbabwe.

I grew up in rural Zimbabwe and all my life I know rural communities are not fed by commercially grown maize. They either grow their own maize or, in times of drought, imported maize. That is why rotary hammer mills (zvigayo) for grinding maize into flour are ubiquitous in Zimbabwe's rural areas.

The removal of white farmers was always going to negatively affect the macro-economy of the country, but it would have improved the micro-economy of the peasant farmers significantly if it had not been accompanied by price controls and trade restrictions. Given that 70% of Zimbabwe's population live in the rural areas this would have significantly improved lives.

Poor economic policies and trade restrictions also significantly affected sectors of the economy which had nothing to do with farming such as mining and services.

Other factors also contribute to the increasing frequency of food shortages in Zimbabwe. The growing population has put a tremendous strain on the ability of communal lands people to continue being self sustaining on the same little land that was allocated to native reserves almost a century ago. The land for native reserves was barely sufficient then, and there is absolutely no chance it will be sufficient now.

To give an anecdotal example, Chiraramiro village, where my mother comes from, originally had six families, Chiraramiro (the Headman), Vambe, Nyamanza, Matambo, Musasiwa and Muketa families. Chiraramiro and Vambe had more than five sons each, including the famous Hahuhunhanzvi (You will never lick this beer). Muketa had three. So by the time of my mothers generation the families had increased to more than 16.

In my generation, each of these 16 families have had three sons on average. The same land that was barely sufficient for six families is now expected to support nearly 50 families. Needless to say there is absolutely no chance all these 50 families being self sustaining without jobs elsewhere. Urbanisation has led many members of the families into towns, where the situation is not much better. Jobs were scant even before the economic collapse.

Some say the economy collapsed because white farmers were chased away. I say the economy collapsed mainly because politicians are stealing or otherwise misusing the money. A ravenous kleptocracy is chewing up more than its fair share of resources.

That climate change is also playing havoc with food security is also increasingly becoming apparent. Of late the rains start in late November sometimes December. Yet the rains used to start around September and October.

As some may know the name gukurahundi (the rains that wash away the chaf) refers to rains that fell around August, soon after people finished processing their harvests. Now that name remains in use only because it was the nickname given to the Fifth Brigade, the army division accused of committing atrocities in Matebeleland provinces in the mid-1980s. Otherwise rains in August a virtually unheard of nowadays.

Yes the removal of white farmers did affect Zimbabwean agricultural, but it would be folly to ignore the numerous other factors also at play. It is also folly to think that the land question can be solved by simply restoring the colonial status quo which is what most white farmers seem to be hoping for.

The major sticking point at the moment seems to be who is responsible for compensating evicted farmers, with Mugabe saying it is the responsibility of the British, and the British saying they are not liable for the sins of their forefathers. At least this is what Claire Short said in a letter to the Zimbabwe government.

Food Production in Zimbabwe - By Eddie Cross, MP

The following is a direct response to my earlier blog post Absence of white farmers not the reason for Zimbabwe's food shortages. Eddie Cross is an MP for Bulawayo South constituency in the Zimbabwe parliament representing the MDC (Tsvangirai faction). He would have been serving in ministerial capacity in the Zimbabwe government, but was denied the opportunity for ethnic and tribal reasons.
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Dear Jupiter

I read your note on the link between food production and the destruction of white owned farms and thought that it needed a response. As you might know I was Chief Economist at the Agricultural Marketing Authority up to Independence and have been involved in agriculture here all my life.

You concentrate on maize production, as this is the primary staple that is understandable. Communal farmers (70 per cent of the population until the recent collapse of the economy and the rural economy) always aimed to produce their own food. Generally over time this meant that 60 per cent of national maize production came from the Communal areas. Because of the nature of subsistence agriculture, low tech, low inputs, yields were always low and the areas cultivated huge – some 2 million hectares were cultivated annually. If we had good rains this produced a surplus and shortages when rains were poor.

Zimbabwe has a 40 per cent mean variation in rainfall (the US is 5 per cent). This means that we get huge variations in rainfall from year to year. 1983, 1992 were exceptionally bad years and only massive imports saved the country from starvation. The other crops where communal farmers dominated were sorghum, millet, ground nuts and beans. Perhaps we could add sweet potatoes and air dried tobacco. Living standards were low =- perhaps a third of the standard of living on commercial farms – it is interesting to note that population density on commercial farms was nearly as great as on communal farms, commercial farmers supported a population of about 2 million people in 1997 on about 8 million hectares of land. Communal areas population was about 4 million on 16 million hectares, the difference being that the majority of the communal land were in regions 3, 4 and 5 – arid and semi arid areas. 70 per cent of region 1 land is communal but that is restricted to the Eastern Highlands.

What made the Commercial farmers (4800 white and 1200 black) so important (70 per cent of gross agricultural output) was the productivity and technologically advanced nature of their operations. They irrigated 270 000 hectares of land – most of it as supplementary irrigation in dry years, they produced about 600 000 tonnes of maize a year (we need 1,8 million tonnes a year – 1,2 million tonnes for human consumption and 600 000 tonnes for industry and stockfeed. But in a dry year they could irrigate much of the crop and guarantee some output. Commercial farmers produced virtually all the wheat (400 000 tonnes), all the barley (40 000 tonnes) and 95 per cent of the tobacco (250 000 tonnes a year) and 90 per cent of all soybeans (120 000 tonnes). Then they produced all the tea – 90 per cent of the coffee, all the milk (260 000 tonnes) and all the fruit (citrus and pome – about 75 000 tonnes a year). In the meat industry they produced about 60 per cent of the poultry, 70 per cent of the beef and 85 per cent of the pig meat – altogether about 350 000 tonnes a year.

When you put this all together, Commercial farmers generated about 70 per cent of gross agricultural output, half of all exports and a third of employment and 60 per cent of the raw materials getting to local industry. They supported over 2 million people directly on farms at a standard that was significantly better than in the communal areas where absolute poverty existed.

Since the farm invasions, commercial agricultural output has declined 70 per cent and is still declining. In the communal sector, and this is fascinating, the decline has been slightly higher at 73 per cent. I estimate that out of the 10 000 title deeded farms that were forcibly taken from their owners, 7000 are today vacant, with no people living there, no farm activity of any kind. Hardest hit has been the cattle industry where commercial stocks of 2,7 million head have been reduced to about 700 000 head. You cannot run cattle when there is no law, no security and no fences.

