Excerpt from "A billion lives"

Mugabe's response to Murambatsvina: Excerpt from "A billion lives"

By Jan Egeland

Tents are for Arabs

Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe looks older and frailer than I remembered him from photographs and film footage. He moves slowly and is thinner. He leans on the right arm of his chair for support as he speaks. As someone who campaigned against apartheid during my student years, I am slightly in awe of the hero of the liberation struggle against Ian Smith's white minority regime as he peers at me through thick glasses. I feel like a student undergoing an examination by an eminent professor. The president is notorious for keeping people waiting and I think we have done quite well to see him by 9:15 a.m. this rainy Tuesday, December 6, 2005, after only fifteen minutes in an anteroom of the presidential palace in Harare. I know this will be one of my most difficult missions and meetings ever.

Nearly three years earlier, my predecessor as UN relief coordinator, Kenzo Oshima, a more polite and diplomatic envoy than me, had been kept waiting for hours in the presidential antechambers before being lectured for an hour about UN shortcomings. This time, probably because of the international publicity surrounding my mission, we do not have to wait and it seems I will be allowed to speak uninterrupted. It is a unique opportunity to speak truth to power. Zimbabwe was called "the jewel" and "the bread basket" of Africa after its liberation from white minority rule in 1980. The economy, the infrastructure, and the educational system were among the best on the continent. Twenty-five years later it is synonymous with economic collapse and political repression. It started at the end of the 1990s. Large and productive farms were nationalized and white farmers were forced to hand over their estates to ill-prepared veterans from the liberation struggle and political activists from Mugabe's party, the Zanu PF.

The need for land reform in a country where a few white colonizers had claimed the best farming land is indisputable. But reform was brutally enforced in the worst possible manner for the farmers, the agricultural sector, and the population at large. Production plummeted, the black farm laborers lost their jobs, and little food made it to the markets or to foreign exports. A country that had had a large food surplus could not feed itself, and had to rely on foreign emergency aid and remittances from the growing number of Zimbabweans who have to leave the country to make a living. As both domestic and foreign investors fled the country, a general breakdown in the rule of law fueled the economic crisis. Mugabe's government was however undeterred and continued to fund ambitious public programs that principally benefited the political and tribal groups that supported the government. To cover the enormous state budget deficits the National Bank was instructed to print additional money that created inflation, and later hyperinflation. Today the Zimbabwean economy is arguably more mismanaged than any other in peacetime.

I am primarily going to discuss the massive homeless problem Mugabe has created almost overnight through his "Operation Restore Order," a brutal eviction campaign that began seven months ago. I spent hours yesterday walking among some of the seven hundred thousand destitute and homeless people who are living under makeshift plastic sheeting or in the open after being evicted from shantytowns across Zimbabwe. The evictions were not only particularly brutal and chaotic in the way they spread throughout the country, but profoundly political, turning out many who did not support the government party and leaving urban areas to regime supporters who would like cleaner and leaner cities and less competition for jobs. Those evicted were not only among the poorest and most vulnerable in the country, many were sick with AIDS or tuberculosis. I saw and spoke to dozens of families who had lost everything when their tiny "illegal" brick houses were bulldozed, or their small vending shacks burned and torn apart by security forces in an operation that began in May.

The presidential office is smaller and nicer than the grotesquely oversized staterooms that so many African presidents preside in. As planned, I start our discussion by describing the shocking scenes I saw in the slums of Hopely Farm, and the Whitecliff and Hatcliff suburbs on the outskirts of Harare. I explain that we need to discover how we can most rapidly and effectively help with food and shelter for the homeless. President Mugabe carefully enunciates each syllable in his academic English as though addressing someone who does not speak his language. He is immediately on the defensive. While acknowledging his awareness of "a problem," he seems intent on downplaying a situation that has scandalized the world with its callous indifference to human suffering. His most outrageous comment comes as I try to impress upon him the urgent need for emergency shelter for the thousands of families with children who are at great risk with no shelter, no food, and no income. The UN is willing to supply tents immediately as a short-term answer to the problem.

