The Herald

FIFTEEN ambassadors of the European Union accredited to Zimbabwe and the Head of Delegation of the European Commission are this week visiting EU-funded projects in Manicaland Province.

The visit, which is organised by the delegation of the EC, is taking the ambassadors to Rusape, Nyanga and Mutare, where several EU-funded projects are under implementation.

In a statement this week, the head of the EC in Zimbabwe, Mr Xavier Marchal, said the visit would cover a food distribution operation organised by the World Food Programme with EU funding in Rusape and a tour of an agricultural project funded by ECHO, the humanitarian department of the EC.

The ambassadors will also visit the Sangano Dairy Project. The dairy project, funded by the EU since 2001, involves the establishment of milk processing centre and improvement of the farmers’ dairy herd and on farm production through training. The project is part of the Micro Project Programme (MPP) covering the whole country.

They will also visit the NATPHARM regional storage centre in Mutare. This is part of an EU health support programme, which mainly deals with the procurement of vital and essential medicines, vaccines, hospital equipment and spare parts to be used by public health institutions.

However, eyebrows have been raised after the EC statement revealed that the ambassadors would hold a meeting at the Mutare office of the Legal Resources Foundation (LRF), a project whose objective they say is to encourage a democratic environment in Zimbabwe and the respect of people’s rights. But most Zimbabweans know the LRF as a group of anti-Zimbabwe lawyers formerly headed by MDC secretary for legal affairs Mr David Coltart.

The EU imposed illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe after being drawn into the bilateral dispute between Harare and London.

Zanu-PF Secretary for Information and Publicity Cde Nathan Shamuyarira urged the EU ambassadors to stop practising double standards.

“They must stop the double standards where on one hand they say they are funding humanitarian projects yet on the other they are imposing illegal sanctions on Zimbabweans,” he said.

Cde Shamuyarira urged the EU envoys to direct their energies towards advising authorities in their native countries to lift the illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe when they meet in Brussels, Belgium, next month.

“EU ambassadors should report to their capitals that Zimbabwe is an internally democratic country. In the last 10 months we have had elections of parliamentary candidates and senators, including for those constituencies they are visiting,” he added. In their statement, the ambassadors said the EU restricted its co-operation with Zimbabwe in February 2002.

“Financial support for projects has been suspended, except that in direct support of the population, in particular in the social sectors. Contributions to operations of a humanitarian nature have not been affected. The EU is also supporting activities to support democratisation, the respect of human rights and the rule of law.”

Political analyst and head of the Media and Information Commission Dr Tafataona Mahoso dismissed the ambassadors’ statement as Euro-speak propaganda.

“You know what happened to Afghanistan when (American president) George Bush dropped bombs that resembled food packages.

This is what is happening here. You should count the number of times they (ambassadors) say ‘humanitarian’ in their statement. The overemphasis on humanitarianism shows that this is not at all humanitarian. One cannot claim humanitarianism but should be seen to be humanitarian,” Dr Mahoso said.

He added that the visit to the LRF offices gives the whole plot away, saying the organisation was at the centre of defining human rights as “white rights” and the rule of law as “rule of white law”.

LRF was at the forefront of legal challenges launched by white, former commercial farmers in protest at the acquisition of white-held farms earmarked for resettlement.

Daily Telegraph (UK)

Harare – Owners of property next to President Robert Mugabe’s retirement mansion have received written warning that their houses will be confiscated by the state. The move represents the first time Zimbabwe’s elite, both black and white, have suffered at first hand. Millions of Zimbabweans were affected by last year’s “clearances” of urban shantytowns and much of the rural population hit by Mr Mugabe’s war on white farmers. But, until now, many members of the aristocracy have escaped unscathed – and even set up home in close proximity to his putative retirement home. Mr Mugabe, 82 next month, has nearly completed a huge luxury residence which will cost more than £6 million. It is probably the largest private dwelling in Africa. The three floors amount to approximately four acres and include a ballroom, media complex and 24 bedrooms. The Chinese-styled palace overlooks dams and a newly-planted 50-acre garden protected by a 12ft wall. The interior includes a Moroccan-style public room plastered by north African craftsmen. Original Chinese decorations have been used in several other public rooms. The palace is overlooked by scores of luxury residences, some still under construction in a special estate, Borrowdale Brooke, about 18 miles north of Harare. The first 15 homeowners at Borrowdale had warning letters on Wednesday from the valuation department of the Local Government Ministry. “This serves to advise you that your property falls in a designated security area in terms of general notice of 255 of 2004, and we will be in contact with you soon with a view to inspecting your house for valuation purposes.”