This year we will import just about everything – two thirds of our milk, a third of our sugar (we used to produce 600 000 tonnes a year with half for export), vegetables, 1,2 million tonnes of maize – maybe more than last year as the crop is smaller, all our wheat, half our barley and two thirds of our soybeans. Much of it from Zambia (where ex Zimbabwean farmers have made a huge impact) and Malawi where very successful peasant agricultural systems are delivering large surpluses – but funded by donors.

What should be of concern to all is that three years after the formation of the GNU, the only sector that shows no recovery, but is still in decline, is agriculture.

Eddie

Absence of white farmers not the reason for Zimbabwe's food shortages

Zimbabwe's food production ability was not destroyed by taking white farms. Commercial farmers were only responsible for producing 30% of Zimbabwe's staple, maize. 70% was produced by communal farmers (villages working on small plots averaging about 6 hectares).

What destroyed Zimbabwe's agricultural productivity was the idiosyncratic economic policies of the Mugabe government. The first was price control. The government decreed the price of agricultural commodities. The second was market restriction. The government decreed that only the government owned Grain Marketing Board could buy maize. In conjunction with this decree they banned the transportation of maize to anywhere other than GMB depots. Thus producing the staple simply became unprofitable and communal farmers simply resorted to producing just enough to feed their families.

The production of maize is very much dependent on annual rainfall patterns. Years with good rains would see bumper harvest enabling the government to put some into reserve stockpiles. Price controls meant that there were several years without reserves being replenished hence the government lost its ability to supplement grain supplies in drought years. Also at play was the monetary mismanagement which wiped out foreign currency reserves. The government was unable to import maize on its own.

The fact that white farmers were chased of their farms was merely a coincidence. In fact this was not even the first time that Zimbabwe had had to import maize for food. In the 1982/83 season there was a serious drought and the government imported yellow maize which was derisively referred to as 'Kenya' by locals. The consistency and taste of sadza (ugali) made from yellow maize is not that same as that from white maize. I do not know for what reason yellow sadza came to be referred to as Kenya.

The food aid that was distributed during that drought came to be commonly referred to as 'chibage chaVaMugabe' (Mugabe's maize). In the subsequent years Zanu-PF became so popular that at one point they won 117 out of the 120 seats in parliament. This is one of the reasons why donors and Western governments are now making a huge effort not to have food aid being associated closely with the government. The fact that this  leads to unnecessary waste and duplication of resources, is ignored.

There was another drought around 1991/92 and the government again had to import maize, this time mainly from SA and Zambia. During both these major food shortages white commercial farmers were in full unhindered operation, yet that did not prevent the weather from playing havoc on food supplies.

As we speak last year (2010/2011 season) the rains were relatively good and we didn't hear anything about food shortages in Zimbabwe. This year the rains have not been so good but some regions of the country have reasonable harvest. Food shortages will hopefully not be serious.

Weather, not the race of farmers, is the chief influence upon food security in Zimbabwe. I grew up among Zimbabwean villagers and the chief worry in terms of food security has always been 'are the rains going to be good this year?' (Mukati nhaka mvura inonaya zvakanaka?)

Of late seasons of low rainfall have become more frequent, and rains are persistently coming late. Thus the other possible reason for Zimbabwe's growing food insecurity is climate change, not the absence of a particular race of farmers.

Lindiwe Zulu: Mediator or now party to the dispute?

I would like to ask, who is in charge of Zimbabwe, the Government of Zimbabwe or Lindiwe Zulu? If it is the former then I would like to further ask what business that later has deciding when or when not elections would be held in Zimbabwe.

Secondly who are the parties to the dispute in Zimbabwe. Are Jacob Zuma or Lindiwe Zulu in any way parties to the dispute. If that is the case can they please explain to us how that come about and why they are mediators at the same time. As far as I am concerned announcements of what can or cannot happen should be coming from Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai, Welshman Ncube (or is it Arthur Mutambara?).

It is entirely up to the three parties to the dispute to modify agreements they made in the past. What is not normal is for the mediator to try and stand in the way of any such modifications to past agreements. What is not normal is for the mediator to try and feed negotiating positions to some of the parties or adopt the positions of some of the parties and impose them on others. It is not up to Lindiwe Zulu to dictate to the parties. It is not up to Lindiwe Zulu decide when elections can or cannot be held in Zimbabwe.

As far as I am aware both Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe have hinted that the elections can be held without all the conditions of the GPA being met or even a new constitution, especially if the 5-year election cycle is about to pass. That cycle is less than a year away so Lindiwe Zulu had better stop grand-standing about things she knows little about. While it is expected for parties to a dispute to grandstand it is completely unusually for a so called mediator to become the chief grandstander.

Despite what the Lindiwe Zulus like to fabricate and believe, Zimbabwe has dilligently, without fail, held multi-party parliamentary elections every five years since her 1980 independence which makes her the leading democracy in Africa. Presidential elections have been held every 6 years since the post was created. So far nothing has ever made Zimbabwe miss her democratic heartbeat, and I am sure nothing, not even Lindiwe Zulu, is going delay elections beyond March 2013.

The overwhelming popularity of Zanu-PF should not be percieved as lack of democracy in much the same way the overwhelming popularity of the ANC in South Africa for the past 20 years does not signal a lack of democracy in South Africa.

It is the involvement of the Lindiwe Zulus which is about to make Zimbabwe miss her democratic heartbeat.

We should avoid a situation where an otherwise stabilised situation is inflamed again by poor or non-existant mediation skills. The only way that can be achieved is to remove the poor mediators.

Time for the African Union to take the lead in Libya

Now that NATO's mess-up is self evident in Libya it is time for the African Union to step in and clean up. Libya has been transformed from being a major African player to a total wreck in the space of six short months, thanks to an overzealous and ultimately ungrateful Sarkozy (how can he turn on someone who gave him campaign funds).

It is up to the African Union to organise troops from say Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morrocco to go and shore up the the NTC in Libya, the same way the AU has stabilised Somalia. The only way the NTC can bring the mushrooming militias in Libya under controls is have a large amount of carrots as well as a big stick.

Militias should be disarmed through a well financed voluntary civil reintegration program. Those who surrender their guns should be given money and training for skills useful to society. At the same time the NTC needs to start seriously building up a military shored by fellow African troops like what is happening in Somalia.

Given the NATO and Western media encouraged perception that black Africans were Gadhafi's chief backers, it would not be advisable to send troops from countries like South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda or Nigeria. Therefore the AU would have no choice but to rely on countries like Egypt which are also battling with their own internal problems.