As I press, the tenor of Mugabe's calm, lecturing tone rises. There is a hint of barely repressed anger as he says, "We do not feel comfortable with the term 'shelter.' Shelter has connotations of impermanency and we build for permanency." As I seek to return to the need for immediate action he is clearly angered. "Keep your tents, we do not need them. Tents are for Arabs!" Stunned, I ask him to repeat what he said. "We want to give real houses to our people. Tents are for Arabs," he says again. It is a phrase that in its absurdity will reverberate through my office. "We may have an accommodation problem," Mugabe continues, "but the 700,000 figure is exaggerated. People can be sheltered by their families." He embarks on a semantics lecture, suggesting the term "shelter" sends the wrong meaning: "The word connotes impermanency. We want permanent housing here. In terms of humanitarian needs it is not even as bad here as in South Africa. The South Africans have sent delegations here to learn from our housing programs.

"When I was a boy herding my godfather's cattle and it rained I looked for 'shelter' where I could find it - under a tree or in a nearby hut. That is shelter. You can provide food if you want to and build permanent houses with us, but not provide 'shelter' in the form of tents." It is one of those situations when you do not know whether to cry, laugh, or shout. With the UN resident coordinator Agostinho Zacarias and my OCHA colleagues Agnes Asekenye-Oonyu and Hansjoerg Strohmeyer, I am failing to get the head of state to admit the gravity of the situation in his country - that his people are in desperate need of precisely the things we offer. Through the UN agencies, the International Organization for Migration, and excellent local and international NGOs, we can help meet acute emergency needs. But instead of saying "How can we help you help our people," the man wants to lecture me about the shortcomings of official UN terms and concepts!

I try to explain that there is no money for any form of more permanent housing since the donors are reluctant to help even with temporary shelter. They regard Zimbabwe's problems as the direct result of Mugabe's evictions, and his agricultural and economic policies. "Donors will only pay for temporary shelters. They think it's indefensible that there are no tents allowed. Disaster victims accept tents in Louisiana, Florida, and in Europe. Why not here?" I ask. "The UN is politicized," Mugabe says. "You want to provide an image of refugee camps here. Our attitude to tents is negative." Nodding from the nearby black leather sofa in Mugabe's small, white-walled office are the permanent secretary of the President's Office and the ministers of foreign affairs and defense. It is difficult to know whether he believes what he is saying because the nodding ministers never seem to tell him what he does not want to hear.

The UN is politicized, Mugabe says, because it is dominated by Britain and its stooges - among whom I, a Norwegian, am soon lumped. Mugabe is particularly angry with the UN because a field visit several months earlier by Anna Tibaijuka, the African head of UN Habitat, our organization for urban issues and housing, had first alerted the world to the full extent of Zimbabwe's housing disaster. He suggests that Tibaijuka would be better advised to visit Nigeria, which has a far greater "cleanup" program under way than Zimbabwe. "It is clear to us that the UN is being used by Britain for political purposes," he repeats. "That is why we are sensitive to your own presence." Mugabe's body language and that of his ministers express their profound skepticism about the motives behind the UN's work in Zimbabwe. Mugabe speaks slowly. "We are beginning to lose confidence in the United Nations and even the secretary-general."

Urban renewal campaigns and removal of unauthorized buildings and squatters take place all the time all over the world. I had, however, called Zimbabwe's eviction program "the worst possible thing at the worst possible time" when it was at its brutal height in May, June, and July. I had no interest in castigating the government of Zimbabwe. Apart from protesting against apartheid, I supported our Scandinavian assistance to the liberation struggles against the white minority regimes of both Rhodesia and South Africa. But we have to tell the truth about what is taking place in the country that President Mugabe rules. I lean forward, seeking eye contact, and try again: "The purpose of my mission on behalf of your fellow African, Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is to discuss how we can more effectively contribute to meet humanitarian needs in Zimbabwe. The challenges here are, as we all know, daunting: There are more than three million who need food assistance. There are one million orphans caused by AIDS."