Scores more residents living in lanes around the palace say they are sure they will receive similar letters soon. Among them are older couples hoping to sell their homes and retire closer to children who left Zimbabwe during the upheavals of the past six years. “We will never be able to get out now,” said an 84-year-old woman. An estate agent specialising in Borrowdale properties, said: “These letters wiped out the value of any property close to the president’s palace. Those who have actually received letters warning them their homes will be acquired must know that they will never be able to sell their homes and that they will receive no compensation.” The Zimbabwe government is bankrupt and is struggling to pay its civil servants’ wages. It has no money to import essentials such as fuel. Only a handful of more than 4,000 white farmers whose homes, lands and businesses were confiscated by the state in the past six years received compensation, in most cases less than two per cent of the value of their property. David Coltart, a legal spokesman of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said: “Mugabe’s house has been under construction for years and this irrational, bankrupt regime only notifies residents now.”

Newsweek
By Joshua Hammer

Inside the hidden links between American big-game hunters and Zimbabwe’s Mugabe dictatorship

Jocelyn Chiwenga is not a woman to be taken lightly. The wife of Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, commander-in-chief of Zimbabwe’s armed forces, Mrs. Chiwenga has earned a reputation in her own right as a vicious enforcer for President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu PF. In April 2002 she reportedly showed up at a farm outside Harare, the capital, with an armed gang and ordered the farm’s white owner to turn over his property to her or be killed, according to documents filed in a Zimbabwean court. One year later, Chiwenga accosted Gugulethu Moyo, an attorney for a pro-opposition newspaper, and beat her so severely that she had to seek medical attention. “Your paper wants to encourage anarchy in this country,” Chiwenga reportedly shouted as she punched and slapped the 28-year-old lawyer on a Harare street. “Chiwenga is as close to the center of power as you get,” says David Coltart, a parliamentarian of the Movement for Democratic Change, the country’s main opposition party. She also knows how to use her power. About three years ago, Chiwenga won an auction for a coveted lease on a 220-square-mile tract of bush, owned by Zimbabwe’s Parks and Wildlife Authority, located just outside Hwange National Park in southwest Zimbabwe. Abounding in the Big Five – lion, elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard, and black rhino – Chiwenga’s property has since become a choice destination for professional hunters, particularly well-heeled Americans.

Now, Chiwenga’s business ambitions – as well as her political clout – have brought her to the attention of the U.S. government. Last November, the Treasury Department added Chiwenga, 50, to a list of 128 Mugabe relatives and cronies who are “undermining democratic processes or institutions in Zimbabwe.” The Treasury Department has blocked the assets of those on the list and established penalties of up to $250,000 and 10 years’ imprisonment for anyone who does business with them. And that executive order has put dozens, if not hundreds, of Americans who hunt on her land in legal jeopardy. Chiwenga’s sanctioning by the U.S. government has drawn new attention to the unsavory, and usually hidden, links between American sportsmen and the Mugabe dictatorship. During the past six years, Zimbabwe’s economy has been in free fall, with the country’s gross domestic product dropping by half and agricultural production sinking by more than 80 percent. But hunting has remained one of the country’s few thriving industries, bringing in as much as $30 million annually, according to conservationists and professional hunters in Zimbabwe. Much of that cash has gone into the coffers of Zanu PF insiders, who have gained control of government-owned safari land at below market prices, reportedly through rigged auctions in many cases.

One of Chiwenga’s neighbors in the Victoria Falls area is Webster Shamu, Mugabe’s Minister of Policy Implementation, and a key architect of Operation Murambatsvina – “Clean out the Rubbish” – the brutal slum clearance program that has left some 700,000 poor black Zimbabweans homeless. (Shamu is among the original 77 insiders who had their assets frozen and were barred from entering the United States by the Treasury Department in 2003). Another big player is Jacob Mudenda, the former governor of Matabeleland North. All of them do a brisk business catering to professional American hunters, who make up about half of the clientele, according to industry insiders. The Mugabe cronies-turned-safari operators are usually careful to conceal their direct involvement in the hunting business. Jocelyn Chiwenga, for example, seems to work through a network of agents that markets safaris heavily in the United States but never reveal the name of the property’s primary lease holder.