Already it looks like the NATO exacerbated crisis in Libya is going to spread to other countries in the region with Mali already divided and in deep civil conflict inflamed by the easy availability of weapons from Gadhafi's armouries. If a negotiated transition had been allowed in Libya, those arms would have remained in secure hands and none of them would have found their way into the hands of rebel groups in the region.

Due to what is at best NATO naivete, at worst a callous attack on African stability, the reality is that the AU is now left to deal with the fallout of bad decisions by others - NATO. The AU have their own faults, but you do not pour hot oil a man because he is diseased. NATO poured hot oil on Africa in destabilising Libya one of the chief backers of the African Union. Now it looks like the hot oil has splashed onto Libya's neighbours with Mali being the first to show evidence of serious burns.

If the African Union does not act now to try and contain the situation, the Arab Spring could soon be followed by a Sahel Winter. It is no use looking to Europe for a solution. Europe is only good a creating Africa's problems not solving them. They created African poverty through colonialism not it seems they are bent on creating African instability.

The military should be treated as a single unit

In my last blog post, I concluded with the remark "Without willingness on the part of Zanu-PF members especially those in the military, there is very little chance that a stable and peaceful transition will be possible"

A fellow Zimbabwe responded to that particular comment about the military as follows.

James Chikonamombe - One point on the military though: this is not a monolithic military, but rather, a deeply divided military split into antagonistic factions. I'm reliably informed that on the one hand, you have certain members of the top military brass who actually consider themselves to be Presidential material, and yet, on the other hand, certain members of the same military top brass are vehemently against these same military "manouvres". 

It those divisions within the military which make it most dangerous. Take a look at the Arab spring. Where the military has remained united such as in Egypt and Tunisia the country has remained stable. Where the military got divided and suffered 'defections', such as Libya and Syria, the countries are faced with serious instability.

What we know in Zimbabwe is that large sections of the military are definitely pro-Zanu-PF, with many of them being described as hardliners. While there has been a constant stream of rumours about this or that general being sympathetic to the MDC, or being 'moderate' there is no real evidence of who will throw in their lot against Zanu-PF once the chips are down.

In any case, the pro-Zanu-PF faction is likely to have the greater numbers and is likely to dominate any proceedings barring outside intervention. Even if outsiders intervene, do not forget that most of the pro-Zanu-PF are hardened guerilla war veterans. Zimbabwean terrain is also more suited for guerilla warfare than say the Libyan desert and it will take years to subdue them, if it is at all possible. They can easily be to Zimbabwe what the Taliban has been to Afghanistan.

As far as I am concerned a bean count of which soldiers are pro-Zanu-PF and which are anti-Zanu-PF is practically useless, or even which soldiers belong to which faction of Zanu-PF is practically useless. The more important think is to prevent them getting at each other's throats. In fact I consider the intra-faction fault-lines within Zanu-PF to be far much more dangerous to Zimbabwe's stability.

Once the Zanu-PF intra-faction fight starts even the MDC will be a little more than a toddler watching its parents fighting - utterly helpless to stop the fight but very much liable to be caught in the crossfire.

James Chikonamombe - Zimbabwe's military, like militaries elsewhere, is a virtual "state within a state". But, we should not put too much stock in the active serving officers; the ones we read about in the papers every day. Conversely, there are retired officers who carry much clout, and it is these officers that the opposition should be embracing. If any democratic change has to take place, then Zanu's "old guard" should be embraced by the opposition. They are actually very progressive, and keen to see Zimbabwe move forward -- believe it or not! -- and should be part and parcel of any post-ZPF scenario.

The retired officers are only important in as much as they can act as intermediaries with the serving officers. It is the serving officers in charge of brigades and platoons who give orders directly to the rank and file of the soldiers who matter most. It is fallacy to think that the retired officers command so much respect that they will be able to immediately take over command of platoons.

Even to imagine that they will have stronger bonds with politicians than they have with the men they once commanded and then handed the baton to, is also fallacy. Yes they may make noises sympathetic to certain politicians every now and then, but when the chips are down it may well be a different story. The man who says, 'Mudhara I covered you during that fire-fight at that mountain' will certainly be more likely to sway the retired generals in his favour. I am not saying it is a given, I am just considering the balance of probabilities.

In short any strategy by the opposition that is centred around corralling a few generals from the rest of the herd, is at best unpredictable in outcome. What is almost certain is that it could lead to dangerous instability. It would be better for them to try and not make a distinction between the generals and just treat the military as a unit. Even the individual soldiers are as important as the generals and their contribution and sacrifice for the country should never ever be trash-talked.

I know that the generals themselves have not been particularly tight-lipped and have said things that are meant to rile to the opposition. What is required is for the opposition to show maturity and avoid tit-for-tat verbal exchanges that will further pollute the atmosphere.

The most important thing is not to divide the military. They should be treated as a unit, not as a patchwork of hardliners and moderates. The best chance of keeping the country stable lies in keeping the military united.

Off lines in the sand - political confrontation in Zimbabwe

Back in the days when fun was fun, donkeys still had horns, rivers were still flowing uphill, the hammer had not yet struck the ground, and I was a cow herdboy in the dusty plains of Manyene, we had a way of starting fights between two people.

We would seek a sandy patch and make four mounts about the size of breasts. We would take two antagonists and to each point out two mounds, "These are your mother's breasts. If anybody kicks them you must fight back."

In Shona culture and, I believe in most other African cultures, insulting one's mother is considered particularly objectionable. You can hurl all kinds of epithets against the individual and be met with unflinching stoicism but the moment you mention their mother all hell would break loose.

In order to show that they were not a coward somebody had to kick the mother's breasts of the rival. If your mother's breasts were kicked, you had to fight for your honour.

That was kid's play, activities meant to pass time while watching scrawny cattle swishing tails and virtually licking the soil in attempts to find bits of grass in the barren overcrowded 'native reserves'. Many bloody noses, swollen eyes and grudges for maybe days would result, but it was all soon forgotten as other rivals emerged and waned with time.

When we used to play our game, we had little but stubborn guys would kick the mother's breasts of older and bigger guys, or who always fought loosing battles when their 'mother's breasts' were kicked by older guys.

In those heady days when I was herding cows, the fights over 'mother's breasts' were instigated by those of us who enjoyed the spectacle of others pointlessly hammering each other. Some of us would run long distances to go fetch sand if there was no sand at the particular spot we wanted the fight to take place. We would gladly take off our shirts and use them as improvised sacks to ferry the sand for the 'breasts'.