"We are willing and able to assist the people if we know whom you will cover and if you will do more to enable the work of the humanitarian organizations. We are less effective here than in most other places due to all the restrictions on our work. We use tents in the emergency phase for the homeless in Europe, America, and Asia. Tents will only be one of the ways we would like to provide shelter to the most needy of the hundreds of thousands who are homeless. I saw thousands yesterday who have nothing. Your government housing programs are small and still not completed. Those who live under plastic sheeting or out in the open want the tents that we can provide."

20 Dollar limit

From VOA News, 4 March: Amid roaring hyperinflation, Zimbabwe sets new cash holding limits

By Jonga Kandemiiri

Washington - The Zimbabwean government has made it illegal for citizens to hold more than Z$500 million in cash, currently equivalent to just over 20 U.S. dollars. A recently introduced statutory instrument says anyone found in possession of more than this sum can be charged with unlawful hoarding. Companies are barred from settling bills over $250 million, about US$10, with cash. In recent days the exchange rate against the U.S. dollar has soared to Z$24 million. The decree was issued in an effort to regain control over the money supply and to put what Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono calls "cash barons" out of business. He coined the phrase to describe large operators on the country's bustling parallel markets in foreign exchange and most essential commodities. A loaf of bread costs about Z$5 million; a single egg fetches some Z$1.7 million. Economist Luxon Zembe, a former president of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, told VOA that the law will merely make life harder for ordinary people who need to carry large amounts of cash to buy scarce goods that can only be found on parallel or black markets.

Universities stay closed

From SW Radio Africa, 30 January: Government orders universities to remain closed till after elections

By Tererai Karimakwenda

In a move described by students as a sign of increased paranoia, the government has ordered all state run universities and colleges to stay closed until after elections on March 29th. ....

New measures to slow down Inflation

From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 1 February: Zimbabwe inflation hits record high

Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's inflation hit a record 26 470,8% in November 2007, Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono said in a monetary policy statement on Thursday. The figure rose from 7 982,1% in September. Zimbabwe's Central Bank produced no inflation data for October. " ... Inflation continues to be arguably the most devastating macroeconomic imbalance in the country, as its adverse effects are cutting across all sectors," Gono said. "As monetary authorities, our philosophy on how to successfully destroy the inflation dragon remains that of deploying a combination of demand management policies, supported by structural reforms, as well as deliberate strategies to invigorate the supply side of the economy," he said. The country needed to produce more food to fight inflation and more houses needed to be built for the people to reduce "the penal rentals that are fuelling overall inflation", Gono said. Zimbabwe needed to produce more foreign exchange through higher exports and foreign investment inflows. "With more foreign exchange, we will better preserve the external value of our local currency, which in turn minimises imported inflation," he said.

... yeah sure

From the news: Water outages hit fire tenders, woes mount in Zimbabwe

From Associated Press, 27 January: Water outages hit fire tenders, woes mount in Zimbabwe

Harare - Fires caused by candles during Zimbabwe's frequent power outages have destroyed homes because firefighters have also been unable to find water, the state Sunday Mail reported. In one incident, in suburban northern Harare, a candle set curtains alight and an occupant tore down them down and threw them outside, onto drums being used to store gasoline. The house was gutted, with only a bed recovered from the ruins, the paper said. In the second, gasoline was being sold from a house occupied by four families in a western township and caught light when a candle was lit during an electricity cut, it said. All the occupants escaped without injury. House owner Sothini Chiravasa told the newspaper by the time fire tenders began drawing water from a neighbor's swimming pool the blaze was out of control. «How could they come to put out a fire without water?» she was quoted as saying. Zimbabwe is suffering daily power and water outages along with chronic shortages of gasoline that have forced many householders to store supplies in containers despite constant warnings by the fire department of the dangers. Amid the shortages, gas prices have soared, crippling public transport services and putting regular fares out of the reach of many workers, many of whom have resorted to walking to their jobs. ....

