Home

Blog

Bio

Byo South Develop.

Photos

Reports

Archives

Links

Subscribe

Contact

The Cape Argus (SA)

Morgan Tsvangirai has been suspended as president of the Zimbabwe opposition MDC, at least according to the party’s constitution. MDC legal secretary David Coltart, who has refused to be aligned to either side in a dispute which has ripped the party apart, said that according to Article 10.4 of the founding constitution, the disciplinary committee had the power to suspend anyone. Coltart was disturbed by the letter of suspension delivered on Saturday during the senate election, which the MDC lost. “I question the wisdom of taking this action at this point in time,” he said. The disciplinary committee is chaired by vice-president Gibson Sibanda, who met three other members, including lawyer Josphat Tshuma, in Bulawayo last week. They drew up the letter and sent it to Tsvangirai. At first Tsvangirai reacted by claiming that he could not be suspended, but yesterday, via his spokesman William Bango, he said: “I don’t want to get bogged down in legal interpretations. This is a political problem and would have to be sorted out politically.”

SW Radio Africa
By Violet Gonda, SW Radio Africa

The MDC legal team led by David Coltart has said that investigations for the controversial 2002 presidential election have exposed massive rigging by the Mugabe regime. The investigations, which will be made public within the next month, will show wide spread voter fraud and breaches of the electoral act. Coltart said the team discovered that some people voted twice while others voted 3 times.

The allegations come in the wake of a decision by the High Court Justice Ben Hlatshwayo to dismiss Morgan Tsvangirai’s election petition. In his decision handed down on Monday, the judge said the petition shouldn’t be used to achieve political objectives. Coltart said the opposition party was deeply concerned by this judgment. He said it “ignores the fact that we relied on purely legal and constitutional arguments.”

Hlatshwayo had taken 2 years to come up with this decision after the MDC had again been forced to go to the Supreme Court arguing that the judge’s delay was unconstitutional. It has been a struggle for the opposition party to challenge the results of the presidential elections. The Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede originally denied the MDC the right to examine all electoral materials like the voters roll and ballot boxes. He only complied this year after the opposition party won a court order.

Coltart said inspection of the voters’ roll has been revealing. He said although some of the ballot boxes have been infested by termites and eaten away, the MDC has been able to examine voting materials in 12 constituencies and have revealed breaches of the electoral act.

Voice of America
- Peta Thornycroft

Analysts in Zimbabwe say that extension of U.S. travel sanctions to include more senior members of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party are welcomed but do not go far enough. The government has not reacted to the widening of the travel sanctions, which now include central bank governor Gideon Gono, a regular visitor to Washington.

David Coltart, legal secretary of the opposition group, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said the new U.S. travel sanctions are a stern message to President Mugabe to stop hindering democratic reforms in Zimbabwe. He said the extension of the sanctions to an additional 128 ZANU-PF members was a warning to Mr. Mugabe to reverse the draconian policies and laws he implemented in the last five years or expect tougher action.

John Makumbe, veteran political scientist from the University of Zimbabwe said the travel sanctions irritated senior members of ZANU-PF. He said he was pleased that sanctions included central bank governor Gono. But, he said, the measures do not go far enough and the United States should ensure that no children of ZANU-PF leaders should be given visas to travel to the United States on holiday or for study.

Veteran economist Tony Hawkins said the travel sanctions may have annoyed senior ZANU-PF leaders, but are largely ineffective in helping change government policy.

He said if they were extended to all children of ZANU-PF leaders, who mostly study in the United States, it might make a significant difference.

There was no one from the ZANU-PF government who would speak to the foreign press Thursday about the extension of travel sanctions.

The United States and Zimbabwe continue normal trade since the country’s independence in 1980.

SW Radio Africa

The MDC legal expert David Coltart has spoken out over the controversial senate election that has divided the opposition party. He says positions have become entrenched over this issue and hoped that things can be restored to normal, but added it would be difficult given the enormous amount of damage done to relationships.

Leaders from both camps have over the weeks embarked on a war of words which degenerated into personal verbal attacks. Coltart, who said there are strong arguments from both sides, is saddened that people within the MDC, civil society and media have adopted absolutist positions as if there is only one side to the argument. He lamented the fundamental lack of tolerance of genuine views expressed by people with opposing views. The opposition official believes this is an indictment, not just against the MDC but against pro-democracy groups in Zimbabwe.

Coltart who is the MDC Secretary for Justice asked, “Are we as a party, as members of civil society, as members of the media genuinely committed to democracy? If we are genuinely committed to democracy we would listen to views of other people. We would consider them…. Even if we disagreed with them we would acknowledge their rights to have these views and that hasn’t happened.”