In Zimbabwean politics, it seems we are headed for a round of games in the sand. Recently Eddie Cross told us that the MDC have drawn a line in the sand, (Why didn't he make them mounds in the sand and call them breasts. Sounds more interesting). Apparently they are daring Zanu-PF to kick the MDC's 'mother's breasts'. They are promising to visit untold woe on Zanu-PF if it doesn't respect their 'mother's breasts' or line in the sand.

The stage is being set for a no surrender contest. The language of confrontation is already being spun. In the days of my herding cows, there were always little guys who would kick the 'mother's breasts' of much bigger guys in the hope that a elder brother or cousin would join the fight on their side.

The MDC are in the position of these little guys. They are choosing confrontational language when they know very well that there is nothing they can do if Zanu-PF decides to call their bluff, except hope that outsiders will intervene on their behalf.

In the current arrangement, Zanu-PF have the capacity to do whatever they like. They are keeping the MDC as their sheepskin - the covering that gives them legitimacy. There is little chance of the MDC drawing any line in the sand that Zanu-PF are not capable of obliterating in a flash.

Therefore I do not think for the MDC to be making ultimatums is the appropriate strategy for them. They need to be seriously thinking about how to achieve a willing giver willing taker transition in Zimbabwe. Without willingness on the part of Zanu-PF members especially those in the military, there is very little chance that a stable and peaceful transition will be possible.

There MDC's attempts to force a humiliating capitulation out of Zanu-PF haven't worked in the past and are unlikely to work in the near future. Claims by Eddie Cross that the MDC have 'drawn a line in the sand' and will 'dictate the outcome' while not totally luaghable amount to a little more than bravado.

Any strategy which is hinged around the MDC facing down Zanu-PF is unlikely to yield the results that the MDC wants.

Jupiter Punungwe
proud of my Strong Rural Background (I was born, bred and will die a farmer)

A New Constitution Does Not Mean Much in Zimbabwe

Recently there has been a lot of controversy, even drawing in our neighbour South Africa, over whether elections should be held before or after a new constitution is in place.

The constitution is not the key problem. The key problem is changing the political mentality of entitlement. As long as the politicians feel that they are entitled to luxury at the taxpayer's expense we are always going to have problems.

You can take any wonderful recipe, as long as you prepare it with rotten ingridients it won't taste nice. No matter what constitution you have, as long as your politicians are corrupt and dishonest, the country will suffer and decline. At the moment, the entire Zimbabwean political fabric is rotten.

Specimens of honest, diligent and truthful politicians on the Zimbabwean landscape have virtually suffered the same fate as the quagga. Extinct. Zimbabwe could take the Bible and use it as a constitution word for word but with the amount of dishonesty we have, there would still be massive problems.

The current saga with the Constituency Development Funds is a reminder of just how deep our problems are. Several politicians were caught investing in their businesses with money meant for development. Others simply blew it without explanation.

The newspapers are full of stories MPs who are on the run, but not a single one about those who used the money properly. This does not bode well for the rest. We do not know whether they have been investigated and cleared or they are still to be investigated.

So far I have had assurance from only one MP, Eddie Cross that they have been investigated and cleared.

I am also worried that if the process threatens to become too politically costly to the major parties, it will be quietly smothered. While Zanu-PF and the MDC fight each other tooth and nail on most fronts, the tendency has been to quietly cooperate where 'eating' for both is involved.

So far no real big names have been fingered on either side of the political divide. I would be surprised if all the ministers are clean.

That Zimbabwe has some of the best educated politicians in the world does not seem to help. How many governments can boast several professors in cabinet? However, a degree does not amount to common sense. Common sense does not amount to education. In life you need both. It seems most of our politicians have the one or the other but never both. Quite a substantial number have neither common sense nor education.

A new constitution will not instill honesty, education or common sense in our politicians. A vulture with a beak muzzle is still a vulture. At some point it will find a way to get rid of the beak muzzle and start tearing at the flesh again. Dishonest politicians with a good constitution are still dishonest politicians. They will be busy looking for the loopholes to exploit before the ink dries.

Most of those clamouring for a new constitution are themselves not being honest. They merely want to use it as another tool in their arsenal for removing Robert Mugabe. This motive has nothing to do with the long term fortunes of ordinary Zimbabweans, but everything to do with the short term objective of removing Mugabe as a stumbling block to neo-colonialist agendas.

Mugabe's continued tenure is in itself also a problem. It encourages personality culture, is a stumbling block to renewal of ideas, and ensures the recycling of the same political deadwood we have had for three decades.

Mugabe's extended tenure is the foundation upon which the culture of crony protection is built - a foundation which the MDC seems intent to reinforce rather than demolish. Both sides of Zimbabwe's political divide want a new constitution only in as much as it serves their narrow agendas.

The MDC and their backers want to use it as a tool prise the levers of power from Mugabe's hands. Zanu-PF want it in order to dampen or eliminate the criticism that they would face if they manage to stay in power (by whatever means necessary). None of the sides seems prepared to accept a loss.

It is therefore very unlikely that a new constitution will change much in Zimbabwe. I am certain that it won't remove the political fighting that has been the root cause of Zimbabwe's woes. I am therefore certain that to ordinary Zimbabweans, a new constitution won't mean much. They will still be the grass beneath the feet of two political elephants.

Response to Sunday Times article

Recently a certain Dr Greg Mills came back from Zimbabwe with an effervescent prognosis of a $100-billion dollar economy that one of the parties is promising to bring to Zimbabwe. From the tone of his article Dr Mills has to be one of the most gullible people to have ever walked the face of this earth.

This Wednesday a friend of mine, a white Portuguese living in Zimbabwe, slept over at my house on a business trip to Johannesburg.

In our discussions he gave Zimbabwe's economy no chance of fully recovering. According to him the leadership culture is simply not right across the board. According to him the companies left are basically retail operations which buy some stock and if they make any profit 'they spend it on flashy cars and girlfriends.' The politicians are all also trying to use public office to get enough money to buy flashy cars and have multiple girlfriends.

I couldn't agree with him more. Look at the girlfriend stories that have been pursuing Morgan Tsvangirai.

I notice that Dr Mills doesn't even mention corruption as a problem. He seems to more interested in shoring up support for the MDC by mentioning impressive pie-in-the-sky economic figures that the MDC 'hope' to achieve. The mechanics of exactly how these figures will be achieved are not a concern of his. You cannot move a mountain unless you know to dig it up, and Mr Mills is simply telling us 'we will move the mountain to over there.' How?