Ask a Zimbabwean for tips on power cuts

Comment from The Sunday Independent (SA), 20 January: Ask a Zimbabwean for tips on power cuts

What an incredible fuss you South Africans make about a few power cuts. I happened to lie down next to my battery-operated satellite radio for a nap this week after the season's only two hours of summer whacked me out. I heard the likeable David O'Sullivan sounding unlikeable. Okay. He was in a rage, so angry he sounded as though he might burst an artery, or the membrane holding his brain in place. About Eskom. I couldn't believe my ears. As far as I can remember, in this past week there were only about six cuts, and none longer than five hours. Same thing at the pharmacy: moan, moan, moan. Then it struck me - for the first time in my life I had really useful knowledge. I do know about electricity cuts and what to do about them. I know about boilers, paraffin fridges, wicks and lighting the lamps by pumping them hard at 5.30pm.

Please, South African householders, unless you live on more than an acre, don't get a generator. There will be murder in the streets of Parkhurst, the Berea in Durban and Obs in Cape Town if home owners on tiny bits of land all have generators farting rhythmically through long days and dark nights. Even small generators use 1 litre of diesel per hour. And they get stolen easily unless cemented in and you need monster ones to do fridges and stoves. Leave generators to Raymond Ackerman and his ilk. First rule for survival: get a solar panel on the roof, which is connected to an especially large car battery in your house, which is then attached to an inverter, which in turn has a switch that lights up the world. This system keeps a TV, DSTV encoder, DVD player, mobile and laptop chargers going. And it costs nothing to run. The bigger the battery, the more lights. (Ditch desktop computers today.) It doesn't do fridges (more about fridges later) and it doesn't do electric stoves.

Go for gas. Mozambique has 300 years of gas, and the ANC government - even though it chose to do the arms deal instead of electricity - did put in a pipeline for gas from Mozambique. If you live in the older suburbs of Johannesburg phone up the angels (seriously) at eGoli Gas and they will look on the map to see if you have a gas pipe in your street. If you have, then get connected. Gas geysers also work at a fraction of the cost of electricity if you don't go for solar-heated water. Refrigerators are another thing altogether. If you keep the doors shut, a tall one will keep food from going off during a power cut of about 30 hours. A deep freeze lasts about 2,5 days if you don't open it. Longer than that and the food goes off. After all, you can shop daily in South Africa. Raymond Ackerman is going to keep the generators running.

Most Zimbabwe-owned supermarkets shut down during power cuts. Only foreign-connected ones such as Spar have generators, or those owned by Zanu PF chefs (political elite), as they get cheap fuel. You must conserve power. You have a chance to do this because you still do have commerce and industry. We lost our industry over the past few years, so that sector can't really help much. We have more or less given up mining. Except, except, and think about this: your mining houses can buy power with foreign currency directly from Cahora Bassa and pay in US dollars, as they are doing in Zimbabwe now. It is a bit more expensive than Eskom, but it keeps the platinum pouring out. We also don't have any robots left in our streets, and little traffic, so we don't have the kind of traffic jams I saw along Jan Smuts Avenue in Jo'burg on Thursday during a power cut.

We don't kill each other in fuel queues, and we don't have road rage as our roads are mostly gone. Nor do we kill each other in banks, even when there is no money there, or in supermarkets. Well, only very, very occasionally, and only once, over sugar and that was in Bulawayo, which is very far from town. So bear up, improvise and go get the solar, inverter, battery alternatives, and gas. And you will all survive until you have enough new power sources within eight years, so I hear, and you are not going to be nearly as short of foreign currency as Zim, so can import some power. But Zimbabwe will recover sooner than South Africa, because our population is in Hillbrow.

new notes

http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,529587,00.html

they even take notice of this in Germany!