Among them: Rob and Barry Style, owners of Buffalo Range Safaris, based in Harare. The Style brothers are regular participants at the Annual Hunters’ Convention scheduled for next week in Reno, Nevada – a three-day marketing extravaganza sponsored by Safari Club International, America’s largest hunting club – and at other venues where American hunters congregate. Although Rob Style denied in an e-mail to Newsweek that he had a business relationship with Chiwenga, several professional hunters in Zimbabwe insist that the brothers have frequently taken clients to shoot animals on her property. The Hunting Guide, an industry newsletter published in the United States, also names Buffalo Range Safaris as a hunting-safari operator on Chiwenga-owned land. Asked whether Safari Club International was concerned about the prospect of facilitating commercial links between American hunters and a sanctioned Zimbabwean figure, David Nagore, an SCI spokesman, says “On the advice of counsel, SCI has no comment on the matter.” American hunters are also flocking to private-game reserves that were seized without compensation, and sometimes with violence, from white farmers and ranchers as part of Mugbe’s radical land-reform program, which reached a peak in 2002. That property is now mostly in the hands of Zanu PF activists and Zimbabwe independence war veterans – considered to be among Mugabe’s most diehard supporters.

While hunting on these properties doesn’t violate U.S. sanctions, human-rights activists and political opposition figures in Zimbabwe say that it is morally objectionable and helps to give legitimacy to a repressive regime. In addition, it is on these ranches, Zimbabwe conservationists charge, that some of the worst abuses of the country’s environment are taking place-abuses that could threaten the survival of Zimbabwe’s rich wildlife, especially the endangered black rhino. Many of the land owners who took this property by force have no experience in wildlife conservation: they reportedly ignore strict hunting quotas established by the Wildlife Authority on prized species such as lion and leopard. They also allegedly kill animals, including rhino, inside protected wildlife areas such as Hwange National Park, one of southern Africa’s most renowned game reserves. “Poaching is rife,” says Johnny Rodrigues, the head of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, a private activist group. “There’s no law and order here.”

Sorting through the thicket of charges and countercharges can be difficult. Larry Cumming, a white rancher, purchased Woodland Estates near Victoria Falls more than 30 years ago and developed it into one of the country’s best hunting and safari reserves. “I built dams, fenced the property, sunk 22 boreholes, purchased wildlife,” he says. But in 2001 the Mugabe regime forced him to surrender half his property – and half his hunting revenue – to 89 destitute Zimbabwean families as part of its land-redistribution plan. Threats were exchanged and, in 2003, Cumming and his wife fled the ranch and moved to Victoria Falls. At that point, a local safari company, Inyathi Hunting – partly owned by Mudenda, the former provincial governor and a close associate of Mugabe – signed a deal with the ranch’s new owners to take over commercial hunts on the property. During the past two years, Cumming charges, Inyathi has been ignoring quotas, hunting for game on other properties, and failing to keep track of wounded animals – a serious violation of hunting ethics. “Inyathi is hunting there knowing that they will not have the property forever, so there’s pillage and rape [of the environment],” Cumming charges.

Steve Williams, the founder of Inyathi and now a marketing consultant for the company, says that he and his partners had no qualms about buying rights to hunt on land that Cummings says was stolen from him. “If your government goes with it [as a policy], then you have to go with it,” he says. Williams claims that Cumming is spreading untrue reports because he is embittered about losing the property. “I can’t condemn the man for being emotional about something that’s been his for years, but we were never a part of that,” he says. He argues that much of the hunting revenue benefits poor black Zimbabweans who wouldn’t have shared the wealth during the days of white ownership. “The 89 black families who have taken over Woodland Estate now have safe drinking water, a better standard of living, an income. We’ve taken the blows, the allegations, the ridicule of people like Cumming. But we’re operating the property in a manner that we are proud of,” Williams says.