The facts of what is happening here and now, that the MDC has become part of the corruption problem, are ignored. Mind you corruption is not just about the money being diverted to the wrong pockets. The reason why people seek clandestine means to divert the money is that they will be lacking the right skills and ability to correctly perform the task required.

In the end what happens is that the correct skills are not used for the task meaning that it is doomed to fail even before it starts. When the failure does happen, no correct diagnosis and remedial action will be taken because of the cover up and crony protection that accompanies corruption. There is no way that a corrupt entity is going to achieve impressive economic figures. Zanu-PF taught us that. The MDC already have their toes is Zanu-PF's sandals in terms of corruption. What is left is for them to grab the jackboots.

I do not know whether Dr Mills thinks we Zimbabweans are kids who can be mollified by promises of sweets (Nyarara mwanangu. Baba vachauya nemasweets. Be quiet my child, Dad is going to bring sweets). His mentions of a $100-billion economy amounts to just that. An empty promise, that any sensible person will not make unless they are targeting very gullible people, or people they believe to be very gullible like a toddler.

While he correctly identifies patronage is being one of the problems of Zanu-PF, he doesn't mention that the MDC already suffers from the same cancer with Morgan Tsvangirai accused of having a very large 'kitchen cabinet' by his MDC colleagues. These are people who have no official role in the MDC or in government but claim or seem to derive authority from their mere personal association with the prime minister.

Some are eventually slotted into officials roles, not out of any kind of legitimate requirement, but as a way of ensuring that they benefit from their association with higher ups. These are not the symptoms of a party that has the capability to lead a billion dollar economic recovery. These are the symptoms that we saw and ignored in Zanu-PF to our great peril. Dr Mills is essentially telling us to ignore them in the MDC now.

I hope that we do not all share his gullibility.

Mugabe: Zanu-PF's Old Ox

Those of us who grew up in rural Zimbabwe know what it is like to have an old ox that you trust and love so much. Everytime you inspan oxen to plough the fields, the old ox would be tathered to lead the team. It's age and creaky bones would be ignored.

It's back would be innured to the constant whiplashes to try and get a faster pace out it. Onlookers would wonder, often very loudly, whether the old ox could take another step without dropping dead. But the family, stranded with no other oxen to turn to, would keep prodding the plodding grand old sire into taking a few more steps, no matter how laboured.

Zanu-PF have got their old ox. Weathered by old age, many believing it can't take another step forward. However Zanu-PF, for lack of choice it seems, have tathered their old ox and brought it to the yoke again. They hope to prod it into plodding a few more years in power for them.

Their old ox, its ears inured to the constant whiplashes of criticism assailing it, has risen to the occasion and promised to plod forward a few more years of rule. That the old ox stumbled badly the last time they yoked it, seems relegated to realm of blissful oblivion. The herd of young steers snorting with impatience in the periphery seems ignored.

That the field ahead is littered with stumps that require more pulling power than old bones can muster seems to be totally absent from the party's future vision. They insist that their old ox is actually an old fox - willy and full of the necessary tricks to keep them ruling.

Us outsiders can only look and but wonder how many more steps the family can get out of the old ox. Sometime we pity the old ox, that no young steers seem ready to take the role of furrow leader (forosi). We can see that the ox is now old and tired, but it is the owners who will choose when to let it rest.

The MDC and Zanu-PF are the same.

My long standing argument has always been that the MDC are no better than Zanu-PF because they exhibit the same signs of intolerance, the same signs crony enrichment, the same signs on heavy handedness and the same cluelessness about the true meaning of freedom.

Both parties are full of people who brazenly use threats and insults to intimidate opponents, whether real or perceived. Both parties are full of people who shy away from intelligent discourse in favour of belligerent pronouncements, threatening accusation and a tar-brush approach to criticism.

Many of them exhibit political maturity below that of medieval warlords and pre-colonial African chiefs. Despite all of them making a lot of noise about the constitution, they seem to think their personal word is the supreme law of the country.

How else do you explain a sitting MP, making brazen threats like “Martin Chinyanga Da William, I have fired you from MDC from onwards you are no longer a member of MDCT have nothing to do with us. You can go and petition anywhere you want…I am an MP. I HAVE FIRED YOU”. This person seems to be totally unaware that there is something called due process, and a disciplinary committee.

Like Zanu-PF the MDC also exhibit an astounding level cluelessness about the technical aspects of running an economy. They seem to suffer from the same belief that authority can impose control on economic factors. The only thing authority can do is carefully study the factors and then adapt their own actions to suit the reality.

The size and expense of Zimbabwe's cabinet under Zanu-PF, made even worse under the GNU (Zanu-PF and MDC together), does not suit the reality that Zimbabwe is a country with a struggling economy.

Maybe I am dull stupid or something. Maybe it is because my mind is so simple, that I fail to understand how we can have more than seventy ministers and their deputies - each with several government bought cars - in a country that cannot provide a basic ambulance service in its capital city.

Is it too much of a request upon the powers that be, to ask them to give up some of their cars so that at least a few ambulances can be bought to take people to hospitals. Is it too much of a burden upon the powers that be, to ask them that give up a few of they foreign trips so that we can put just a few more medicines, even if only pain killers, in the cupboards of our clinics.

Dishonest Leadership is Zimbabwe's Biggest Problem

The major problem we have is that our leaders are not honest. They would impose price controls by day and rush to sell on the black-market by night. A classical case was when a woman was found with her boot full of newly printed money. She tried to contact a very close adviser to the reserve bank governor, who later described her as his 'intimate casual girlfriend' or mistress in simple English.

Officials were brazenly using laws and by-laws to loot legitimate businesses. A law imposing price limits would be passed by evening and the following morning price control teams would fan out and confiscate goods from supermarkets accused of overcharging. The same goods would later find their way onto the blackmarket at much much higher prices, with the same officials pocketing the money.

A classical case was the case where companies and organisations were forced to remit of bank their foreign currency in local banks with the promise that it would be kept as foreign currency. On several occasions such organisations would wake up to find that their money had been converted to Zim dollars at the official rate which was a miniscule of the black-market rate.

The Zimdollars given to the people who worked for the money, couldn't buy anything while those who just took the money would now buy luxury cars including umpteen cylinder Barabuses. Recently one such organisation filed a lawsuit to try and recover their money.