From The Independent (UK), 15 January: John Simpson: The abject poverty in a country where everyone is a millionaire

Travelling undercover, the BBC's World Affairs Editor, discovers a nation running out of patience with Robert Mugabe

In Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, everyone is a millionaire. You have to be: a loaf of bread costs a million Zimbabwe dollars, a newspaper costs two million, and a decent joint of beef costs a hundred million. The only problem is that the average wage is 20 million dollars a month. They're called Mugabe dollars and it isn't a term of affection. Everyone queues here: in the supermarkets, at the petrol stations and in the banks, in order to draw out the money to buy anything. Inflation is so high that items which cost a mere20 million dollars yesterday are likely to cost double that by tomorrow. For some reason, the government refuses to print million-dollar notes; perhaps it thinks it would look bad. The highest note is for 750,000 dollars, and doing the maths is horrendous.

It's extraordinarily difficult to find anyone here who supports President Mugabe. He is loathed in the Harare slums. In Mbare, where two years ago his thugs bulldozed the shanties housing thousands of opposition supporters, small children shouted anti-Mugabe slogans as we drove past. Shopkeepers, domestic workers, hospital staff, Aids patients, people selling handicrafts in the street – they all hate him. A very senior Zanu PF figure, a man who sees himself as a king-maker, met me clandestinely in Harare. He hated Mugabe more than any of the others. I am in Zimbabwe undercover, together with two colleagues. The BBC is banned, so it felt particularly good to broadcast live from here for last night's Ten O'Clock News. It's the first time any British television news organisation has broadcast from Zimbabwe since Mugabe refused to let foreign journalists come here.

The biggest problem is that BBC World, our international television news channel, has a big following here, especially among the political elite. There's a real danger of being recognised and arrested. Back in London a make-up artist fitted me out with a beard, to make me look like an Afrikaans farmer. But it had a habit of coming loose in the heat and, if we were caught, it seemed unwise to wear a disguise. So I've just worn a baseball cap to cover my untidy white hair. I look pretty awful, but not as bad as I looked in the beard. The disguise has worked pretty well. We have been in Harare for a week, and have spent a lot of time driving and walking round the city, the suburbs and the slums. Recording what is known in the trade as a "piece to camera", walking down a main street in Harare apparently talking to myself, was the tensest moment. I had to do it a couple of times, regardless of the onlookers and the police stooges.

So far I have been recognised three times. Once was in an expensive restaurant, where we were filming how the Mugabe elite live. Our own meal came to 290 million dollars; I left a 10 million dollar tip (about £2.50). Once was by a senior opposition figure whom I wanted to interview anyway, since he had recently been tortured by Mugabe's secret police. And once was in a shop where I wanted to find a pair of Zimbabwe's famous Courtenay boots. Yet unpleasant though Mugabe's Zimbabwe is politically, it isn't Idi Amin's Uganda. There is still a certain degree of personal freedom here. People can be tortured for their political beliefs but it's rare for anyone to be killed. The murders of white farmers eight years ago have not been repeated. But there are spies everywhere. One attached himself to the BBC's cameraman Nigel Bateson as he finished some clandestine filming in an empty supermarket.

"I would so much like to be your friend," the stooge said. "Won't you give me your name and phone number?" "I couldn't do a thing like that," Nigel replied, "I hardly know you." And because Mugabe is so unpopular, it has been easy for us to find people to shelter us and help us. For them, I suspect, it's a quiet act of resistance. The BBC has called me on three different occasions to warn me of rumours that we were in Harare. Each time the three of us discussed the possibility that we might be caught and sent to a Zimbabwean prison. Each time we agreed to stay on and finish the job. That job is almost finished now. We have established that there is a major split within the ruling Zanu PF party, and that a former finance minister, Simba Makoni, is being put forward by a powerful grouping as a candidate to challenge Mr Mugabe for the presidency. The high-level Zanu PF figure who briefed us in secret was certain that 2008 was likely to be the year Mugabe's hold on power was either weakened or ended.

But he won't be brought down by a popular revolution. A combination of a new and tougher approach by South Africa, the worsening economy, and a palace coup may do the job. But Mugabe is clever and resourceful. Even now, it is too soon to write his political obituary. As for us, we will be crossing the Zimbabwean border about the time this article appears. After so many years of being banned, it's been a real pleasure, if slightly nerve-racking, to spend a week here again. This is a magnificent country. It just deserves to be governed better.