That may be so. But in September 2005, Mudenda, along with three other top officials of Zanu PF, were accused by a conservation group in Zimbabwe of using fake hunting permits and poaching wildlife in the Intensive Conservation Areas in Matabeleland, established by the government in 1991 to protect rhino, elephant, lion and other prized species. All have denied the charges. Debate also swirls around what many industry sources call the most controversial operator in Zimbabwe: Out of Africa Safaris. Founded by four former South African policemen and based in both South Africa and Overland Park, Kan., the company has done a brisk business taking a heavily American clientele to hunt on several ranches that, according to industry watchdogs in Zimbabwe, were seized by Zanu PF activists and independence war veterans. Critics, including the Zimbabwean Association of Tourism and Safari Operators, say that the group uses poorly trained hunting guides who, among other violations, sometimes endanger the lives of their clients and overhunt species in violation of the Zimbabwean government’s hunting rules.

Zimbabwe’s Parks and Wildlife Authority banned Out of Africa last year from operating in the country. “This is an unscrupulous organization that doesn’t respect the environment and pursues unsustainable quotas,” says David Coltart, the opposition leader. Conservationist Johnny Rodrigues calls the company the most “flagrant violator” of hunting regulations in Zimbabwe. Dawie Groenewald, one of the founding partners of Out of Africa, denies that his company has done anything ethically wrong and says that he has been slandered by white Zimbabwean hunters. “The white Zimbabweans hunting in Zim don’t want anyone else coming in there to hunt – they hate South Africans coming to hunt in their kingdom,” he told Newsweek. Out of Africa’s attorney, Kevin Anderson, says that “these allegations about poaching and other illegal activities have been floating around for several years and they’ve never been substantiated.” Anderson also says that Out of Africa recently decided to stop organizing hunts in Zimbabwe because “it’s just become too difficult.” Whatever the case, next week in Reno, Out of Africa will set up its usual booth at the SCI convention – just down the hall from Buffalo Range Safaris, according to the SCI Web site. But for the hundreds of American sportsmen browsing for an African safari next week, finding out the full story of those two companies’ activities in Zimbabwe will require a real hunting expedition

The Zimbabwean

EDITOR – In a development that shocked many Zimbabweans a couple of years ago, the State owned daily newspaper, The Herald carried full page headline story which gave the profile of MDC Secretary-General, Professor Welshman Ncube. It was very rare for the state owned media to give positive coverage to anyone in the opposition. Zimbabweans had gotten used to stories that denigrated the MDC leaders, Morgan Tsvangirai and Professor Welshman Ncube included. In a rare admission, Professor Ncube admitted in that article that he was not a natural politician. A few years down the line, Professor Ncube has proved beyond doubt his own personal assessment of himself in an article carried in the Daily Mirror of 4 January 2006: “Even if Zanu (PF) says there is an election for a toilet caretaker we will participate”, Professor Ncube is reported to have said these words when he addressed over 600 pro-Senate supporters in Mt Pleasant after the restructuring of his faction’s Mashonaland West, Mashonaland Central and Harare provincial executive committees. Like a few other officials in the pro-senate faction, which the professor himself prefers to call the “pro respect for the MDC constitution group”, Professor Ncube had, since the beginning of the crisis that has split the party leaders into two opposing camps, been saying that he was only supporting the idea to participate in Zimbabwe’s senatorial elections because there are others within the party who think it is necessary to participate in these elections. But the statement he made in Mount Pleasant, which in essence means that he thinks that we have to participate in every election Mugabe comes up with, even if it is irrelevant. The MDC opposed the re-introduction of a senate, but in a surprising turn, some officials of the party decided that the party had to participate in the senate elections, even though many prominent Zimbabweans, including the MDC’s Secretary for Legal Affairs, David Coltart, described the senate as an irrelevant institution in Zimbabwe. It would appear from Professor Ncube’s statement that he has been pursuing his own interests under the guise of protecting the democratic rights of those MDC officials who wanted the party to participate in the senate elections. One cannot rule out the possibility that he could be the very person who sold the idea to have the MDC participate in the senate elections, which idea was quickly bought up especially by those who saw the possibility of making easy money as senators. Thank you Professor Ncube for showing your true colours. Having admitted that he is not a natural politician, the best Professor Ncube can do is to quit politics and concentrate on his legal profession or farming. There are unconfirmed reports that Professor Ncube has not been evicted from a farm he owns in the Midlands Province of Zimbabwe because he got it from Mugabe’s Zanu (PF).