The tactics used by the then Zanu-PF only government to manage the economy were heavy handed, devoid of intelligent analysis, and often based upon spurious unscientifically tested assumptions. I see exactly the same kind of ignorant heavy handedness in the current demands that banks bring back money from 'offshore'. The minister now leading the heavy handed charge, Tendai Biti, now belongs to the MDC.

The pattern of lack of scientific study remains the same. The pattern of leaving their own personal benefits untouched and even growing, remains the same. The pattern of jumping at the mote in another's eye while gingerly stepping around the log in one's own eye remains the same.

My long standing opinion is that the difference between Zanu-PF and the MDC is that between a wolf and a jackal. Neither can be trusted with a flock of sheep. Neither can be trusted to run Zimbabwe properly. Neither can be trusted to eradicate corruption.

Unfortunately the landscape of political analysis is monopolised by analysts who don't see beyond party names. The political landscape is full of people who are blind to all other facts except the name of the party. These analysts some of them acclaimed academics endeavour to reduce all political discourse to an Orwellian chant of "so'n'so good, so'n'so bad"

Animal farm is a story about animals who overthrow the leadership of humans and institute a slogan of 'Four legs good, two legs bad'. As the pigs who took over the running of the farm start to enjoy the comforts left behind by humans and learn to walk on their hind legs, the slogan us changed to 'Four legs good, two legs better!'

Before the GNU the opposition airwaves were full of chants of 'MDC good, Mugabe bad." Since the MDC leaders got into government and started to enjoy the wamth and comforts of power the chants have been slowly migrating towards 'Mugabe good, MDC better'. I would rather chant "MDC and Zanu-PF 'same differnce'".

A write up on Wikipedia about Animal Farm rightly says that the novel "portrays corrupt leadership as the flaw in revolution (and not the act of revolution itself), it also shows how potential ignorance and indifference to problems within a revolution could allow horrors to happen"

In Zimbabwe corruption is the grindstone that has been tied around the country's neck. Ignorance has been the scourge that has riven incompetent leadership of key institutions like the Reserve Bank with disastrous consequences. In difference by top leadership whose pockets are not affected, or are actually fattened, by mismanagement of the economy has allowed horrors to be visited upon the masses.

We need responsible government

"................. is not Government that puts food on the table for civil servants." -- Morgan Tsvangirai

It is the responsibility of government to put food on the tables of civil servants. Government is their employer, and government is not a slave running entity. It is the responsibility of every employer who is not a slave runner to provide living wages for his workers. Any caring employer should try and ensure the welfare of their employees is well looked after.

 What is not government's responsibility, is to put multiple cars in the garages of senior politicians and ensure astronomically paying jobs for the cronies and relatives of political leaders.

Right now, the Zimbabwe government is underpaying civil servants because it is spending too much on an over-bloated executive (70 plus ministerial level posts are simply too much!).

On top of that some government arms such as the PM's office are famous for having a very large 'kitchen cabinets'. That is people with no official role in government but just hanging onto the coat tails of appointed leaders in order to make money.

I think Mangosuthu Buthelezi captured the essense of Zimbabwe's problem (and much of Africa) when he said "Too many, and I dare say the overwhelming majority, are trying to make money on account of holding public office, being in politics or exercising public power."

As long as that political culture remains, Africa is going nowhere in terms of development. As long as Zimbabwe's politicians are more worried about making money for themselves first and for their family and friends second, the life of ordinary Zimbabweans is going to be hell.

No all of us are connected to a rich relative or friend. The only chance that we have is through a fair system that allows us to enjoy the fruits of our hard work. A system that takes from us the hard-workers and gives to a few who happen to know somebody high up is never going to work.

We need fairness.

Land Dispute In Zimbabwe's Communal Lands

By Marimo Ronald - Ndinokumbirawo kuti ndibatsirwe neruzhinji kuti ndizive masimba a sabhuku zvichienderana nekutongwa kwemabhuku .Ndiri kugara mubhuku raKahari mudunhu ra chief Chikwaka nyaya irikundishungurudza ndeyekuti sabhuku anandakavakidzana naye anonzi Jemera Chirima anoti avakuda kundibvisa panvimbo yandakasiyiwa nevabereki vangu. vabereki vangu vakatanga kugara mubhuku iri 1949 kusvika parinhasi chinondinetsa ndochokuti vabereki vangu vari vapenyu sabhuku uyu haana kumbotaura zvomuganhu .uye vabereki vangu vakagariswa patsva nachigovanyika ,minda yavo ine madundhunduru. madhomini akavagarisa anononzi Mandhava na Magwenzi . Zvitupa zvavo kusvikira panechangu zvakanyorwa kunzi bhuku Kahari .Chirikundinetsa ndeckuti Zvondonzi ndibve Inzvimbo yaNyamasoka ndoenda kupi nemhuri uye ini ndirikuona kunge Sabhuku uyu arikutengesa nzvimbo saka kupera kwaita kwake ndikokwavekukonzera kuti atsvagurudze zvemiganhu. Vanokwanisa kundipawo mazano ngavandibatsirewo ndashaiwa zano nenyaya iyi.

Translation

By Marimo Ronald - I need help to understand the powers of a headman over the village they preside over. I stay in Kahari village in Chief Chikwaka's area. My problem is that my headman Jemera Chirima wants to evict me from the home I inherited from my parents. My parents moved to this village in 1949. My parents were allocated the land by Chigovanyika and the agricultural demonstrators who demarcated the land are Mandhava and Magwenzi.  While my parents were alive the headman never mentioned anything about boundaries. My national identification card and those of my parents state that we come from Kahari village. My problem is that I am now being asked to move away and allow Nyamasoka to move in. Where do I go with my family. I thing the headman has been accepting money to allocate land. Now he has run out of land in his jurisdiction, he wants to evict me. I need your help because I am at my wits' end.

http://www.facebook.com/groups/ziffe/permalink/244965172249007/

Your problem illustrates one of the problems left behind by colonialists and not addressed at all by subsequent land reform programs. In terms of the law neither you nor the Sabhuku owns the land. In the early colonial days communal land was called the Queen's Land. Native reserves were created by colonial state on the Queen's Land. In other words the land legally belonged to the Queen and natives were only allowed to stay there upon the Queen's grace.

As you can see the native residents were not owners of the land and if the Queen (upon the recommendation of the colonial government) decided to use the land for something else, they could not take her to court. This was designed to make it easy to evict the natives if the land was allocated to whites as happened with the Tangwena people of Gairezi.

After Ian Smith's UDI the land became Tribal Trust Lands. The state took over ownership from the Queen (since Ian Smith was unilaterally declaring independence from the Queen ruled Great Britain). However the people living on the land were still not given formal title to the land.

