In the 11 months between August 2008 and July of last year, nearly 100,000 Zimbabweans came down with cholera in the first countrywide epidemic of the disease in modern history. Previous outbreaks in Zimbabwe, which have occurred annually since 2003, had affected only pockets of the country. This time, cholera was everywhere. Corpses filled the streets and hospital beds. In some districts early in the crisis, half of those infected died.

It was a tragedy in every way — not least because the worst might have been prevented. Months before the initial outbreak exploded into a full-blown epidemic, Georges Tadonki, who headed the United Nations’ humanitarian office in Zimbabwe at the time, says he warned his superiors of the severe risk, suggesting to the U.N. country director, Agostinho Zacarias, that 30,000 cases or more were possible. But Zacarias stifled that warning, Tadonki claims.

“He forced us to put the figure very low,” Tadonki told Foreign Policy in an exclusive interview. “Because the government did not accept that there was cholera, the United Nations was forced to align with that position.” Both a high-level official from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) who worked on the humanitarian response and an independent analyst, Ed Schenkenberg van Mierop, confirmed that Tadonki had warned of a catastrophic outbreak.

And indeed, a Nov. 19, 2008, U.N. appeal for aid, issued months after the cholera epidemic began, predicted just 2,000 cholera cases. Just two months later, the death toll alone had already reached that number. In all, more than 4,000 people died between August 2008 and July 2009, and roughly 98,600 people had caught the disease. The true figures might be even higher.

“It was very clear that no action was taken” as the outbreak became apparent, Schenkenberg said. “That is what I would call criminal neglect on the part of the U.N.”

Although some facts are in dispute, Tadonki’s story highlights the perils of U.N. engagement in authoritarian states such as Zimbabwe, from the moral choices about engaging with a country in crisis to the pitfalls of navigating “elections” in a place where they are neither free nor fair after three decades of dictatorial rule by Robert Mugabe. In fact, Tadonki says he was at war with his superiors not only about cholera, but also about the United Nations’ preparedness for an election in Zimbabwe that swiftly turned violent.

Tadonki, the former head of the Zimbabwe branch of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), was fired at the height of the cholera crisis in early January 2009 — in part, he says, because of the warnings he raised. He has appealed his termination, and his case will be heard before a U.N. dispute tribunal in Nairobi, Kenya, on Feb. 23. This FP report is based on more than 200 pages of confidential U.N. documents, including emails and investigations; interviews with nearly a dozen U.N. and government officials, NGOs, and independent analysts; and a lengthy telephone interview with Tadonki.

None of Tadonki’s superiors at the United Nations who were contacted for this article, including Zacarias, would comment on the record. One senior U.N. official, who asked for anonymity because no disclosures could be made to support OCHA while litigation is ongoing, said, “We’re going to just have to take it on the chin.” Some U.N. officials contested Tadonki’s allegations, including a former U.N. agency head who said that “the actual size of the cholera outbreak was larger than anyone (including Tadonki) had forecasted.” And some claimed Tadonki’s clash with Zacarias was due to poor performance, which is cited in U.N. internal reports as the reason for his firing, not his efforts to sound the alarm.

Tadonki, a Cameroonian doctorate-holder with a specialty in mapping and a decade-long history with the United Nations, had arrived in Harare on March 25, 2008, at a fraught moment in Zimbabwe’s history. Once hailed as a model African state, the country had been hurtling toward disaster over the past several years, with an inflation rate rising to the billions of percentage points, food shortages pushing up incidences of malnutrition, and thousands of refugees and migrants spilling across the border into neighboring South Africa.

It was also a particularly challenging time for the U.N. mission there, which included a handful of U.N. agencies, in addition to OCHA, that worked hand in hand with international and local NGOs. Mugabe, who denied his country was in crisis, took issue with OCHA, whose mission was to communicate information about the humanitarian situation. The president and his ruling ZANU-PF party were particularly upset, Tadonki says, because of the agency’s participation in a 2005 U.N. report documenting the forced displacement of an estimated 700,000 Zimbabweans at the government’s behest.

Zacarias, the country director at the time, holds a political science doctorate from the London School of Economics and was once a member of FRELIMO, the former guerrilla movement in Mozambique. He arrived in Zimbabwe three years before Tadonki in March 2005, after two previous U.N. posts, one in Angola and later as special advisor on Africa to the secretary-general.

Tadonki, opposition figures, and some NGO officials raised questions about the proximity of Zacarias to Mugabe’s political party in interviews with FP. “He was certainly perceived as someone who was sympathetic to ZANU-PF,” one MDC official told FP. But some U.N. officials said they saw Zacarias as a classic, old-school African diplomat who thought he could achieve more by maintaining good relations and access to the government.

As both humanitarian and country coordinator, Zacarias faced two conflicting mandates: to ensure that humanitarian aid was delivered in a neutral, unpoliticized way, while also working with Mugabe’s regime to coordinate an approach to developing the country. One senior U.N. official summed up the dilemma this way: “The U.N. has to work with the government. Clearly, we work in a lot of countries where the government can make it very challenging. But should we say forget it? Or stay and try to help?… To be the resident coordinator in some of these countries is not an easy task; you have to deal with the consequences of the actions of those regimes, but in a way that those regimes don’t take for granted that you’ll be there to clean up.”

Unlike Zacarias, Tadonki was in Zimbabwe entirely in a humanitarian capacity, and the two men soon clashed. A dozen emails exchanged between Tadonki, Zacarias, members of the U.N. country team at the time, and some local NGO leaders, and later seen by FP, make it clear that their conflict was visible and pronounced.

“While my job as Head of OCHA Zimbabwe is not easy, it seems to me that you have made it the most difficult job on Earth,” a particularly pointed Sept. 18, 2008, email from Tadonki reads. “It is not clear to me what triggered this astonishing, unexpected and unwarranted outburst,” Zacarias responded nine hours later, carefully pushing back against Tadonki’s complaints.

Not long after his March 2008 arrival, Tadonki says, he updated the country’s contingency plan, a document that every country team produces to prepare for crises (released in final form here), to include political risk, a factor that had been excluded before. “The U.N. chief in country had been forcing agencies in Zimbabwe to say that Zimbabwe was on the same footing as Lesotho — telling us that the agriculture is troubling because there is no rain, that the education is failing because of a lack of resources from taxes,” Tadonki recalled. In his eyes, however, the causes were political: Land seizures were rendering agriculture unproductive, and repression was hitting every sector hard. (Zacarias’s annual report for 2008 downplays the government’s role in the humanitarian crisis and doesn’t mention that the Mugabe regime refused to acknowledge the cholera epidemic until December.)

Then, on April 7, 2008, Tadonki sent what’s known as an “early warning assessment” to the head of OCHA, U.N. Undersecretary-General John Holmes. The warning was brutally frank. It declared that Zimbabwe’s U.N. country team was “not prepared to face the consequences of an emergency silently in the making” and cited “hesitations of the U.N. in responding to acts of political violence,” warning that the coming months would see “dire consequences.” Such strong words directed at the country team also represented a direct attack on Zacarias.