Both sides have made accusations against each other and labelled each other traitors and sell-outs. Coltart said this is unacceptable saying this has been a test that all of us have failed and hoped that as a nation we all take stock and think about these unrestrained comments that have been made by both sides. He said this has been damaging to all parties who are trying to get rid of this brutal regime.

Zimbabwe Independent

Harare - Political violence in Zimbabwe has fallen to its lowest levels since the emergence of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change six years ago.

Analysts say this is because President Robert Mugabe has successfully subdued the opposition and civil society.

The Human Rights Forum (HRF) on Monday released its latest monthly statistics, which show that political violence during September was at its lowest level since the MDC burst onto the political scene and ended Mugabe’s de facto one-party rule.

The HRF report shows that in September there were less than a dozen arrests of political activists and no incidents of torture.

Political protests are rare in Zimbabwe these days, and draconian security laws - tougher than those used by the Rhodesian regime during the liberation war in the 1970s - make it an offence for any demonstrations without police permission, which is regularly denied to opposition groups.

The HRF gathers its information from volunteers who offer information, and it does not have the capacity to seek full information in rural areas.

John Makumbe, a senior political scientist at the University of Zimbabwe, explained on Monday: “Zanu-PF, which perpetrated most political violence since 1999, now feels safe and secure as it has subdued all effective political opposition.”

He said violence, repressive legislation and state security agents had effectively managed all opposition attempts to challenge Zanu-PF’s 25-year rule.

More than 400 MDC members have been killed since it came close to beating Zanu-PF at the general election in 2000 - only six months after the party had been launched.

Tens of thousands of its members have been tortured, jailed or had their property destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of its supporters fled to other countries, mostly South Africa and Britain.

Independent Online

Harare - Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court on Thursday began hearing a petition from opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai challenging President Robert Mugabe’s victory in elections three and a half years ago.

A lawyer for Tsvangirai argued that the constitutional rights of the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had been violated because the case had been delayed for so long.

Tsvangirai had first lodged a legal challenge to Mugabe’s disputed victory in April 2002, barely one month after the election which was won by the longtime Zimbabwean president by less than 500 000 votes.

The challenge was only heard in the High Court 18 months later, and the judge went on to dismiss the case after another seven months without giving any reasons for his decision.

“We know of no case in the world where there has been a delay like this,” the opposition leader’s South African lawyer Jeremy Gauntlett said as the case opened Thursday morning before a full bench of five Supreme Court judges.

Gauntlett said the delay had disadvantaged his client because some key witnesses had died or moved away.

According to a statement from the MDC’s secretary for legal affairs David Coltart, the party wants the Supreme Court to nullify Mugabe’s victory or at least listen to the arguments of Tsvangirai’s case.

Tsvangirai maintains Mugabe and his ruling party have stolen the last three elections in Zimbabwe - parliamentary elections in 2000, presidential elections in 2002 and parliamentary elections earlier this year.

In court Thursday, Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku acknowledged there had been misconduct on the part of the High Court judge.

But lawyers for the 81-year-old president say Tsvangirai’s application is frivolous and vexatious. They are due to address the court later in the day.

(A speech delivered to the symposium organised by Bulawayo Agenda and the Konrad Adenhauer Stiftung at Bulawayo on the 16th November 2005)

I have been asked to consider the question as to whether Zimbabwe is now a failed state. It is hard to define what a failed state is because that is such a relative term. Somalia is clearly a failed state. Liberia until recently was also a failed state. In Somalia today there is no functioning bureaucracy and the country appears to be run by a variety of warlords. The rule of law has broken down completely and the economy of the country has been set back to the dark ages.

Clearly Zimbabwe has not reached that stage and if that, namely Somalia, is the standard by which we judge a failed state, Zimbabwe is not one. Whilst the rule of law has almost totally broken down in Zimbabwe and whilst Zimbabwe does suffer from one of the fastest declining economies in the world there is still a semblance of law and most government institutions are still functioning, albeit badly. Furthermore Zimbabwe’s physical infrastructure is still largely intact.

However it would be true to say that by first world standards Zimbabwe may well be considered to be a failed state. Indeed by international law standards an argument could be made that Zimbabwe is, in some respects, a failed state. In this regard it is pertinent to refer to be Responsibility to Protect Doctrine which is currently being debated in the United Nations. The essence of this doctrine is the following:

1. State sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the protection of its people lies with the state itself.

The Herald

WHAT is motivating the wave of constitutionalism sweeping across Africa?