After independence the land was rechristened Communal Lands but was still left in the ownership of the state. The residents of communal lands still do not have formal title to the land.

When white farmers were evicted, most of them took the state to court. That is because they have formal title (registered ownership) of the land (commonly referred to as title deeds or deed of grant). On the other hand people like the Tangwena and Chiadzwa people had no recourse to the law because they had no registered title to the land they called their homes. Unfortunately this lack of registered deed of grant or lease, applies to all people in communal lands (i.e. former native reserves (maruzevha) and communalised resettlements (minda mirefu)).

A deed of grant establishes the fact of who owns what land and the boundaries of the land. If you have no such record, the court has to rely of the word of witnesses and then it becomes your word against the Sabhuku's and any other witnesses either of you might call before the court. Even then the rights that both of you enjoy are less than those of a registered title holder. The colonial system deliberately left natives without adequate rights and protection.

I am not aware of any cases involving a traditional leader and a tenant that have been taken to court, so I do not know if there is a legal precedent to your case. Disputes such as the Tangwena case and the Chiadzwa case have been disputes between the state and occupants of communal lands.

In both cases what happened has depended on the political mood of the moment. As such their fate has been entirely at the whim of politicians. If the politics of the day is in your favour then good for you, but if things go the other way then you are virtually without legal protection.

In today's terms it may boil down to whether you are a Zanu-PF member or an MDC member. Being neutral sometimes doesn't help because each group then accuses you of belonging to the other.

I do not want to lie to you and say that I know the exact solution to your problem. The best option is to maintain good relations with your neighbours such as the sabhuku, if that is possible, so that you avoid giving each other problems.

The second option is to simply stay put and do nothing. The Sabhuku does not have the legal authority to evict you. But remember this won't stop him from using illegal violence against you. You should carefully consider your safety before taking this route.

Another option is to try and use traditional channels. You can take your case to the chief of your area. The chief can then make a determination. Traditionally the chief's authority is above that of the Sabhuku. However it is very likely the Sabhuku will bear a grudge against you for a long time and could find other ways of causing you trouble in future.

Lastly you can explore the idea of obtaining a peace order against the Sabhuku and others disturbing your peace. This affords you protection in terms of state law, provided the law is professionally and impartially enforced. I would also suggest that you approach Ministry of Lands and/or Ministry of Local Government officials in your district and obtain their opinion. They are the groups most likely to have dealt with similar cases in the past.

But let me stress the best way to solve any dispute is to avoid it. Therefore the best option would be to maintain good relations with your neighbours and avoid the dispute in the first place. That would mean negotiating your way out of the predicament by talking to the Sabhuku. For matters to come to this point, there must be something you and him are disagreeing about which you havent't mentioned. Pamwe makamitisirana vana kana kutorerana vakadzi (nyangwe vekubhawa).

You know your own circumstances better than I do so at the end of the day everything depends on your wise judgement. Make your decisions very carefully because this matter can affect you for the rest of your life.

Why we need a small lean government

Right now in Zimbabwe we have a situation were government officials and ministers have several cars bought by the taxpayer. The normal rule with official cars is they should be driven by the person to whom it is allocated or when that person is a passenger.

Therefore an official has no need for more than one car because they cannot ride in more than one car. Zimbabwean officials have multiple cars just for the sake of status, not because they need them.

A bloated, extravagant and expensive top
hierarchy of government is a waste of money.

At the same time ordinary people are suffering from lack of simple infrastructure and services. People have to take each other to hospital in scotch carts and wheelbarrows. Yet the money that is used to buy extra status symbol cars for officials could be used to buy simple ambulances and enough for every district.

A small efficient top hierarchy will free up money
to provide services to the people.

As mentioned earlier each official only NEEDS one car. Any special purpose vehicles should be pool cars.

I do not buy the argument that you need big 4x4s because the roads in most of the constituencies are bad and cannot be accessed with ordinary cars. Fix the roads so that you can go there with ordinary cars. A car for an official is only used by that official, whereas a road is used by thousands of people.

There is something called efficiency. Isn't it more efficient to spend money for the direct benefit of more people than for the benefit of one person.

The money saved from buying less and cheaper cars for officials can be used to provide sorely needed services. It can also be used to provide better salaries for underpaid civil servants.

Save Zimbabwe: What needs to be done.

I am always talking about what others are NOT doing right in running Zimbabwe. Well that is what we armchair critics do - criticize from the comfort of our armchairs. We see all the wrong things but never really do anything ourselves.

What would I do if I were ever to run Zimbabwe.