From Associated Press, 10 January: Zim election observers report problems

Angus Shaw

Harare - Impoverished Zimbabwean farmers have to show they are loyal members of the ruling party if they want free equipment that the government is offering, and opposition supporters have been threatened with dogs, independent democracy monitors said on Thursday. Thursday's report by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network three months ahead of planned national elections also outlined problems with voter education and registration. The report underlined concerns by the main opposition party about the fairness of the poll. There was no immediate response from the government, which has insisted that the elections will be open and democratic. Instead, a government newspaper equated election monitors with United States spies. The support network, in its latest election bulletin, said it deployed 120 observers throughout the country and based its findings on information from members of the public attending its community workshops. Observers in the Masvingo district in southern Zimbabwe reported that ox-drawn plows being distributed by the government were allocated only to people holding cards showing they were dues-paying members of the ruling Zanu PF party and who could chant three party slogans. The local governor said that donated plows would be taken away in districts won by opposition candidates, the network reported. In the central district of Gokwe, villagers were told they would not have to pay for plows as long as the ruling party won the March polls, the report said. The distributions were part of a Reserve Bank programme begun in November to get 120 000 plows, tens of thousands of donkey carts, seeds and other equipment into farmers' hands to revive crop production and end acute food shortages in the former regional breadbasket....

Comment from The Nelson Daily News (Canada), 7 December: Zimbabwe experience

André Carrel

All personal secrets have the effect of sin or guilt - Carl Jung

Why do they put up with it? Why are Zimbabweans not protesting in the streets by the thousand? Why is there no sign of a popular revolt against Mugabe? I was hoping to find answers to these questions during my visit. Zimbabwe has elections, but it is not a democracy; it is a dictatorship. ….. During this last visit I was given a copy of a banned report, published in 1999 by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe and the Legal Resources Foundation. This report, titled Breaking the Silence, Building True Peace, is a summary of a much larger report documenting the terror Mugabe unleashed on his country in the 1980s. The report recounts how, a few months after his first election, Mugabe made a deal with North Korea’s Kim Il Sung to train a special security force. The report describes the physical torture, deprivation, psychological torture, and disappearances Mugabe’s special force inflicted on civilians in the provinces of Matabeleland and Midlands.

The Fifth Brigade, as this internal security force was known, operated independently of the army, police, and the Central Intelligence Organization. The Fifth Brigade was not accountable to parliament. It took its orders directly from Mugabe, and the atrocities it committed are of the kind associated with the regimes of Hitler and Stalin. The difference is merely one of scale. Mugabe’s torture victims number in the tens of thousands, not in the millions. When Mugabe disbanded the Fifth Brigade, he integrated its members into the regular security forces. Nobody has ever been held accountable. To this day Zimbabweans are afraid to talk about the activities of the Fifth Brigade. A disillusioned former guerrilla fighter, who bitterly claimed that what is happening in Zimbabwe today is not what he fought for, told me that he believes that Mugabe clings to power because of the legacy of the Fifth Brigade: Mugabe fears losing his immunity as head of state. The banned report is on the internet, but few people in the communal lands in rural Zimbabwe have access to the internet.

They learned about what happened in the province of Matabeleland in the 1980s by word of mouth. People in every community of every province now know about Mugabe’s capacity for terror and brutality from first-hand experience. What is happening in Zimbabwe today is not new; it is consistent with Mugabe’s rule since his first election in 1980. For a quarter century Mugabe’s obsession with secrecy in the name of state security has served as a cover for his corruption and his state-sponsored lawlessness, thuggery, torture, beatings and killing, and the indoctrination of youth gangs to act as agents of terror. Foreign embassies and their intelligence services must have known what was going on in the 1980s. Yet many developed countries, Canada included, praised Mugabe’s government while they poured millions of dollars into the country. I was one of many ignorant Canadian volunteers (all expenses paid by the federal government) holding to the naive belief that Mugabe’s government welcomed our efforts to help develop open and accountable local government in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabweans do not believe that the world will come to their assistance if they rise up against Mugabe. Having read the banned report, I understand their mistrust of the outside world. How could I have explained to my friends the decision by Queen Elizabeth II, our Queen, to bestow on Mugabe an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, a British order of chivalry, after all the atrocities of the 1980s? How could I have explained to them the equally despicable decisions by several prestigious European and North American universities to reward Mugabe with honorary doctorates? The combination of government secrecy and willful blindness is fatal to democracy. We betray democracy with our silence. When we accept anything short of full public accountability and disclosure from any level of government in cases such as Maher Arar, the tasering of Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport, and the arrest of war resisters in our communities, we betray democracy, and we do so at our own peril.

