Mugabe Denies Jimmy Carter Visa for Humanitarian Fact Finding Visit

Celia W. Dugger reports for the New York Times from Johannesburg that Jimmy Carter, who is the same age as Mugabe, has been refused a visa to enter Zimbabwe along with Kofi Anan and Graca Machel. Dugger reports that Carter "...had never before been denied a visa."

Dugger writes:

"Mr. Mugabe’s decision to forbid a humanitarian visit by Mr. Carter, former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan and Nelson Mandela’s wife Graca Machel was a measure of the Zimbabwean leader’s disdain for international opinion at a time when deepening hunger, raging hyperinflation and the collapse of health, sanitation and education services have crippled Zimbabwe.

He refused to let them fly into the country, they said, despite the intervention of both South Africa’s current president, Kgalema Motlanthe, and his recently ousted predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, who is mediating power-sharing talks between Mr. Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader who bested him in the March general election.

“It seems obvious to me that leaders of the government are immune to reaching out for help for their own people,” Mr. Carter said at a press conference in Johannesburg.

Mr. Carter said Zimbabwe's ambassador in Washington had advised him he would not be issued a visa after he applied for one several weeks ago, but he said the staff of the group sponsoring the trip, The Elders, thought the three of them would be get visas to enter the country on landing at the airport. A very senior official advised them Friday evening that they would not be allowed to enter the country.

Zimbabwe’s information minister, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, reached Saturday on his cell phone, said that he had been in an all day meeting and was unable to comment. The state-owned newspaper, The Herald, reported on Thursday that the threesome had been told to come later because the government was busy with power-sharing negotiations and the planting season."

Apparently the cell phone farmers in ZANU(PF) are busier planting than negotiating.

In the meantime, the death toll from the cholera outbreak, lack of medical services, and starvation continue to mount.

The big question moving forward is how the international community can continue to offer humanitarian aid while also exerting what little leverage it has on Mugabe. The parallels with the Burma regime and the Mugabe regime are increasingly clear based on this weekend's response to the group of Elders attempts to intervene on the behalf of the people of Zimbabwe.

The World Food Program's Work in Zimbabwe

The World Food Program's efforts in Zimbabwe will require an additional $140 million dollars if the food is to be available through the April 2009, according to the WFP in October, 2008.

The WFP report includes reference to malnourished children:

"In Zimbabwe, 28 percent of children under five are already chronically malnourished.

To boost its already-substantial logistics operation, WFP has opened a new transhipment point in the central town of Gweru and a new warehouse in the South African border town of Musina, which has the capacity to bag 50,000 tons of food over the next six months.

But these plans are all subject to sufficient donations arriving in time. WFP currently faces a shortfall of over 145,000 metric tons of food, including 110,000 tons of cereals. Without extra donations, WFP will run out of supplies in January – just as needs are peaking."

In addition, the WFP report gives details on the donor support as of October 2008:

“Our donors have been extraordinarily generous over the past six years, but the food crisis is far from over. We are urging them to dig deep once again,” said Darboe, adding that cash donations will allow WFP to purchase crucial commodities regionally.

In addition to WFP’s beneficiaries, a group of US-sponsored NGOs known as C-SAFE plans to provide food to over 1 million Zimbabweans in districts not covered by WFP. With these two humanitarian pipelines, food assistance should reach around 5 million people at the peak of the crisis.

While WFP has received almost US$175 million so far in 2008, another US$140 million is urgently needed to fund WFP’s huge emergency operation until April 2009.

Donors to WFP’s operations in Zimbabwe in 2008 include: United States (US$105 million); United Kingdom (US$18 million); Australia (US$14 million); Netherlands (US$11 million); EC (US$10 million); Canada (US$6 million); Japan (US$3 million); Norway (US$2 million); Switzerland (US$1.8 million); Ireland (US$1.5 million); Sweden (US$ 1.2 million); Italy (US$780,000); Spain (US$470,000); and, Greece (US$72,000)."

Given that SADC has recently given Mugabe and ZANU(PF) their "green-light" to do as they please, it would seem helpful if these countries did more in feeding those Zimbabweans who are now in need. It also seems the height of folly for Mugabe to continue to blame the targeted sanctions again himself and his cronies for the failure of the Zimbabwean economy, when the same countries who are imposing these sanctions are spending such large sums of money to feed those in need.

South Africa gets tough with Zimbabwe as Gold Mining Sector is "virtually shut down"

The Financial Times reports today that the South African government is using its promised AID to Zimbabwe as leverage to push Mugabe's ZANU(PF) and the MDC to agree on the terms of the power-sharing agreement.

The article states:

"But the power struggle between Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, his old foe, has overshadowed daily hardships including food and fuel shortages that have driven millions of Zimbabweans out of the country and strained regional economies.

Zimbabwe’s rival parties will meet with former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who is mediating, next week in South Africa to discuss the deadlock, the South African foreign ministry said.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) group of nations has failed to push Zimbabwe’s parties to settle their differences and get on with the task of rescuing the economy.

Regional power South Africa said it was disappointed to note that ”political interests have taken priority at the expense of the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans”.

”Cabinet decided that the approved R300 ($28.33m) will be retained for agricultural assistance to Zimbabwe,” said a cabinet statement.

”However, this money will be only disbursed once a representative government was in place and in time for the next planting season in April 2009.”