Tadonki sent his assessment directly to New York, but tensions escalated in Harare on May 14, 2008, after someone leaked Zacarias a copy of the document. In a meeting of fellow humanitarian workers, Zacarias confronted and admonished him for reporting that the United Nations was unprepared for a calamitous humanitarian situation.

The following week, a joint World Food Program, UNICEF, and OCHA regional mission arrived in Zimbabwe, staying from May 19 to 21. According to a draft of the mission’s report seen by FP, the mission concluded that “the U.N. and NGOs are in a ‘reactive’ mode.” It also recommended that Tadonki’s agency be given more freedom to operate.

By then, however, the election violence was well under way. After the disputed first-round poll on March 29, Mugabe’s government denied the MDC’s claims of victory and doubled down on repression. On June 4, the government banned all humanitarian workers from moving throughout the country in the days before the June 27 runoff vote.

Tadonki started receiving reports of desperation. “I have pictures of people with their hands crushed. In Zimbabwe you vote with your finger — [so government thugs] would say, ‘In June, we will see which finger you use to vote against Mugabe,’” he recalled. State-orchestrated violence left “at least 36 dead; hundreds tortured; thousands beaten; and tens of thousands deprived of food or displaced,” according to Jon Elliott of Human Rights Watch.

“We are responsible for those deaths,” Tadonki said. “If the United Nations had told Mugabe, ‘We know what you are planning,’ we wouldn’t have seen it…. We all sat [in Harare] and knew that in the countryside, 60 percent of Zimbabweans were being killed or raped.” No high-level U.N. statements regarding the election violence or the humanitarian ban were made until June, after both were already under way.

One former agency head said that the whole country team, not just OCHA, was well aware of the coming election violence and prepared for “the worst case scenario [of] the possibility of 250,000 to 300,000 people fleeing the violence by crossing the border to neighboring countries,” he told FP by email. “A regional contingency plan was established to be able to respond in the event this would happen. Mr Tadonki’s scenarios did not exceed these projections.”

On top of the election violence, Zimbabwe had a nascent epidemic on its hands, and the tension between Tadonki and Zacarias continued to build over the summer as the first cholera cases began coming in. Frustrated by his inability to make headway within the U.N. system, Tadonki shared NGO figures on the burgeoning epidemic with the Ministry of Welfare, without the NGOs’ consent, first in June and again in October.

“This led to a crisis of confidence between the NGOs and head of OCHA, of course,” said Schenkenberg, who had come to Zimbabwe in 2008 to investigate the cholera situation. But the affair, according to Schenkenberg, also “gave Zacarias a pretext to try to get rid of [Tadonki].” In a letter dated July 7, 2008, two NGO leaders expressed concern about Tadonki, claiming they were losing confidence in his leadership. Schenkenberg’s office, an organization that represents NGOs worldwide, saw the letter and sent him to Harare to investigate. “OCHA was not the smartest in terms of sharing without consultation, but the real problem was the lack of action on part of [Zacarias],” Schenkenberg said.

Over the summer and into the fall, the cholera epidemic exploded, killing Zimbabweans at an alarming clip. Cholera epidemics in Africa have been known to edge up on 2 to 3 percent mortality rates at their worst. But in Zimbabwe, rates rose well over 5 percent — five times the rate cholera epidemics should yield if they are tackled with simple, readily available treatments, according to international guidelines. Meanwhile, the Mugabe government denied there was even a cholera outbreak until December 2008.

Some former U.N. agency heads from Zimbabwe highlighted Zacarias’s accomplishments as an interlocutor with the government. For example, beginning in January 2008, the government imposed a ban on paying partner organizations in dollars at a time when the Zimbabwean currency was essentially worthless due to the massive hyperinflation. This made it near impossible to procure or to pay distributors of aid. But on Nov. 12, 2008, those restrictions at last ended, thanks to “intense negotiations lead by the UN Resident Coordinator [Zacarias], with support from UNICEF,” one former agency head noted in an email.

Other NGO and U.N. colleagues of Tadonki defend their response, saying that they found ways to work with the government to bring in medical aid. Custodia Mandlhate, a World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Harare, said in an email that the response had been delayed, but that she, Zacarias, and the country head of UNICEF had finally “decided to go and see the minister of health … and convinced him to declare cholera an emergency.”

Schenkenberg, however, remembers it differently. The WHO, he said, which is supposed to lead the health response, “didn’t have its first meeting [to begin coordinating operations] until the first week of December” — after the government had already declared the cholera emergency. Nor had Zacarias pushed the WHO to do so, according to Schenkenberg.

By January 2009, Tadonki was gone. Assistant U.N. Secretary-General Catherine Bragg, who terminated Tadonki’s contract, cited concerns about a poor performance review and relations with donors in his dismissal notice, according to U.N. internal reports. A November 2008 OCHA mission concluded that Tadonki lacked leadership skills and had polarized the OCHA office.

One donor, however, wrote in a Jan. 19, 2009, email to Bragg, “As a donor, I can tell you that it is not the right time to leave a such important office during this time of humanitarian crisis including cholera, without a head. The gap that this may create while you are looking for someone else will be huge…. I can speak for other donors if I say that since the cholera breakout, we have been receiving regular daily and weekly reports from OCHA which have been very useful.” Bragg declined to comment because of the ongoing litigation.

Tadonki’s dismissal case will be heard starting Tuesday in Nairobi.

FP

There was complete mayhem in Epworth on Sunday during an MDC rally when ZANU PF supporters in a three-vehicle convoy allegedly drove at the crowd forcing them to scatter, resulting in a mass brawl that left many injured.

The provocation has been condemned by the MDC who insisted on Tuesday that the violence was sparked by the ZANU PF supporters who tried to disrupt their rally.

The state controlled Herald reported that six ZANU PF youths were severely injured during the Epworth disturbances, saying the incident ‘dampened the ongoing national healing and reconciliation efforts.’ Three of the ZANU PF supporters injured in the melee have reportedly been admitted to Parirenyatwa hospital.

MDC-T spokesman for Harare province Willas Madzimure told SW Radio Africa that ZANU PF supporters were to blame for the violence, which erupted after they tried to stop a rally that had been authorised by the police.

“If anyone dares to check the facts, they will find out that we (MDC) had permission to hold a rally in Epworth on Sunday from the police. Therefore, we were left baffled when ZANU PF supporters came to our rally in three 4X4 vehicles with the intention of intimidating the crowd. This was gross provocation and their actions sparked all the disturbances. A lot of our supporters were injured when they were attacked during the melee,” Madzimure said.

The MDC-T MP for Kambuzuma said they had information that ZANU PF chairman for Harare province Amos Midzi was behind the attempts to block the MDC rally.

