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The Telegraph

By Sebastien Berger in Bulawayo
21st August 2007

Zimbabweans are starving to death on a scale equivalent to genocide, a top opposition MP claimed yesterday.

Four million people will need food aid by the end of the year, the World Food Programme said earlier this month, as President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF government oversees the fastest-shrinking economy in the world.

David Coltart, a senior member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said there was “no doubt” Zimbabweans were already starving to death.”Arguably this is the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “Zimbabwe has the lowest life expectancy in the world: 34 for women and 37 for men.”

“To use a legal term, I would say this amounts to genocide with constructive intent. In terms of a complete disregard for the plight of people, not caring whether there is wholesale loss of life, it amounts to genocide.”

Some observers believe that an internal coup in Mr Mugabe’s divided Zanu-PF party is the best, if not only, hope for change. But Mr Coltart, a lawyer and the MP for Bulawayo South, said: “I don’t believe you can predict he will be gone in six months. It has been a mistake many have predicted in the past.”If Zanu-PF are happy with the notion of a vastly reduced economy with a powerful ruling elite living in a sea of poverty, then it is sustainable.

There are several reasons Mr Mugabe has survived for so long. Few African leaders are prepared to openly condemn him despite the fact that, as Mr Coltart pointed out, “the overwhelming majority of the people who are dying as a result of the regime’s policies are black Africans”.

Voice Of America

17 August 2007

Regional heads of state are expected to encourage South African President Thabo Mbeki to continue his efforts to facilitate negotiations between Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Peta Thornycroft for VOA reports that the Southern African Development Community’s summit in Zambia also launched its first peacekeeping standby force.

President Thabo Mbeki will continue to facilitate negotiations between the ruling ZANU-PF and the MDC, according to South African foreign affairs minister Nkosozana Zuma. In response to a question from South Africa’s independent newspapers on whether there would be further negotiations, minister Zuma replied with one word, “Sure.”

President Mbeki was appointed in March by SADC to facilitate negotiations between Zimbabwe’s two main political parties ahead of national elections next March. President Mbeki briefed a three-nation ministerial committee of SADC on the progress so far.
While the details of his report were not made public by the official end of the summit, some broad outlines on the mediation have emerged.

Negotiations have focused on a new constitution, and there is a deadline at the end of next month for resolving outstanding areas of disagreement.

This may mean, political sources say, that if agreement is reached between ZANU-PF and MDC, national elections may be delayed by a few months as new provisions are put into place.

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe intends to be the ZANU-PF candidate for president in the elections due next March. He wants parliamentary elections to be held at the same time.

SADC prepared a comprehensive report on Zimbabwe’s collapsed economy and humanitarian crisis ahead of the Lusaka summit, but SADC says its reconstruction plan depends on an improved political climate.

Independent On Line

August 12 2007 at 10:56AM

By Peta Thornycroft

President Thabo Mbeki seems likely to go to the Southern Africa
Development Community summit in Lusaka on Thursday unable to claim much
progress on the Zimbabwe crisis.

Unless there is an unlikely and last-minute breakthrough between the
Zanu-PF and opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Mbeki will tell SADC
that Zimbabwe will not have a new constitution ahead of national elections
next March.

Instead, Mbeki is expected to tell his peers that any reforms will
have to emerge from an amendment to Zimbabwe’s independence constitution.

Mbeki was appointed by SADC to mediate between Zanu-PF and the MDC at
a summit in Dar es Salaam in March, two weeks after MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangirai and colleagues were savagely beaten by police.

At the start of the negotiations, a draft constitution hammered out in
secret between the MDC and Zanu-PF in 2004 was used as the foundation to try
to resolve disagreements.

But on the eve of the second round of talks last month, President
Robert Mugabe made it clear he would never agree to a new constitution
before elections next March.

His two negotiators, Labour Minister Nicholas Goche and Justice
Minister Patrick Chinamasa, failed to turn up for the scheduled talks on
July 7/8.

Nevertheless, the two teams from Zanu-PF and MDC had already
undertaken assignments from SA facilitators to isolate points of
disagreement in that draft constitution.

Last weekend, when the two Zanu-PF negotiators finally turned up in
Pretoria and met the two MDC secretary generals, Tendai Biti and Welshman
Ncube, it had become clear that a face-saving mechanism for Mugabe had to be
reached if there was going to be any progress at all.

Financial Times

By Tony Hawkins in Harare

Published: August 5 2007 18:23

A new law in Zimbabwe allowing the state to tap private phone conversations
and monitor faxes and e-mails is unconstitutional and impracticable, said
local lawyers, opposition politicians and internet service providers.

Lawyers said they are confident the government’s Interception of
Communications Act which became law last week can be challenged successfully
in the courts.

The act empowers President Robert Mugabe’s government to establish an
information centre to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, open mail and
intercept faxes and e-mails.

The government said it is justified by the need to combat domestic and
international terrorism as well as “economic sabotage”. The law merely puts
its anti-terrorism legislation in line with international practice, it says.

The act requires ISPs to purchase and install equipment to spy on their
clients’ communications “when so required”. ISPs must also ensure that they
have the capacity to monitor communications full-time.