to be continued...

Cash Crisis for Christmas

From The Standard, 23 December: Gono labelled 'No. 1 saboteur'

By Ndamu Sandu and Jennifer Dube

Reserve Bank governor, Gideon Gono was labelled the biggest economic saboteur, as thousands of Zimbabweans yesterday endured a nightmarish start to the Christmas and New Year's holidays in long queues for cash. The cash crisis, in its second month, continued unabated yesterday with account holders failing to access their money.... The critics said it was "very cruel" of Gono to plunge the ordinary people into the crisis in a miscalculated move "to fix" people whose identity he knew. In a televised interview on Wednesday, Gono said of the $67 trillion in circulation, the RBZ could only account for $2 trillion, leaving the remainder in the hands of cash barons, among them top politicians and businesspeople. "I know three quarters of them but professional ethics do not allow me to name them...If challenged I would name them," Gono said. But Chibebe said the governor could afford to dilly-dally because the politicians were not being affected by the crisis. "I am yet to see any minister queuing (for cash).... Against all odds, ZBH's FM station at 8am yesterday declared Gono, its "Personality of the Week". But very few people shared State-owned network's adulation of the central bank czar. "I have been to four shops in Avondale," said a Mabelreign parent, who said she and her children were determined to vote in next year's elections. "They will not accept cheques. I cannot get cash from the banks. If I use commuter buses, will they accept cheques?... Assuming that the money was shared equally among the 12 million population, each citizen, including the newly-born babies, would get less than $6 million each and that could hardly buy three square meals!

From ZENIT (Rome), 21 December: South African prelate urges welcome of Zimbabweans

Recalls Christian obligation to aid needy

Johannebsurg – The Christian obligation of South Africans is to welcome those fleeing the escalating crisis in Zimbabawe, said the archbishop of Johannesburg. ... Archbishop Tlhagale urged South Africans to make an adjustment to their lives by welcoming Zimbabweans and assisting them as much as possible. He said even small gestures of welcome and compassion will make a difference.

Grim tales from Zimbabwe

From The Los Angeles Times, 21 December: Grim tales from Zimbabwe

continued from yesterday...

On the road from Harare to Bulawayo, there's a hill named Heroes' Acre where famous veterans from Mugabe's triumphant uprising against Ian Smith's white minority regime in the 1970s are buried. Driving by, I feel a twinge of curiosity to see the soaring North Korean- designed obelisk within, but entry requires a special government permit. Locals shrug at my interest and say the place usually is deserted. But occasionally there are jealous fights in the ruling party over who deserves to be buried there. The many roadblocks on the way are mostly a means for underpaid police to extract bribes. Lately most can't even find cars or fuel to man the barriers. But roadblocks do get more serious if the government has a big campaign on, like Operation Murambatsvina (Clean Out the Filth) two years ago, when the military invaded townships and razed nearly every shack.

The Mugabe government said that it cut crime and made everything clean and tidy. But it targeted areas that had voted for the opposition. In the townships then, the air was full of the dust of demolitions. The route from Harare to Bulawayo looked like a road out of a war zone, with desperate people pushing carts piled with belongings. One evening during the operation, I was stopped at a roadblock as I was leaving one of the affected areas. I'd carelessly slipped notes of interviews into the pages of a guidebook, in between brochures and maps. The police ordered us out of the car and began to search the vehicle. They carefully searched the pockets, the trunk, my rucksack. They lifted up the seats. One officer picked up the book with my notes and began flipping through it. I had to look away. For a moment I felt a tiny whisper of the fear that Zimbabweans live with, like a fine invisible web that sticks to everyone. But when I glanced back, he had placed the book back in the car.