“In this day and age it is very easy to trace the number plates of vehicles used in clandestine operations. We also know that the group that came to disrupt our rally were members of the Mbare based Chipangano group. They were picked up from Mbare to come and cause mayhem in Epworth and we know that Midzi was behind all that,” added Madzimure.

SW Radio Africa

SW Radio Africa Hot Seat Programme: Part 2: Broadcast: February 19, 2010

VIOLET GONDA: Welcome to the final part of the debate on the new Empowerment and Indigenisation regulations recently passed by the government.  My guests are businessman Mutumwa Mawere, economist Daniel Ndlela, the President of the Affirmative Action Group Supa Mandiwanzira and journalist Peta Thornycroft. Supa picks up from where the discussion ended last week with Mutumwa saying Zimbabwe needs to generate employment and encourage the masses of people who left the country to return – instead of introducing legislation that will add a significant burden to established businesses.

SUPA MANDIWANZIRA:  First of all I don’t buy this argument that Zimbabweans are desperate to be empowered by jobs. I think that as Zimbabweans we have come a long way as a people to realise that jobs will not take us anywhere, we now must own our own resources and then we must control our own destiny. I do not speak on behalf of the Zimbabwe government or any other party except the Affirmative Action Group which represents the interests of those that want to get into the mainstream of the economy and not be relegated in very Mickey Mouse kind of businesses like selling at flea markets and stuff like that.

Let me tell you Violet, the fact of the matter is this, that for instance I’m aware that at Kamativi Tin Mine a lot of that tin was mined and was used to make arms during the Second World War but I can tell you that today if you go to Kamativi you will see some of the poorest of Zimbabweans. Why has that happened? It is simply because there was nobody else in the company that exploited those resources who was Zimbabwean or who was from Kamativi – who ensured that post this mine we will eventually have another life that is supported by other infrastructure that we have to build now, and we have many examples.

I’ll not mention a platinum, a multi-national company that operates in Zimbabwe that has got platinum concessions. When a year or two ago the Zimbabwe government, before the inclusive government, wanted to take a certain chunk of that platinum so they could do a trade deal with China. That company requested that they be paid 150 million US dollars and this is an asset that they obtained simply by getting a Mining Commissioner’s stamp. They never spent a cent in terms of that asset. If they spent a cent, it was merely on exploration, which of course they’ve already recovered by the mining operations they’ve been undertaking. But to give up a certain portion of their platinum mining block, which they were not utilising, they wanted 150 million US dollars.

Now our argument, which is supported by this Law and Regulation, is that you must now allow the indigenous people to be part of the ownership, to have 51% and they determine how these things are happening and what is remaining in the country. We have nothing to show for all the gold, all the silver, and all the nickel that has been exploited out of this country by the multi-nationals. If you drive to some of these mines, and I’m talking from practical experience, the roads are so terrible and yet significant resources have been exploited.

So at the end of the day, we must acknowledge that it is important to have significant ownership of businesses in Zimbabwe especially some of these that relate to exploiting our natural resources in the hands of the locals. The Zimbabweans in the Diaspora, three million of them as Mutumwa is saying, they will need to come back here, not to come and be employed again. They’ve been employed elsewhere, they’ve worked hard enough, they must now come and own businesses, this is their opportunity. And of all things, I have not heard any one foreign investor issue a statement that this is not good. What I’ve heard are Zimbabweans who purport to represent foreign investors who say this will scare away investment. Let the foreign investors speak for themselves. As far as we are concerned as the AAG, this is fantastic, this is the best thing that has ever happened after Independence in 1980.

GONDA: I’d like to…

PETA THORNYCROFT:  Well actually…

GONDA: Yes Peta?

THORNYCROFT: Sorry Violet, we got a foreign investor, Rio Tinto, we interviewed them in London about these regulations and I know that they’ve been talking about a massive expansion, the bottom line on that expansion is an initial investment of 200 million because it is quite a small mine and this certainly frightened them off, certainly.

MANDIWANZIRA: Peta, Peta, I want you to mark my words. Rio Tinto will remain in this country, Rio Tinto will remain to invest in that 200 million even under the current circumstances because we have an asset that they want – because it’s an asset they will make profit out of. I can tell you, even at the height of Zimbabwe’s problems, companies like Zimplats were announcing putting 400 million dollars into this market. They shrugged off resistance by foreign governments to say don’t go into Zimbabwe; they simply said we are doing business. Now if it makes sense for Rio Tinto or for Zimplats, for any other to say I will still go into Zimbabwe, I can sell my 51% at market value and still continue to make money, they will stay in this market and mark my words – they are going to stay in this market.

GONDA: Peta?

THORNYCROFT: There was a very long struggle between Zimplats and Gideon Gono at the Reserve Bank, a long struggle; it went over about three years. As far as I can remember, when they were being summoned to the 22nd floor of the RBZ, where they were being told that they now had to bank locally, when they had a signed agreement of 20 years previously – signed by the then Minister Edison Zvobgo, to allow them to have their off shore banking because they needed to spend these billions of dollars on imports.

They couldn’t have it in Zimbabwe because nobody trusted putting your money in Zimbabwe.  There were years of those struggles. It ended up OK, from what I gather, and whenever we talk about mining we just need to remember that there is enormous money that has to be invested in mining over a certain payback time over some years, and it takes years and years. So for a company to go and invest it has to be extremely sure and you can see what’s happened in Katanga in the last couple of years. You had an enormous boom, it was also to do with the prices – but as they got less and less sure about more and more government taking over percentage of their companies, you’ve now reduced from about 70 mining companies operational in Katanga, say three years ago when I was going there, down to two or three that have survived. And those are the very biggest in the world and they’re extremely worried.

MANDIWANZIRA: Violet, let me tell you, if you speak to Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister today, he will tell you that he is not happy at all that the mining industry in this country contributes only 4% to Gross Domestic Product but if you look at the kind of profits they are making, you cannot correlate the two. That’s one; Secondly Peta helps my argument. You have international companies, multi-nationals operating in Zimbabwe, 100% foreign owned, they choose to bank their money outside Zimbabwe so even where they were banking locally and others can borrow that money to sustain their business so we can deal with the liquidity crisis in this country, they choose to bank this money in foreign banks because they don’t trust this market but they trust taking out the assets of Zimbabweans.

And that is where we are saying it is absolutely wrong for you to come and exploit, even just ensuring that the Zimbabwean banks benefit from your deposits and continue to do business to lend and everything, you still don’t even want to do that, you want to bank that money in foreign banks which do not benefit anyone, so we are simply saying if you… (interrupted)

MANDIWANZIRA:  …have indigenous people owning these businesses, 51%. Decisions will be made who benefit not just themselves but Zimbabweans at large.