Benjamin Chitate, Auckland, New Zealand

Zimonline

HARARE – Too many of Zimbabwe’s judges and magistrates have benefited from the government’s political largesse that the bench could not be deemed independent, local human rights lawyers and activists said yesterday. The lawyers and activists were reacting to a statement by Judge President Paddington Garwe, when he opened Zimbabwe’s legal year yesterday that the bench was independent and not subservient to President Robert Mugabe and his ruling ZANU PF party. Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) executive director Arnold Tsunga, said the general consensus among the legal fraternity in the country was that the judiciary was compromised both at the personal level of individual judges and at the institutional level. “Let’s look at conditions of employment of the judiciary. The judges and magistrates are mired in poverty, the Judge President mentioned it. The conditions of service are not attractive to the extent that it will be difficult for them to have personal independence when they are economically compromised,” said Tsunga. Tsunga – whose ZHLR has taken Mugabe’s government to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) accusing it of violating human rights, undermining the judiciary and the rule of law – said judges had compromised themselves by accepting land controversially seized from whites. Some of Zimbabwe’s judges such as Justices Ben Hlatshwayo and Chinembiri Bhunu allegedly personally invaded farms while several other judicial officers were also allocated land by Mugabe’s government. Tsunga said: “A number (of judicial officers) have accepted farms which are contested. These farms have not come as written perks (in their contracts of
employment) but as discretion perks by politicians.
“When judges and magistrates are being given and accept discretion perks because of poverty, surely their personal independence is compromised as well. Institutionally, they are also compromised because the operating environment is providing them with serious challenges. Judges are given political cases to handle by politicians bent on settling personal scores.” Top human rights lawyer and the faction-riddled opposition Movement for Democratic Change party’s spokesman on legal affairs David Coltart said the bench’s failure to deal expeditiously with political cases had also cast doubt on its independence and professionalism. Coltart said: “The problem with this judiciary is that it is not seen as independent because of what happened in the last five years in terms of failure to deal with certain political cases expeditiously.” He was referring to the courts’ failure to finalise several petitions by MDC candidates against victory by ZANU PF candidates during elections in the past five years including the petition by the opposition party’s leader Morgan Tsvangirai against Mugabe’s re-election in 2002. Although election petitions are dealt with as urgent, the High Court has over the last three years failed to conclude Tsvangirai’s petition forcing the MDC leader to appeal last year to the Supreme Court, the country’s highest court of law. Officially opening the 2006 legal year, Garwe defended Zimbabwe’s judiciary as independent and professional and challenged critics of the bench to come out in the open and point out their specific grievances to judicial authorities. Zimbabwe’s bench – reconstituted over the last five years after Mugabe purged independent judges – has been criticised by both local and international rights groups for failure to defend the rights of ordinary citizens and opposition activists in the face of increasing repression by the government.

Zimbabwe Independent

THE Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) national council yesterday passed a vote of no confidence in executive members of the pro-senate faction, barring them from carrying out party functions until the party congress next year.

The resolution suspends deputy president Gibson Sibanda, secretary-general Welshman Ncube and his deputy Gift Chimanikire, treasurer Fletcher Dulini-Ncube, information and publicity secretary Paul Themba Nyathi and secretary for policy and research Trudy Stevenson.

At a meeting attended by 57 of the 66-member council, the body adopted a resolution to “dissociate with the pro-senate group” by invoking members’ constitutional right to freedom of association.

“The council resolves that pending their availability for party business, the national council resolves to exercise its freedom of association by not associating with the deputy president, secretary-general, deputy secretary-general, the treasurer-general, the secretary for information and publicity and the secretary for policy and research, among others,” says the resolution passed by delegates from all provinces except Matabeleland South.

Analysts say the resolution was crafted in such a manner as to hobble efforts by the pro-senate group to take their case to court over party assets.