... In a nearby village, two policemen ask for a ride. My activist friend agrees with obvious reluctance. On the road he berates them for arresting and beating people for no reason, brushing aside their ineffectual protestations of innocence. The activist asked not to be identified, fearing repercussions that might make it difficult for him to work. Like everyone, it seems he has something to fear. The elite fear losing their privileges and wealth, or being arrested as traitors should they fall out of favor. Dealers and retailers fear jail for black market profiteering, or for violations of strict foreign exchange laws and price controls. Opposition and human rights activists fear being arrested, beaten, tortured or "disappeared." People believe the secret police are everywhere, eavesdropping on every phone call, inspecting every e-mail. As vast as Mugabe's security apparatus is, the fear of it is even larger. People walk on a knife-edge. Even giving birth is something to fear.

decline and absurdities that would be comical if they weren't so tragic

From The Los Angeles Times, 21 December: Grim tales from Zimbabwe

By Robyn Dixon

Everywhere you travel in the country there is evidence of decline and absurdities that would be comical if they weren't so tragic.... Nothing is simple in Zimbabwe. I'd planned to leave by 8. Problems getting diesel (and Max's elastic idea of punctuality) meant it was lunchtime before we got on the road. But once the car has rested awhile, Max starts it up and decides we can limp along after all. The music of the cicadas almost drowns out the tinny vibrations of the tape player. Zimbabwean artist Oliver Mtukudzi is singing a ballad in Shona called "Bvuma": "Accept that you are old. Accept that you are worn out. . . . Don't deny it, you are finished." It could have been written for Max's car. Or is it about the country's all-powerful, 83-year-old president, Robert Mugabe? The roads of Zimbabwe sing their own haunting lament for a people and their suffering.... Life here is full of Catch-22 dilemmas that would strain credulity if they were fiction: It costs more to go to work than you can possibly earn, for example. There is no economy to speak of, either, just the black market, where even the government gets its dollars..... Reporting is difficult here. Because the government rarely issues journalist visas to foreigners, most of us work undercover, risking jail.

So when I had asked some church activists who knew where people were most hungry to take me to Nkayi, they told me, horrified, that it would be impossible. Everyone would ask who the white woman was. I'd be watched. The authorities would be summoned.... Everywhere you go in Zimbabwe, there are snapshots of decline. On the dusty roadsides, elderly women struggle along with huge branches on their heads, hewn from the bush. A pickup heads out of town, hazard lights blinking, a makeshift coffin in the back and mourning, threadbare relatives cramped around it in the cold wind. Along the road from South Africa, SUVs tow trailers swollen with loads as large as elephants: consumer goods unavailable in Zimbabwe's bare shops. The stores are so empty that the government statistician says it's impossible to work out the inflation rate. (Independent economists estimate that it is between 40,000% and 90,000%.) Given the depth of the economic crisis, it's difficult to see how anything works.

The answer is in a Zimbabwean turn of phrase, "We'll make a plan," which can mean growing your own vegetables, going to the black market, bartering, bribing an official, stealing from your workplace and selling the goods, buying what you need in South Africa or Botswana, or holding down several jobs to make ends meet. A journalist more than doubles his salary by making candles on weekends. A Reserve Bank employee buys and slaughters cows on the side. A sign writer sells sandwiches cobbled out of difficult-to-come-by bread. Teachers, who can go to South Africa with no visa, bring back cooking oil, the staple called maize meal, flour and sugar to sell. In Harare, the capital's thin veneer of normality and air of placid self-satisfaction have been scraped away over the last few years. Often the elevators in its few modest skyscrapers don't work. I wait in the rain in a gasoline queue with Mtukudzi singing a song about a fractious old man who has lost everyone's respect. A little girl with an orange umbrella dances in the downpour.