THORNYCROFT: Supa, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe over the last five years has been dipping itself into peoples’ foreign currency accounts, not individuals but companies, they’ve been dipping into foreign currency accounts and helping themselves to it and then using it in the market for whatever reason and those companies haven’t got payback. Think of what happened to the gold mines in the last five years, the few that survived. The problem is Zimbabwe has a very bad record, it’s a difficult time for any investment anywhere in the world today, and its past record over say the last five, it’s going to have to repair that record because the Reserve Bank in this country… (interrupted)

MANDIWANZIRA: That’s quite patronising, that’s quite patronising…

MUTUMWA MAWERE: But…

MANDIWANZIRA: …The fact of the matter is that if you’re operating in Zimbabwe, and you don’t trust the environment, you might as well not be there. You cannot be coming into my house and you want to have a meal in my house and say but I don’t trust you. So don’t come and have that meal in the house in the first place. We have an asset… (interrupted)

THORNYCROFT: They were there already.

MANDIWANZIRA:  …you can go anywhere in the world and look for a country that has got the second largest proven resources of platinum, you will not find it, you will end up coming back to Zimbabwe. We are simply saying those benefits must accrue to the local people. I do not disagree that there were problems at the Reserve Bank, there were problems in the economy but I do not think that these dispensations for banking outside were given by Gono, I do not think that these dispensations existed only in the last five years, they have existed for a very long, long time and we are saying it must stop. What was the reason that was given for banking money outside, well they didn’t trust the exchange rate, they didn’t trust that their money would be safe, well we have an inclusive government here that has assured everyone that’s it’s no longer business as usual, it’s now business unusual. So why don’t we bring back that money at least it circulates within the Zimbabwe banking industry? Zimplats… (interrupted)

THORNYCROFT: Because the inclusive government has stalled.

MANDIWANZIRA: … makes more than 20 million US dollars a month. If that money was banked in the local banking system, it will make a difference.

GONDA: Mutumwa, you wanted to come in?

MAWERE: Yes, I think my companies were taken over by State action in 2004; today you read that at the companies right now workers can’t even go underground because water level is rising, bills have not been paid. In Zambia where I had an involvement in the copper mines, the examples are clear of what happened in Zambia. The copper remained underground but it couldn’t be extracted because of policies that inhibit investment. And when you talk of indigenous, I’m not too sure whether Supa is listening to his own voice or he’s talking as a businessman because any businessman would know that money cannot stay in a bad relationship.

People are, like the human spirit, the people who leave Zimbabwe today are not invited by the people who host them, they find their own way. Good countries don’t have to do anything. When the Berlin Wall fell, the traffic, the human traffic indicated where people’s preference were. Some people want to swim to freedom and that human spirit, if you are banking it’s the same thing, it’s about confidence.

If Zimbabwe does what it needs to do you don’t have to invite anyone to bank the money. But your costs are foreign. If you’re mining, even the physical assets, the bulldozer is not made in Zimbabwe so you have to pay for it in foreign currency. When you want to procure that asset everybody will say – look can you give me evidence before I put in the ship that you are able to pay for it. And in Zimbabwe you know that most of the banks don’t have, the people don’t have income for known reasons.

So if you are saying that the asset, if I’m going to bring in the asset like the special mining lease that was given to BHP to start even exposing the platinum and that investment that is required without that off-shore account, the platinum that Supa is talking about today will remain hidden where it was in the Great Dyke, but somebody had to take the plunge. But in doing so, some of us were involved in the time when I was working at the World Bank in trying to convince the government that it was necessary to open the mining sector to the potential that was there.

When Cecil John Rhodes, through Rudd Concession, got the concession from Lobengula what they thought was the gold that they thought was there, they didn’t even know about platinum but that platinum remained underground, diamonds remained underground. But to expose it, even to have an interest in Zimbabwe, people with capital have to look at what their interests are. And I don’t think that Supa himself – I’ve seen him in South Africa, that he is allergic to foreign currency. He’s got his own foreign currency  – but would want to pretend today that he can be the custodian, the policeman of where people bank their own money without him declaring … (interrupted)

MANDIWANZIRA: I’m not suggesting that I’d like to be the custodian Mutumwa, I’m simply saying if you are a responsible investor and you are extracting and exploiting a Zimbabwean asset, that’s really grounded, a natural resource…

MAWERE: I’m investing, I’m putting…

MANDIWANZIRA:  …surely you must have an obligation to say how can I be of more help in this society. Zimbabwe…

MAWERE: And you become the custodian because you were elected the president of the AAG? Of what I should do? If I go into the country, the minerals remain in the ground and nothing happens, the platinum will still be in the Great Dyke…

MANDIWANZIRA: …I’m simply saying there’s no reason why you should operate an account outside the banks that are in Zimbabwe…

MAWERE: Are you saying you don’t have an account yourself? I’m saying I’ve seen people who are disingenuous and are talking about other people, when they have their own assets, their own interests. When you want to buy things from South Africa you have to have the Rands; if you want to buy in the US you have to have the US dollars. What is wrong with that because the costs have to be spent in Zimbabwe, the private sector party has to pay those costs? It’s not government funds. Whether I put them in Europe, I put them in Zimbabwe, what’s the difference? It’s still my money, if it’s in the left hand pocket or the right pocket, it’s still my money. What is your interest in it!?

MANDIWANZIRA:  My interest is this – that you’ve got to be responsible in a country, if there’s no liquidity in the market and you are turning over 30 million dollars a month, nobody’s taking that money away from you but you have a responsibility to make everyone else around you prosper, so make the banks prosper by you know, in circulating that money within that system. That money you are obtaining it out of a Zimbabwean asset – so you do have a social responsibility to make sure you are also assisting others without losing a cent…

MAWERE: So you are now the social engineer?

MANDIWANZIRA:  …will not lose money by banking it at Barclays here in Zimbabwe, they’ll not lose money by banking it at CBZ, they’ll not lose any cent, we are simply saying that money must be operated in Zimbabwean accounts so the liquidity crisis is resolved so that the people are able to borrow from the banks, because this money has been generated out of Zimbabwean assets, what we are doing…

MAWERE: Like I, Supa…

MANDIWANZIRA:  …is we are allowing that money to be lent to other investors elsewhere and those are the ones who are benefiting.

MAWERE: Supa, I am by definition of the law I am indigenous, previously disadvantaged, but I have never had the AAG even raise a finger about assets of an indigenous being taken and being administered by someone appointed by the State.

MANDIWANZIRA:  We don’t have to shout about the actions we take and I don’t think this is the platform to talk about what we have done for you to recover your assets or…

MAWERE: Oh if it’s Rio Tinto you shout?

MANDIWANZIRA: …to be resolved. We don’t have to do it in public.

MAWERE: Oh if it’s Rio Tinto we do it in public?

MANDIWANZIRA: We are talking about a law that has been implemented in Zimbabwe that affects Rio Tinto.

MAWERE: I see, it doesn’t affect anybody.

MANDIWANZIRA: Oh come on.

GONDA: Let me go to Daniel to get his thoughts on this. Daniel, Supa has said Zimbabweans have nothing to show for all the resources that have been exploited. First of all, is this the right way to redress the situation? And also do you agree with this bearing in mind of what happened in the Chiadzwa diamond area where Zimbabwe has the resources but there are Zimbabweans who are exploiting those diamonds?