In what is seen as a victory for party leader Morgan Tsvangirai and chairman Isaac Matongo against the pro-senate group, the national council reposed authority to convene all future council meetings in the secretariat while stripping Welshman Ncube of his administrative duties to arrange such meetings.

Youth chairman and MP for Kuwadzana Nelson Chamisa was mandated to take over the role of party spokesman from Nyathi.

The national council resolved that in the absence of Ncube, Dulini-Ncube, and Nyathi since October 12 when differences over participation in senatorial election split the party into two factions, Isaac Matongo would take over their functions.

The council also nullified Tsvangirai’s suspension from the party by the pro-senate group while upholding the suspension imposed on Job Sikhala, MP for St Mary’s.

Sikhala was suspended for his allegations that the MDC received funding from Taiwan, Nigeria and Ghana. He later retracted the allegations.

But the pro-senate group, which rebuffed yesterday’s meeting, fired its own salvo, saying it would not attend a “kangaroo” meeting by a former leader who now has no mandate to call meetings.

Commenting on the resolution to “dissociate” from them, Nyathi said it was misplaced and had no legal standing. It was carried out by people with nothing constructive to do, he said.

“How do you stop a political activist from doing what he has dedicated his life to doing?” Nyathi said.

“It is the most puerile resolution from anyone claiming a desire to confront this regime. It’s nothing exciting. They assume we want to associate with them.”

He disputed the composition of the meeting that resolved to “dissociate” itself from the pro-senate group, saying nine of the provinces did not attend the meeting. Nyathi said those who attended were picked from the streets for the purpose of achieving a quorum.

“That is what people like us are uncomfortable with,” he said.

The two groups are embroiled in an argument over the suspension of Tsvangirai by the Sibanda-led disciplinary committee whose composition has come under the spotlight.

Nyathi said the party would still take Tsvangirai to a disciplinary hearing before congress.

Tsvangirai has scoffed at the suspension saying only the MDC national congress can suspend him.

MDC legal affairs secretary David Coltart said the disciplinary committee had powers to suspend anyone in the party including the president, according to Article 10.4 of the MDC founding constitution.

Zimbabwe Independent
Editor’s Memo

I THOROUGHLY enjoyed the piece we ran on our opinion pages last week by veteran journalist Bill Saidi.

In a typically rasp allegory, Saidi had this to say about the Anti-Corruption minister Paul Mangwana’s hairstyle: “He will always be remembered for a very peculiar hairstyle; or the lack of one. His hair looks uncombed most of the time. Perhaps this is how he wants to be recognised; as Harold Wilson was recognised by his pipe, Margaret Thatcher by her hats, Helmut Schmidt by his snuff, Fidel Castro by his beard and Mugabe by his dyed hair.”

Sithembiso Nyoni’s head is always adorned with fascinating hairstyles and perhaps that could be how she wants to be recognised. Like the Indian premier Morarji Desai who drank his own urine for medicinal purposes, everything about her demeanour appears normal and straightforward until her political life is factored in. Desai eventually let out the shocking secret about his life and his whole history drowned in the acrid liquid.

Perchance Sithembiso will one day tell us the secret of her political survival and how she appears to have become an extremely useful person in the government of President Mugabe.

She does not need to win an election to remain in government. She appears to live a charmed life in which the presidential crane is always at hand to pluck her from the political scrapyard, which is where the electorate in Zimbabwe believes she belongs.

The president was involved in one such rescue operation this week after Sithembiso lost in last weekend’s senate vote in Magwegwe-Lobengula.

To finish off the operation, President Mugabe then put up a mesmerising juggling act. Edna Madzongwe, a non-constituency MP and deputy Speaker of Parliament, was shifted from the lower house to become President of the Senate. The vacancy in the lower house then went to Sithembiso and with it, the reappointment to the portfolio of Small Enterprises Development minister.

She has now lost three times in national elections. She has beaten the record set by veteran politician Enos Nkala who was never able to win an election despite his long history in nationalist politics.

Nkala lost the first-past-the-post poll in Bulawayo in 1985 and 1990 when he had to be accommodated in the Kariba constituency amid protests from Mash West voters. Sithembiso is joined in the league of serial losers by former Bulawayo mayor Joshua Malinga who has also lost in three elections. He has also been appointed non-constituency senator.