One ISP executive, who did not wish to be named, said: “All the equipment
has to be imported, and we do not have foreign currency for that.” Most ISPs
would have to close if the authorities enforced the legislation, he said.

Media houses believe the government will use the law to curb critical
reporting of the country’s rapidly worsening social and economic crisis. The
authorities are particularly anxious to clamp down on online news services
that are read increasingly widely in Zimbabwe, government critics said.

David Coltart, secretary for legal affairs in the Mutambara wing of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said the law was unconstitutional
and “an unjustifiable invasion of a person’s rights”. He said lack of
foreign currency meant the government did not have the capacity to
implement the legislation.

Zim Standard

By Vusumuzi Sifile
5th August 2007

THE Interception of Communications Act, signed into law by President
Robert Mugabe last week, is unconstitutional and can be successfully
challenged in the courts, legal experts said yesterday.

The government will find it difficult to adequately monitor
communications, particularly e-mails and other internet communications, they
said.

The law authorises the government to set up an interception centre to
eavesdrop on telephone conversations, open mail, and intercept e-mails and
faxes.

But legal experts told The Standard yesterday the law was an
unwarranted infringement on people’s rights.

David Coltart, secretary for legal affairs in the pro-Senate faction
of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said the law was
unconstitutional and will have serious repercussions on people’s rights and
freedom of expression.

“There are practical difficulties in implementing the law,” he said,
“especially in the current environment when there is no foreign currency in
the country. The equipment to monitor communications has to be imported, and
I doubt if the service providers have the capacity to do so. They will find
it difficult to adequately monitor communications, particularly e-mails. “

The president of the Law Society of Zimbabwe, Beatrice Mtetwa, said
the law could be challenged in the Supreme Court.

She said: “They had been intercepting before the debate, and what this
law simply does is to legalise what they have already been doing”.

The spokesperson of the Morgan Tsvangirai anti-Senate faction of the
MDC, Nelson Chamisa, condemned Zanu PF for using Parliament to deprive
people of their liberties.

International Herald Tribune

By Michael Wines
Published: August 2, 2007

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe: Earlier this month, shortly after President Robert Mugabe proposed legislation mandating a gradual transfer of ownership of all businesses to “indigenous” citizens, a Zimbabwean businessman received an unexpected telephone call.
The caller, a stranger, said that he represented a group of indigenous investors. The investors, he said, would like to discuss the merchant’s plans for complying with the coming ownership law.

There is a flip side to Zimbabwe’s incrementally unfolding human tragedy, and this is it: as 11 million or more people descend into destitution, a tiny slice of the population is becoming ever more powerful and wealthy at their expense.No one outside of Mugabe’s inner circle, of course, can say with certainty why he has pursued a series of policies since 2000 that have produced economic and social bedlam. For his part, Mugabe says Zimbabwe’s chaos is the product of a Western plot to reassert colonial rule.

Among many outside that circle, however, the growing conviction is that Zimbabwe’s descent is neither the result of paranoia nor Mugabe’s longstanding belief in Marxist economic theory. Instead, they say, Zimbabwe is fast becoming a kleptocracy, and the government’s seemingly inexplicable policies are in fact preserving and expanding it.

“Their sole interest is in maintaining power by any means,” David Coltart, a Bulawayo lawyer and politician, said this week. “I think their calculation is that the rest of Africa is not going to do anything to stop them, and the West is distracted by Iraq and Afghanistan. The platinum mines can keep the core of the elite living in the manner they’re accustomed to - just in a sea of poverty.”

By Clemence Manyukwe Staff Reporter
Financial Gazette
2nd August 2007

THE collapse of opposition unity talks is like manna from heaven for President Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF and creates an unimpeded path for them to march to victory in next year’s polls, analysts say.

Arthur Mutambara, leader of one faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), at the weekend attacked factional rival Morgan Tsvangirai, describing him as an “intellectual midget” and a “weak and indecisive leader”.Blaming his rival for the failure of attempts to re-unite the two groupings, Mutambara vowed his party would field its own candidate against Tsvangirai and President Mugabe when harmonised elections are held next year. “If Morgan Tsvangirai is such a weak and indecisive leader who cannot embrace what ordinary Zimbabweans are demanding (unity), is he worthy of the presidency of this country? Zimbabweans deserve better leadership.”

Explaining why his faction pulled out of the Save Zimbabwe coalition of opposition groups, Mutambara said the grouping had “become a vehicle to solely advance the perverted agenda of Morgan Tsvangirai”.

However, at a rally in Kuwadzana the following day, Tsvangirai said he remained committed to unity, although he will launch his election campaign in September.

Negotiations collapsed after Tsvangirai refused to publicly endorse a code of conduct ending hostilities and leading to a coalition pact, Mutambara claimed.

The latest mudslinging comes after months of bickering between the factions, which began when the MDC split into entities in October 2005 over disagreements about participating in senate elections.

Analysts say the undoubted beneficiary of the bickering is President Mugabe and his party.Lovemore Madhuku, chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), said those who understood the MDC had never expected the two factions to re-unite because of what he termed “fundamental personality differences” between its founding figures.