DANIEL NDLELA: Well the fact that Zimbabweans have nothing to show for the minerals under the ground is quite a fact but the issue here – who is responsible for that 30 years after Independence? Is it some foreigner out there or some people who are ruling us? Governance is about fairness, is about transparency, is not about empowering a few people.

MANDIWANZIRA: I agree with Daniel that there’s somebody to blame for the past 30 years but at last finally we are seeing some action so we applaud it. We now have an opportunity to make sure that it is happening and we are controlling it.

GONDA: But Supa, why has it taken 30 years to redress this situation?

MANDIWANZIRA: Unfortunately you are asking the wrong person, you must ask those people who were responsible. I think that as AAG and other empowerment groups, we’ve been making this noise for many, many years. And I know for a fact that the move that we began to see in the financial sector where licences, banking licences were then issued to people like Mutumwa and others, was out of this push to say how can you continue to have a few organisations, few determining who should get money and what sort of terms, why don’t we allow our own people to get into these sectors like banking?

That’s why we saw that happening out of that pressure. So I think the same sort of pressure that has been put on government to say where can we not see our people playing a part in the biggest of enterprises that were achieved by some people simply by getting a government stand, why can we not get into those assets? Because the majority of these mines were given away, these concessions were given away by just a government rubber stamp, nothing else. No money brought in, no evidence of money, special concessions, bank your money in foreign countries, do whatever you want, you don’t pay tax for the next five years and all these kind of things. We are simply saying if you are giving a foreigner that benefit, 51% of that benefit must accrue to a Zimbabwean.

GONDA: Daniel, do you have anything to add?

NDLELA: The point here, the moralistic behaviour of people at the top of leadership positions is sickening and that is actually the point. And as long as we have a situation where all these laws are done in opaqueness, in areas that you don’t understand what is happening, empowering whether it’s indigenous empowering – it is about empowering a few. Supa is the president now, where is the former popular president? He has enriched himself, he is quiet. So is this about the empowering of Zimbabweans? …

MANDIWANZIRA: We don’t believe at the Affirmative Action that we must be like graders – we open the way for others and we are not allowed to walk on that same road.

NDLELA:  OK so as soon as you are empowered you disappear Supa?

MANDIWANZIRA: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with anyone who is with AAG or any other empowerment group to make money. And blacks must not be apologetic for being rich because it is their country and it is their resources.

NDLELA: At this point in time I think if we were to come back to the subject matter is that we have to talk about governance and leadership positions in this whole matter so that we know very well that we are talking about the people who actually should be empowered. The people to me who should be empowered are the working people of this country, not the few intellectuals who are intellectually dishonest in the first place. The people to be empowered are the people to be empowered through the normal avenues of empowerment not the avenues of actually picking up the few and then the minister is going to allocate from his head that Supa is number one in this thing and next is Supa number two and of course I’m not going to put my hat in that thing.

GONDA: Do you believe companies should even bother to fill in their plans for indigenisation by March 01 or defy this, or worse still, strip down the assets and close?

NDLELA: Well, there’s no question of believing or not believing. The law has been set, the companies are going to behave in a way that they will actually be safeguarding their interests. What will their interests be here? Their interests in the next five years, they will not invest so that the cake is smaller because it is going to be taken over by the new 51% ownership. So companies are actually going to be less enthusiastic, may close down or may keep the status quo as it is but without investing because if you have your money you must invest your money where your mouth is. You’re not going to invest your money where other people are going to come in. And you don’t even know who is going to be in bed with you until somebody is then allocated to you. Companies are either going to follow the rule because this is the letter of the law or are going to bolt out.

GONDA: And Peta, we said at the beginning of this discussion that Morgan Tsvangirai, the Prime Minister in this coalition government that the move had been made without his knowledge, so first of all, did he really need to be consulted since the law was passed in parliament and what does this also say about how this unity government is operating?

THORNYCROFT: Well from what I’ve read of the GPA and we’ve all been writing about it for long enough, yes, Morgan should have been consulted about it. He is the Prime Minister of this country but he seems to have no power. Things seem to take place that in which he has absolutely no power to stop. People being arrested, let’s go back to where Mutumwa was talking about his company being specified and so little has been written about this both by us foreign journalists and the domestic journalists – what happened to Mutumwa’s companies. But when it hit Meikles, and I am presuming it hit Meikles because journalists or those who visited Zimbabwe know about Meikles Hotel, and there was this enormous outcry. Giles Mutsekwa, the MDC Minister signed this specification apparently idiotically and it has in fact, allegedly been reversed. But beyond that it seems to me that the inclusive government is at Mugabe’s decision about whether something will or will not be fulfilled from the Global Political Agreement.

It’s nearly 18 months since the Global Political Agreement was signed but we’re stuck, paralysed with the inclusive government at the moment with outstanding issues.  I was at SADC Summit where these things were agreed and we’re still quibbling about it. And until we have a new constitution ,so that we’re going to free and fair elections, (a) why would anybody invest in us because we don’t know what is going to happen and we’ve got a very poor record of elections.

In 2008 from March 28th or about April 11th until June 30th of 2008 – I was in hospital, interviewing injured people because we had an election. So we’ve got a very bad record here. We have a very bad record of our government taking money, we have a very bad record of the de-industrialisation of this country. We’ve lost at least 40 or maybe 60% of the industries we had in 1980, particularly in the last ten years. So we are a very bad risk country and until the political situation is sorted out and we can move into free and fair elections without being beaten up – because you want to support whoever it is in your area you want to support – until we have all of those normal aspects of democracy I can’t imagine there will be any investment at all. Let alone when you can go to jail if you haven’t managed to sort out 51% of the company that you might have been building up for 15, 20, 40 years.

It’s nonsense that anything, any progress can be made until the political side of the country, the governance is sorted out – that has to come first before we have regulations about handing over 51% of companies because they might be foreign owned. And we say the mining companies contributed nothing to this country? No I think even in 1980 even despite all the racial discrimination and how unfair it was for black people, we got some roads, we got some hospitals, we got some stuff out of it and we haven’t done a hell of a lot since then. Since 1980 – what have we done to expand our industrial base, our mineral exploitation, and our retail base – what have we done?

GONDA: Supa, let me come to you to get your comment on this statement made by the Prime Minister that the regulations are null and void since this issue was not discussed in Cabinet. What can you say about this?

MANDIWANZIRA: Well I am pretty much aware that these regulations were gazetted by a government in which the Prime Minister is part of and that the Minister who gazetted the regulations reports to the Prime Minister in the Council of Ministers, and that this was done by the government of Zimbabwe. Now the Prime Minister says he was not consulted and they are null and void I don’t know how the whole process can be reversed and I do not like to talk about that but as far as I’m concerned and as we are concerned at the AAG, this is the law, if you want to change the law you’ve got to take the whole process back to parliament and see what you can do.