In addition, the article notes the failing of Zimbabwe's gold mining sector:

"The world’s highest inflation rate - above 231m per cent - has made life unbearable for Zimbabweans. And there are new signs of economic deterioration in what used to be one of Africa’s most promising countries.

Zimbabwe’s gold output, which accounts for a third of its export earnings, hit an all-time monthly low of 125 kg in October as economic woes forced more mine closures, a mining official said on Thursday.

The sector has virtually shut down as miners cannot fund operations, senior Zimbabwe chamber of mines official Douglas Verden told Reuters."

Meanwhile, the ZANU(PF)'s Herald newspaper in Harare reports that smuggling is to blame for the destruction of the gold mining industry. Like illegal diamonds, the illegal gold trade is one more indication of how the Zimbabwean economy has been "eaten" by insiders to the point were it has lost any meaningful way to attract the foreign exchange necessary to run the economy.

The Herald reports:

"Producers of the precious metal list their constraints as being largely escalating production costs, frequent power outages, shortages of critical inputs such as cyanide, explosives, spare parts and mining equipment.

However, while gold producers moan over all these factors, many of them are guilty of big-scale smuggling.

The country has for sometime now been losing gold worth hundreds of millions of US dollars every month to smugglers.

Gold is one of the main sources of hard currency for the country, accounting for a third of its export earnings, but now very little of the precious metal is trickling in.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has regularly reviewed the local price of gold, in some cases awarding 10-fold increases, in a bid to curb smuggling and boost sagging deliveries, but this has apparently not paid off.

It means there is something wrong somewhere. Gold producers get 60 percent of their proceeds in foreign currency from what they deliver, but we understand that they have not been paid since March this year.

This is an area that needs urgent attention and against the background of escalating operating costs, it becomes imperative that the gold miners get the payment.

We believe and are confident that the central bank will honour its side of the equation.

However, the RBZ gets irked by the endemic smuggling, elements of indiscipline and side-marketing on the part of the gold producers, especially after they have received the support they need.

All the evidence of gold smuggling and the list of those responsible is there.

What is needed is to bring them to book.

There has been procrastination on arresting and prosecution of the smugglers of gold and other precious metals such as diamonds simply because there is big fish involved."

The Herald is not usually known for its use of understatement. But these are drastic times.

Issues of Retribution and Restorative Justice

The Los Angeles Times continues its excellent reporting from Harare with a story by Robyn Dixon in Harare, "In Zimbabwe, the hunters are now the hunted"

Dixon interviews former "Green Bombers" and other ZANU-PF thugs who had carried out political violence during the months between the March and June elections in 2008.

Dixon suggests that the thugs are now on the run and that in many places the MDC have reclaimed control over their areas and now the Green Bombers, or members of ZANU(PFs) youth militias are worried for their own safety.

Dixon writes:

"Samson Bopoto also spent months hiding in the countryside. Every night, he and other MDC activists expected to be killed.

"Now the tables have turned. It's now ZANU-PF are panicking," said Bopoto, 34, an MDC youth organizer who lives in a Harare township. He and his comrades have taken back the local bar. They sit for hours singing MDC songs, and the former ZANU-PF thugs are nowhere to be seen.

Sometimes the ex-thugs come to his house secretly at night, trying to buy forgiveness or at least protection.

Bopoto says it isn't easy to stop the MDC members from taking revenge. Many are waiting until Cabinet posts are settled and the MDC takes its share of power.

"Still, our wounds are open. . . . Just imagine seeing somebody who's the guy who beat up your mom. They say, 'Sorry guys, I was forced to do that.' But we still have a lot of pain."

The power-sharing deal leaves the way open for prosecutions. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai says Mugabe should not be held responsible for past crimes, but the question of immunity or prosecution for others hangs unanswered, poisoning the talks."

There are other interesting interpretations in the article, well worth reading in full.

Raises the important issue of restorative justice moving forward. To what extent is there going to be any serious attempt, this time after years of impunity, to force people to accept their personal responsibility for the acts of violence perpetrated on behalf of their political party?

Cholera epidemic in Harare worsens

Peta Thornycroft reports for the Voice of America of the increase in the number of deaths caused by cholera in Zimbabwe's capital. The deaths come at a time when the city's health services and hospitals have all but stopped functiong. Thornycroft writes:

"In Harare Tuesday, doctors from the state's largest hospital in Harare were prevented by riot police from demonstrating against the government's lack provision of medicines, equipment and living wages.

They have also demanded salaries in foreign currency. The Parirenyatwa Hospital where the doctors were demonstrating stopped admitting patients last month because specialist doctors refused to to work under the present conditions. Now the rest of the doctors have formally announced a work stoppage.

Zimbabwe University closed the country's only medical school Monday and sent all third fourth and fifth year students home because of what it describes as the prevailing conditions.

This unrest in the state medical fraternity comes against the background one of the worst cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe. Doctors Without Borders, which is trying to assist says 1.4 million people in Harare are now at risk of catching this preventable disease."

1.4 million people at risk of cholera in Harare. And ZANU(PF), SADC, and South Africa act as if there is no problem.

This is in addition to reports that up to 5 million people in the rural areas will likely need emergency food aid by January, and that the infrastructure is not available to bring in the necessary food to those who need it.

Jimmy Carter, Kofi Anan, and Grace Machel are reportedly planning to visit Zimbabwe this weekend. Let us hope they can get the humanitarian aid rolling in, the regional leaders seem satisfied with doing nothing beyond congratulating themselves for getting Mugabe and the rest of ZANU(PF) out of yet another stolen election.