Sithembiso was in 2000 routed by MDC’s Thokozani Khuphe in Makokoba. She was appointed a non-constituency member and given the post of Minister of State for Economic Development.

In April she was appointed minister when she was not an MP. She had lost the March poll in the Bulawayo South constituency to the MDC’s David Coltart. Before contesting in Bulawayo, she had literally camped in Nkayi where again the electorate thought she was not the right candidate for them.

So parliament for a brief period this year had 121 MPs because our constitution tolerates this strange arrangement for 90 days during which a constituency should be found for the extra MP. Another juggling act could have saved her.

Ray Kaukonde, who was MP for Mudzi, was appointed governor of Mashonaland East which called for a by-election in the constituency.

However, that did not save the day for her. She reportedly could not take up the offer because the people there did not know her.

In August, having failed to find a constituency, she mutated from minister to become a consultant in the Office of the President.

Attending the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries congress in Nyanga in September, delegates sarcastically bestowed on her a new title of “Honourable Consultant”. But she is back to her former glory as honourable minister. I wonder why she had to go through another embarrassing electoral defeat to regain her post in government.

The story of Sithembiso is a graphic example of a leader subverting the will of the people. She is the epitome of political patronage which is the hallmark of failed governments. If she is not a beneficiary of sheltered employment, then she has to prove that she is too important to be missing from the list of ministers in Mugabe’s government.

She may want to claim credit for mushrooming SMEs in urban centres. She should be reminded though that this was a natural process wrought by the closure of big businesses due to the inclement economic environment.

Under her watch the SMEs and the informal sectors have failed to contribute to national development through taxes and other government levies. Under normal circumstances she should have been swept away by the Murambatsvina tide together with ramshackle shelters housing the informal sector.

She has survived three election defeats but remained in government. Is this how she wants to be remembered?

New Zimbabwe

ZIMBABWE’S warring opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party on Wednesday sought a court interdict against its leader restraining him from conducting business on behalf of the party.

The MDC has been rocked by factional fighting, culminating in last week’s suspension of Morgan Tsvangirai by the party’s seven-member disciplinary committee. Four members of that committee came up with the decision.

Tsvangirai now has 10 days to show cause why a final order should not be issued against him — barring him from representing the party at any level and compelling him to surrender all MDC property.

The court action followed Tsvangirai’s defiance of his suspension announced in a letter by his deputy and chairman of the party’s disciplinary committee, Gibson Sibanda.

Sibanda said Tsvangirai had “acted in wilful violation of the MDC constitution” and was suspended from conducting any party business. Tsvangirai was also instructed to hand over all MDC property and relinquish his perks.

MDC sources told New Zimbabwe.com last night that Tsvangirai had planned to file his own court petition on Wednesday, objecting to being prevented from entering the party’s Harvest House headquarters or using MDC cars.

Tsvangirai’s camp appeared to have noted that there could be a technical way out of the suspension because all MDC properties are registered in the names of two directors — Ian Makoni and Reverend Tim Neil of the Anglican Church.

All the properties, however, are owned and maintained by the MDC.

Tsvangirai’s arguments are now likely to be heard within the next 10 days during which he has to oppose the granting of a final order.

Tsvangirai, through his spokesman William Bango, has claimed that the MDC constitution did not provide for the suspension of the president, although this has been rejected by the party’s legal affairs secretary, David Coltart.

Bango has also suggested that Sibanda is an interested party who has already taken a position in the conflict, thereby disqualifying him from acting as an impartial judge on the matter.

The MDC split was dramatised by differences over the Senate, a newly created legislative body whose elections were held at the weekend.

Sibanda and other senior colleagues say Tsvangirai breached the party’s constitution when he went against a vote of the party’s national council supporting participation in the senate elections.

Sibanda’s group fielded 26 candidates out of a possible 50, and gained seven seats in the MDC’s traditional stronghold of Matabeleland.

Analysts say while Sibanda’s camp has an upper hand on the legal front, “Tsvangirai controls the political temperatures” and his position enjoys popular support.

Some among Tsvangirai’s camp are openly talking of starting a new group called the Resistance Movement to wage a democratic struggle against President Robert Mugabe’s autocratic administration.

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.”