And as far as we are concerned, we are taking them as legal, as the law as this has been done by the inclusive government. Whether one has been consulted or not consulted we believe those are only deficiencies in that inclusive government and we have nothing to do with those deficiencies, as far as we are concerned this is the right thing that has happened, we are moving on.

GONDA: But this is the Prime Minister saying this is not the right thing and this regulation was sneaked through. So is that not a problem?

MANDIWANZIRA: Unfortunately the Movement for Democratic Change in parliament with ZANU PF, they passed this law so unfortunately it’s action after. You know I think it should have been stopped if the Prime Minister and his political party didn’t agree, it should have been stopped at the process of being legislated. Unfortunately you cannot now say when you have legislated law and say you don’t like it. You want to change it, go back and start the process again.

THORNYCROFT: Well it…

GONDA: But as we all know, this was done when ZANU PF was still in the majority in parliament.

MANDIWANZIRA: Well because they had been voted by the people of Zimbabwe to be in the majority.

GONDA: Peta, you wanted to say something?

THORNYCROFT: I just wanted to say that this went through parliament literally days before parliament was dissolved and ZANU PF was in the majority and I can’t actually recall, and I tried to look it up, what the MDC actually said about this legislation and we should in fact be consulting them and ask them what they thought about it then and did they or didn’t they put up a good fight about it, but they only had about 42 MPs then.

GONDA: Mutumwa, your thoughts on this?

MAWERE: I think it’s always difficult to, you can comment about the process and whether you’re consulted or whether you are not, but at the end of the day, what the country requires now, it requires some adjustment, requires a different viewpoint, a different world view and if we know that the kind of changes that we are talking about can bring the results that are predictable and sustainable then well and good.

But when you know what has happened in other countries pursuing similar policies and you then say look, irrespective of that let me go head on. The law in question was passed as Peta has rightly said, before the inclusive government and before the elections and people of Zimbabwe spoke and I think their voice really saying let Zimbabweans find each other, find the most optimal way of advancing the nation that’s the interest – that requires now consultation and if the Prime Minister says he was not consulted because now they are in a position where they need to ventilate their own ideas and people who may see the world differently from the people who controlled parliament at the time, they have to deal with it.

Even our laws – POSA, AIPPA, even the Reconstruction Act was passed – it doesn’t make it a good law and whether you’re consulted and somebody’s driving, you may consult a passenger but at the end of the day, if you fall asleep on the steering, you’ll have an accident, it doesn’t change the speed but surely you must be able to say to your people who are in the car today and say this is where we are, we need to go to Point A or Point B, what is the best way of getting there. And if Supa believes in his own bones that this is the best way to build a nation, then that’s it – then we would have to look at Supa and say how have you build yours – around a collective structure where your profits become subject to corporate social responsibility or whether indeed you have advanced your own interests and if you die today, your family is the successor to that.

What kind of society does Zimbabwe need to be and what kind of society we encourage anyone, not just people who were born in Zimbabwe, those who may be born outside Zimbabwe, albeit with Zimbabwean parents or those who are born outside Zimbabwe with no Zimbabwean parents to believe in the promise of Zimbabwe and that requires not just minerals, that it’s our minerals, it requires people to build confidence and that’s what we should be focussing on. Without it you might have the best resources in the world but they will remain in the ground and without it you may have the best laws, all the procedures you say you are implementing but you know it’s toxic at the end of the day because it discourages the very people we need to build the country and provide confidence that jobs will be there and the country can advance its own interest. Zimbabwe is too small to be able to command its own destiny without other people’s input.

So I think those are the areas that I would rather focus on. As the Prime Minister in the inclusive government, there’s a contestation for power because there’s a transitional structure but what is not transitional is Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe will remain whether this President or that President or this Prime Minister or that Prime Minister, but what are Zimbabwe’s interests and how can they best be advanced. Does this law advance? Does the Reconstruction Law advance? Does AIPPA, does POSA advance the Zimbabwean cause? And we may decide to broaden the conversation so that we also understand why people would leave Zimbabwe if there was promise – and if this law, I guess judging by what Supa is saying, we will have now new plane loads and bus loads of people coming back because the Indigenisation Law has given some life. I don’t believe so. People will remain where they are because there are other things that drive the human spirit.

GONDA: OK, let me just finish by getting a final word from Daniel Ndlela?

NDLELA: As far as this law is concerned, we will wait to see but the immediate perception of this law, it’s a bad law. It’s a law that is not going to encourage investment in our country. Whether we praise ourselves and say so on and say let those who come from the east or come from the south, they will come here, the law itself is really not going to assist us. When it comes to the consultation between the Prime Minister and so on, that has to be sorted out there. In other words they show there is a serious lack of governance in the system as a whole, let them sort out that one, but as far as this law is concerned it is coming at a time when Zimbabweans actually needed more money into our system and a fresh money into the system and the law itself is not going to encourage that.

GONDA: Supa, a final word?

MANDIWANZIRA: Well my final word is this; that I’m not suggesting, as has been said by Mawere, that there are going to be plane loads of Zimbabweans coming back because of the Indigenisation Law. My point is this; that here is now an opportunity for Zimbabweans who have worked so hard in the Diaspora to come back and come and serve themselves, not serve the same master who they were serving overseas or in other countries, that’s one. The second point that I need to make is that people need to read and understand this law and the investors more importantly need to understand this law because if they rely on media reports they will be misled.

The reality is that there is a process that says an investor must identify the right partner and that right partner must pay market value for whatever shareholding they are getting. And I would like to encourage every Zimbabwean to say this is an opportunity to come and board and make a difference, this is not a free for all, you’ve got to raise money and you’ve got to be able to buy into a business that you can take forward not a business that you can run down. So I’m saying this is the festive season for all banks, for all sons to now look at opportunities that they can now develop in Zimbabwe. If you do not come on board, this train is not stopping no matter how much people talk against this move, the train is not stopping, come on board and let’s go.

GONDA: Mutumwa?

MAWERE: Yes I think there are a lot of lessons available in the world of what can be done and what should not be done and I think we all should also rely on what has worked and what has not worked and there are some laws that will not advance the collective interests of the country and such laws require review and require interrogation and the more we do that, the more we find what really should work for the country’s interest.

GONDA: And Peta?

THORNYCROFT: It’s so difficult to do business in Zimbabwe anyway. The record of the previous government has been to legislate, restrict, control, take over and interfere with. And so we have an economy 30 years after Independence that is a small fraction of what it was in 1980, where industries have closed down and where perhaps only the retail sector has enlarged. We desperately need industries that create goods, services, jobs and a law like this is just anti expansion. It’s actually a childish law, it’s a law based on spitefulness. It has nothing to do with creating a Zimbabwe where the majority of the population is employed and where the raw materials are beneficiated for everyone’s good – for the companies’ good, for the workers’ good etc.