1. Reduce the size of the gravy train by
• Reducing the number of executive posts. A maximum of sixteen ministers and no deputies. Upgrade the perm secs so that they can act as deputies if necessary.
• One minister one car policy. This habit of ministers having a spare car to take the poodle to the vet while Zimbabweans take each other to hospital in wheelbarrows and scotchcarts must stop.
• No luxuries at taxpayer's expense. This habit of ministers trying to outspend Bill Gates, Philip Chiyangwa, Carlos Slim, Warren Buffet and all the other billionaires combined, but using taxpayers money must stop. For example the one car above should be a locally assembled reasonable car like a Mazda 3 or Mazda 6 at most, not an umpteen cylinder Barabus. This policy would apply to every public or public linked post including mayors and parastatal managers.
• Have two strong anti-corruption units. One should be independent and directly linked to the judiciary and the other should be supervised by the president. The first should be to prosecute offenders and the second should be to gather intelligence on corrupt activities.
2. Zimbabwe first
• Look inside. The idea of feeding your chickens to mongooses in order to spite eagles means you still loose your chickens. Haupi hukwana kuhovo nekuti wasvotwa negondo. In my books any policy that says look elsewhere is not right. You must look inside Zimbabwe first. If we really have to look elsewhere then our neighbours must have first priority. They are the ones who take much of the strain in times of our troubles. During the liberation war Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana took most of the refugees from the then Rhodesia. They even suffered direct military attacks on their soil but they stood by us. Right now in a time of economic mismanagement largely of our own making, it is South Africa which is even facing threats of civil unrest by its own citizens because of our large numbers there.
• We should not be using taxpayers money to fund expensive lifestyles and foreign education for public officials' children. Taxpayers money should go torwards funding and improving infrastructure in Zimbabwe. Sending the children of officials to get foreign education is not even necessary. They only do it for bragging rights and status symbol power ('Wangu mwana ari kuLondon. Akatomboona Queen vachipfuura' as if seeing the queen passing is anything special). We have the best education ethos in the world. Some of us are 100% Zimbabwean educated and are among the best at what we do. There is no reason why the children of officials should not get a good education in Zimbabwe if they are bright.
3. Pay public workers well
• This is necessary to stop corruption and improve efficiency. I am not saying we should make civil servants millionaires. However every civil servant should be able to pay off a car over six years, pay off a house over 20 years while sending three children to good public schools. Civil servants should not have to supplement their salaries by selling peanuts at work. In the past it was automatic that teachers, nurses and police officers would be well to do. Now vegetable vendors are doing better. That should never be the case.
4. Reduce taxes and educate people on why they need to pay taxes.
• Right now everybody thinks that you pay taxes in order to make ministers rich (which is practically true in the current corrupt environment) or that government money is inexhaustible. Government money comes from taxpayers pockets and every person whose pocket ever runs out of money should know that the same applies to government. If taxpayers don't have money the government won't have money. Taxes are levied to fund common services such as roads, schools, hospitals and justice delivery. They are not levied to enrich ministers.
• Secondly it is better to collect low taxes from more people than to collect very high taxes from those few that you can catch which is what is happening in Zimbabwe now.
5. Close off opportunities for corruption by ensuring efficient service delivery
• People pay bribes because they are faced with inefficient opaque service delivery. If you want a passport and you do not know when it will be delivered chances are that you will even offer the bribe to get it in a reasonable time frame. However if you know that my passport will come after 4 weeks without fail you can wait.
• One of the reasons why service delivery is so inefficient is that supervision ranges from weak to non-existent, or the managers themselves are corrupt.
• The other is plain laziness. Therefore you need practical methods to monitor and evaluate service delivery. You need indicators that can be reliably measured and monitored. In these days of computer technology it is very easy to attach a bar code to a form and monitor its progress in great detail.
6. Educate stakeholders on their rights and duties
• The only way institutions can function correctly is if the people (not just the media who are usually just as corrupt, or more so, as the other institutions) can effectively police them as well as make correctly informed choices when filling up those institutions.
• Zimbabwe needs a subject called Democracy and Development Studies as part of the school curriculum. This will educate and sensitize people from a young age on how to evaluate the development needs of their communities as well as how to select key implementors of the development plans.
• Hopefully this will minimize instances of the electorate being taken for a ride by empty or impractical promises from politicians.

Notice that I haven't mentioned any party names or people's name to exclude or include. I haven't said anything along the lines 'VaNhingirikiri chete chete' or 'Only Nhingirikiri has the brandpower to challenge VaNhingirikiri'. I have laid out a set of ideas that any Zimbabwean should be able to take and use to make Zimbabwe right. The only requirement is the the person should be honest, diligent, hardworking, knowledgeable and tough enough to stick to his principles. He should also genuinely care about all the people in the country not just a particular racial or ethnic group.

Believe me there is going to be a lot of noise from the people who will loose the benefit and opportunity to slavish off the taxpayers. Kana uchidzinga bere pambudzi yako yarabata rinotombokuhon'era chete. If you are chasing a hyena away from your goat it will growl at you.

Notice also that I also haven't mentioned transient issues like land reform and indigenisation. I have concentrated in what I consider core principles that need to be diligently pursued forever. That does not mean I do not consider transient issues important. They are issues that can be tackled in a generation and they need to be tackled this generation. If they are tackled properly, they should soon be forgotten as major political issues. This also need to be tackled in conjunction with other core policies. For example it is plain idiocy to give people agricultural land and in the same sweep ban the free trade of agricultural commodities. If you don't want people to freely market their produce what are you giving them land for in the first place!

Also have some selection criteria that recognizes people with appropriate skills. Give preference to people with agricultural qualifications. I do not believe the absolute bullshit that to be good farmer someone has to be a certain race. Whites had well capitalised agricultural operations because of past racial preferential treatment, but we do know that they started off under-capitalised as well, which is why they had to resort to forced labour (chibharo) to kick-start their agricultural operations. It is to be expected that those being given equal opportunity on the land now will start off undercapitalised, but with time their capitalisation levels will also improve. Giving preference to people with agricultural qualification will speed up the process though it does not necessarily eliminate it altogether.

Indeginisation as well should not be about taking over existing operations but spreading opportunities to previously disadvantaged groups. Rather than take over National Foods it is much better for the government to say it will buy say its rations for soldiers from a company with 51 percent black ownership. Right now our government would rather import rice noodles from China and give them to soldiers who grew up eating sadza, just because it wants to 'Look East'.

In mining rather than pushing in a few black individuals into the ownership structures make sure the community from whose land the minerals are being extracted benefits. If a mine is in Chivi district then give a percentage to Chivi District Council a percentage to Masvingo Province and a percentage to national coffers. Methods of making sure the community benefits have to be studied and fine tuned. You could work the benefits into the taxation model but then you would have to deal with tax evasion and plain cheating by operators. You could demand fixed royalties but then you would also run the risk of demanding too much such that operations become unprofitable or too little to make any difference to the status quo. It is a subject that needs further careful thinking and study.

Ownership of mining concessions should also be tallied with short to medium term investment plans on the concession concerned. The aim is to prevent hoarding of concessions as well as create more investment flow. Mining concessions should also be linked to the building of local processing plants. Companies the build refineries and purifiers locally should be given extra benefits and preference to those who export almost unprocessed rock.

We also need to bring an end the culture of entitlement that pervades our leadership. Right now most of our leaders feel that they are entitled to luxury at our expense. Yet they do not seem to be aware that it is us the people who are entitled to service delivery from them. We used to complain about whites travelling with their dogs in the comfort of the cabin while workers and people were dumped in the windswept 'pan'.

The new elite won't even allow people near the car. In many cases the car is not even being driven, it just parked in the garage as a status symbol. 'Manje Benz yangu iri kumba uku inomhanya iyoyo. Kungoti gumbo pfaa mbichana, yabva yabata 240km/h one time.' are typical boring boasts we are frequently subjected to.

It is not even legal to drive at 240km/h yet you find people actually boasting about it.

I could write a book about what needs to be done for Zimbabwe. And I can guarantee you that I can write a thousand page book with mentioning a single party or politician as I have done here. Like I always say, it is not the parties or their leaders who matter, it s the principles.

If something has go large horns, no matter what kind of cloth you look for, you can't wrap it up nicely. Get rid of the horns before looking for the cloth. Get the principles right before talking about a leader.