Who is behind it?

Is this pre-occupation with national constitutions a manifestation of growing consciousness within Africa, or another manifestation of external manipulation?

Where does the constitution stand in the resolution of Africa’s ongoing socio-economic and political challenges?

Isn’t Africa better off addressing pressing issues of the national question arising from the colonial legacy of dispossession, without undue encumbrance from so-called protection of the right to property that the Western sponsored documents inadvertently call for?

Which property rights always relate to ill-gotten colonial loot?

And why do Western donors see the need to pour resources towards constitutional drives especially in countries that make overtures to correct colonial inequities?

All these questions, like many others remain unanswered in the tragicomedies Westerners impose on our question mark-shaped continent.

It appears the constitutional debate was not an issue in Zimbabwe in the first decade of independence because the Lancaster House Constitutional Conference guaranteed white minority property rights for a whole decade.

When this decade elapsed and Government made serious moves to implement agrarian reforms particularly after 1995 (following the failure of talks with the British), the so-called National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) then led by Mr Morgan Tsvangirai was launched.

The NCA was launched on January 31, 1998; 86 days after former British Secretary of State Ms Claire Short wrote a letter to Harare absolving the British of their colonial obligations to sponsor land reforms in Zimbabwe as was agreed at the 1979 Lancaster House Constitutional Conference.

The Herald
By Nathaniel Manheru

AT the risk of sounding overweening and elitist, I have repeatedly maintained MDC is the West’s bid to foist an ignorant leadership on Zimbabwe, in place of an enlightened one. To what end, it is not difficult to say.

After all, the doyens of British foreign policy have long advised the Blair government that the basic problem with Robert Mugabe is that “he is too educated and thinks like us”. I do not know whether the President takes this for a compliment.

Most probably he considers it an insult and curse, for Britain has declined to an unthinking nation, a nation no longer associated with anything cerebral. It has suffered a hefty decline, some kind of time-honoured hemorrhaging of intellect commonly known as senility.

It is a hoary society in a giant stupor, a society that has long lost the quick of its intellect. Tony Blair is no Augustan citizen, one typifying the famed British “age of reason” which fired human thought and lifted its discourse. Instead, he is a fitting character for Alexander Pope’s “Dunciad”: thoroughly unthinking and susceptible to a baser drive.

Like his kinsman on the other side of the Atlantic, he so ably represents the drool of the prosaic, and is only redeemed by the absence of that drunk and clownish face as burdens the unhappy torso of his cousin who presently misrules America, pilfers the riches or Iraq and marches his country’s youth to the siraha, the slaughterhouse that Iraq has become.

Blair’s two completed terms have yielded not a single wisecrack, the kind Churchill delivered so copiously and seemingly so effortlessly. Speechwriters are fired by good causes that edify mankind, never by unjust wars triggered by baser instincts. I feel pity for biographers. To attempt a biography of such a man is to banish the sublime for the trite and even the absurd.

Daily Mirror

HIGH Court Judge President Paddington Garwe yesterday declared as null and void the suspension of St Mary’s lawmaker Job Sikhala after the defendants failed not only to turn up in court but also to oppose the matter.

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai suspended Sikhala on October 31 on allegations that he made unsubstantiated statements to the media about the opposition party having received foreign funding to the tune of US$2,5 million from the governments of Nigeria, Ghana and Taiwan.

The matter was heard in chambers and immediately after, Sikhala’s lawyer Charles Chikore said: “The suspension has been declared a nullity. The judge president granted a default judgment after all the respondents failed to turn up. The order is final. He (Sikhala) is free to perform his duties as an MDC member.”

Tsvangirai unilaterally suspended the MP from all party activities (except Parliamentary business) for allegedly bringing the name of Zimbabwe’s biggest opposition political party into disrepute. However, Sikhala later withdrew the remarks after speaking to the Office of Ghanaian President John Kufour.

Chikore said the court ascertained, through a certificate of service, that papers had indeed been served on the respondents: Tsvangirai, the MDC and its disciplinary committee.

Contacted for comment on why the MDC did not respond, the party’s legal secretary David Coltart said he was unaware the matter had gone unopposed.

“I am not aware if the papers were served on us. I suspect that they were served at Harvest House (the party’s headquarters). Normally I am informed when they are served, but on this one I have not been contacted by the office,” said Coltart, the MP for Bulawayo South.

Tsvangirai’s spokesperson, William Bango, as usual refused to comment.