ZANU PF has no record of success and Minister Saviour Kasukuwere who has created these legislations in consultation with his colleagues, should be advised to do what is necessary to expand the economy and not contract it. At the beginning of this debate I said instead of taking over companies, 51% no matter how it is done, why is the energy of this country not going into creating new companies even to replace those companies that have closed down in the last ten to 15 years? That would be creative, this is just destructive.

GONDA: That was businessman Mutumwa Mawere, economist Daniel Ndlela, the President of the Affirmative Action Group Supa Mandiwanzira and journalist Peta Thornycroft speaking on the programme Hot Seat.

Tomana(pictured) told journalists in Bulawayo that Zimbabweans both at home and those living in the Diaspora were threatening him.

The ‘threats’ are said to be coming from Zimbabweans who are complaining over his continued stay in the office despite calls by the MDC-T for him to go.

“I am being demonised and my family, my wife and kids are being threatened with unspecified action. We have always received calls from the British and Australians promising to deal with me and my family,” said Tomana.

He said the AG’s office should not be subjected to intimidation and threats on the life of the person occupying the office. He said the hatred he is facing was more directed to the office than the person occupying it.

The MDC-T has been calling for the removal of AG Tomana from the office under the Global Political Agreement (GPA).

The MDC-T has also lobbied for the removal of Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono.

Harare(Zimbabwe)-Poor service delivery by the country’s major parastatals was caused by massive corruption by government Ministers responsible for their operations, a cabinet minister has said.

Minister of State Enterprises and Parastatals Joel Gabuza told journalists in Harare on Friday that an audit they have conducted has revealed a massive abuse of resources at most quasi-government organizations by ministers responsible for their operations.

“The most problematic area is the appointment of management board members in most parastatals.There was a lot of corruption in this area. We have discovered in some pararastals that one person was occupying more than 15 boards of different companies as a chairperson and really it means this person has no time to do whant he is required because of continued commitments. It has also emerged from the exercise that a nurse was a board member in an airline company a thing that failed to make sense.Overall there is nepotism and corruption in most parastatals,”said Gabuza.

Board members would allocate themselves more resources than what the company needs for public service delivery.

He said his Ministry was creating a national data base of experienced personnel from which parastatals would get qualified candidates to be board members.

“To improve transparency in the management of these institutions we have strategised a method of clearly defining the roles of ministers so that they do not abuse them.

“We want every Zimbabwean to have an equal chance of becoming board members of any parastatal.We are going to have a national data base of qualified and experienced people from which parastatals would tap board members. Anyone who wishes to be a board member should apply for the job.”

The former ZANU-PF government used to treat parastatals as its political wings.

This resulted in the abuse of parastatals like the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ), Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (ZUPCO) Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) and the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) by the government ministers for political and private gains.

The ministers looted resources like fuel and vehicles from these parastatals leaving them bankrupt.

Minister of Economic Development, Elton Mangoma, said government ministers should not use parastatals as their back yard corruption grounds.

“We need parastatals to perform; if they fail to deliver their Chief executives should be fired. We do not want government ministers to interfere with their day to day operations,” said Mangoma.

The firm issued summons in November last year and the bank never responded prompting Seed Co to apply for a default judgement at the High Court.

Justice Charles Hungwe is expected to make a ruling on the chamber application soon.

Artherstone and Cook Legal Practitioners are appearing for Seed Co while Chitapi and Associates are representing the central bank.

In the application, Seed Co submitted: “Defendant was served with a copy of summons on November 2 2009. Although they entered an appearance to defend on November 5, defendant has failed to plead. The defendant has lost right to defend the matter.”

According to the summons, during the 2007 and 2008 farming seasons, the RBZ ordered maize seed from Seed Co International’s Botswana depot.

In 2007, seed valued at US$6 376 350 was delivered to RBZ from Botswana and early 2008 another consignment of seed worth US$6 999 654 25 came in.

RBZ, according to the papers, had paid US$10 million by April 2008, leaving a balance of US$3 634 830 80.

It is Seed Co’s claim that the RBZ undertook to pay the balance in weekly installments of US$400 000 with effect from May 2008.

Seed Co said the payment plan was never fulfilled, prompting the firm to seek the High Court’s intervention to recover the money.

“We want to create a conducive environment so that they can have elections to choose their own government but the continuation of sanctions is undermining the agreement,“ South African President Jacob Zuma told the weekly Sunday Times newspaper.“Zimbabwe is not an easy matter. It is very complex. It is impacting on South Africa. We have a facilitation team close to the situation and working with me. My first point of call is the troika led by President Armando Guebuza of Mozambique.“

However the co-chairperson of the parliamentary committee on constitutional reform and Zanu PF legislator for Chivi Central constituency Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana says Zimbabwe’s new constitution will only be be ready by 2012.

“We will not accept any election in this country before 2013. I have been on record saying this and let it be clear to anyone that I will personally incite all MPs from all political parties to refuse that election in Zimbabwe. We will block that election,” said Mangwana.

Mangwana said he was aware that Zimbabweans are eager to have a new constitution as soon as possible but, however, there are a lot of
‘processes before the constitution is done’.

“Zimbabweans have to bear with us on this one. There is no way we can have a constitution before 2012. We are already seven months behind
and there is no way we are going to skip those months. It was foolish of the negotiators to agree that there be a constitution when there were no funds for that. For us, to use donor funds is like asking a foreigner to pay lobola for your wife… it simply shows lack of seriousness,” said Mangwana.

Zuma’s coments come less than a week after the MDC party led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai who signed a political agreement with President Mugabe’s Zanu PF and Arthur Mutambara’s smaller MDC party, declared a deadlock and asked the South African leader to intervene.

However his negotiating team has so far responded to these calls, saying they are yet to receive a report to that effect from the negotiating parties insisting the parties are still negotiating.

Zuma said criticisms that has so far been labelled against him for not doing enough to break the impasse north of the Limpopo are not justified.

“Those who have criticised South Africa have done absolutely nothing. People don’t seem to be looking at Zimbabwe in totality. They wanted us to shout on top of our voices. That would have undermined the negotiations. The issue is very complex. We handled a very explosive situation in a responsible manner. We need to reach a point where they’ll go to elections without a fight. We need to put a platform for them to move forward,“ said Zuma.

Zimbabwe’s unity government that came into office last February has been credited with stabilising the country’s economy to improve the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans. But the administration has made no real progress in implementing political reforms and ending human rights abuses after a year in office.

Incessant bickering between coalition partners over how to equally share executive power, the appointment of senior government officials and the removal of Western sanctions on Mugabe and his top allies threaten to cripple the government.

Radio VOP/Sunday Times

This is what a senior Zimbabwean police officer is reported to have told a South African newspaper in an interview, thus confirming the use of torture by the Zimbabwe Republic Police, (ZRP) and it is still the case that the ZRP resort to this horrible practice, as evidenced in the allegations of the use of falanga in the torture of Jestina Mukoko and the other 41 abductions.

Although torture has been seen in all three previous decades of Zimbabwe, it has become so commonplace since 2000 that it is only when particularly repugnant episodes occur that there is publicly expressed revulsion of it. Since its formation in 1998, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum [Human Rights Forum] has issued a large number of reports about torture, urging an end to this vile practice. Despite this torture still continues to be practised on a widespread basis in Zimbabwe.

Falanga is unequivocally a form of torture and constitutes a serious criminal assault under Zimbabwean law. This form of torture has become particularly prevalent in the past five years. Although falanga has been reported in previous decades, it now appears to be very widespread indeed, and almost routine, both inside and outside of places of detention. It is used by the police as well as non-state actors that are supporters of the government.

The police have a constitutional and professional duty to protect people against unlawful assaults and yet members of the police force are frequently perpetrating acts of torture as is documented in this report and has also been documented in previous reports of the Human Rights Forum. The evidence establishes that the practice of torture, including falanga, is not carried out by a few aberrant law enforcement officers but instead is widespread and systematic. It is evident that it is not only the ZRP that are guilty of falanga, but that it has become a widespread practice carried out by proxy forces of the Zimbabwe government, and mostly by supporters and members of ZANU PF.

What is torture?

Torture is one of the worst forms of inhumane treatment, involving as it does the deliberate infliction of severe pain, mental suffering and degradation upon a person who is in a helpless condition. It is usually carried out in a way that is grossly humiliating to the victim. It generally stops short of causing death, but sometimes victims are tortured to death. It causes physical injury (sometimes permanent disabling injury) and usually also leads to drastic longterm psychological harm.

Torture is a vile practice which any civilized society will do everything possible to prevent and eradicate. As the Supreme Court observed, in the case of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe v Attorney-General1, “the right not to be subjected to torture stands as a sentinel over human misery, degradation and oppression.”

No civilized nation will permit its law enforcement agencies or its military forces to make use of torture or seek to justify, excuse or condone the use of such practices by these personnel. No civilized government will encourage or allow irregular forces or militias to inflict torture upon its opponents. No civilized nation will grant an amnesty or pardon to persons who have used torture. Instead, a civilized nation will ensure that all persons who are alleged to have engaged in this despicable practice are prosecuted and, if found guilty, are punished in a manner that takes account of the gravity of this crime. Victims should also be entitled to claim civil compensation for the harm they have suffered.

In international law, torture can constitute a crime against humanity. Under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, torture will constitute a crime against humanity, if it is “committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack”, and the attack was “pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organisational policy to commit such attack.” The Rome Statute thus requires that the crime against humanity constituted by official use of torture be part of a widespread and systematic attack against civilians in pursuit of state policy. On the other hand, under the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), a single act of official torture is enough to fall foul of the Torture Convention.

HRF

The call was made at a three-day Commonwealth Organisations’ Roundtable conference which ended in Sandton yesterday.

Lifting media restrictions and repealing all repressive laws was a priceless exercise which could be done immediately to enhance free expression and free flow of information, particularly in the current process of re-writing a new constitution for Zimbabwe.

The Roundtable brought together about 80 Commonwealth associations and organisations as well as Zimbabwean civic society groups and others from the southern African region to review the needs of Zimbabwe during its current transition, identify priorities for practical help and support and develop new programmes of action to enhance the transition.

Mark Collins, head of the Commonwealth Foundation, said the 53-member club of former British colonies had a wealth of experience drawn from former trouble spots like Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Northern Ireland and other countries which can be valuable to Zimbabwe as its people seek to achieve reconciliation and healing after a period of turmoil.

Although President Robert Mugabe had pulled Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth in 2003, its people had always remained part of the Commonwealth and the club’s associations had thought it prudent to continue re-engaging with civic society in Zimbabwe and offer assistance wherever possible to enhance the transitional process.

“There is no competition going on between SADC, the African Union and now the Commonwealth to see who can engage (in Zimbabwe) better,” said Collins, in response to a question at a press conference about whether the Commonwealth could do anything that SADC had failed to achieve in Zimbabwe.

“Our idea is to help the transitional process. We want to use every tool in the tool bag to ensure that this process is a success.”

Carl Right, the Commonwealth local government forum’s secretary-general, said his organisation had the technical skills that Zimbabwe’s local authorities could draw from as they battled to restore services and infrastructure destroyed during the country’s 10-year crisis.

Some participants had been unhappy that instead of pushing for the repeal of all draconian laws which impinge on basic rights and press freedoms, the new unity government was still setting up commissions to regulate the media. There was no guarantee that these commissions would fair any better than the previous ones which had destroyed the independent press.

The pre-2000 environment in Zimbabwe in which the media was not regulated and citizens were allowed to set up their newspapers without hindrance is what Zimbabwe desperately needed now.

Cephas Zinhumwe, the CEO of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO), said one major success of the unity government had been the ability of his members to move freely to distribute humanitarian aid in the country.

However, he also called for the repeal of the repressive media and security laws which had been used to stifle NGOs in the past. As long as these laws remained in the statute books, the police could always resort to them whenever it suited them, Zinhumwe warned.

Former South African cabinet minister Jay Naidoo, who chairs the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), said his institution was prepared to help in Zimbabwe’s reconstruction but also called for reforms particularly at the central bank to ensure transparency in the use of any resources extended for the reconstruction process.

Zimbabwe has scored another first in this regard with Onny.

Onny is a new search engine that is proudly Zimbabwean with a global reach, which is redefining the versatility of a search engine in Zimbabwe and beyond.

Mr Kingstone Kanyile, the brains behind Onny, told this paper that he was inspired to develop the search engine because of his understanding that the power brokers in the new global arena will be the knowledge facilitators because as humanity evolves there are questions that need answers.

He said that Onny was developed to precisely help web surfers to find answers to questions such as: How do I do it? Where do I find it? Who are they? What is it? What is going on?

He said although ignorance will be more tyrannical and enslaving than in the past, Onny is the search engine for serious Internet surfers who have a thirst to acquire knowledge in new ways that will help them innovate and create real opportunities for themselves.

The name Onny means a state of joy in anticipating answers to questions. So Onny primarily seeks to deliver that happiness to all surfers of the Internet.

Onny is different from other search engines in the way all pages and search results are indexed on the web pages.

Onny has been developed to become the darling search engine for all Internet users, knowledge workers, students, businesspeople and communities.

In essence, Onny is for everyone who has a compelling need to keep informed and understand their world to stay ahead.

To access this search engine, you simply log onto www.OnnySearch.co.zw or www.OnnySearch.com

On the home page Internet users can simply tell all their friends about Onny when they click on the “tell a friend” link.

Mr Kanyile said Onny is the first of many innovative IT-driven solutions with local roots and a global impact that the market is going to see coming from his corporation.

Onny is signalling the dawn of a new era for Zimbabwe as we embrace innovative solutions to claim our space on the global arena.