Denford Magora's Zimbabwe Blog

Botswana's president, Ian Khama, is seen here with President Obama in November last year. Zimbabwe has now released two Botswana game rangers who had been arrested for straying into Zimbabwean territory and charged with trespassing while carrying "weapons of war". Zimbabwe remains unapologetic and says Botswana should not complain because it has done the same to Zimbabwean policemen. The Zimbabwe Ministry of Foreign Affairs also announced yesterday that the Botswana Minister of Foreign Affairs was "a liar".

Harare, Zimbabwe 10 February 2010

The two Ministers of Home Affairs in the Zimbabwe Inclusive Government held a press conference on Monday in Harare where they effectively told Botswana to go and jump into the nearest lake.

Botswana last week protested at the detention and trial of three game rangers in Hwange, near the resort town of Victoria Falls. 

But that statement has now been overtaken by events, after the two Tswana rangers appeared before a magistrate in Hwange and were found guilty of the charges leveled against them. They have since been released after paying US$100 fines each.

Zimbabwe is refusing to let the matter die, however. 

Today, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs backed the MDC-T co-Minister of Home Affairs who said the Botswana government had overreacted on the matter, saying Botswana itself had put two Zimbabwean policemen in jail for straying across the border and only released them after they had been tried by a court in that country.

Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs ministry also says Phandu Skelemani, the Tswana Mniister of Foreign Affairs, was lying when he said he had been trying to engage Simba Mumbengegwi, Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs Minister over the matter.

Zimbabwe says the two ministers met in Ethiopia during the recent African Union Summit and "engaged in general banter" but the Botswana Minister never raised the issue of the rangers. The Botswana Vice Prersident had asked to meet President Mugabe in Addis Ababa, but the Zimbabweans ran away before the agreed time of the meeting.

The tone in Zimbabwe's state media today is unapologetic and it is clear that ZANU PF and Mugabe are not going to let this matter rest at all. Hence the continuing tone of telling Botswana to go and jump into the nearest lake.

You have to put all this into perspective.

Mugabe and ZANU PF have been anti-Botswana for some time now. The Zimbabwean dictator was incensed when Ian Khama, President of Botswana, said Mugabe was not the legitimate Head of State of Zimbabwe and that he would recognise a government led only by Mugabe and ZANU PF.

Further to this, Mugabe took a dossier to the Southern African Development Community in which he accused Botswana of training insurgents and bandits on behalf of Morgan Tsvangirai.

The bad blood between the two countries is set to continue, as Mugabe moves to demonstrate that, despite Ian Khama saying he is not the president of Zimbabwe, he can still show him up and assert his authority.

The MDC-T of Zimbabwe's Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, issued a a belated statement decrying the detention of the Tswana rangers, but that was all they could do. It was an attempt to show that they did not endorse the arrest of the rangers.

But the matter is a bit more complicated because the MDC-T's own minister of home affairs was the one who was telling Botswana that they had "overreacted over a simple administrative issue that could have been easily resolved."

Perhaps it is time for Zimbabweans to ask whether the MDC-T co-Minister of Home Affairs is still part of the MDC-T or whether he has now moved on and joined ZANU PF. The man is increasingly aligning himself to ZANU PF positions.

Earlier this year, he told a Police Summit in Singapore (more travel allowances) that the Zimbabwe police force was a professional outfit that respected human rights but was being compromised in executing its duties by "illegal sanctions".

He is the same man who was also defending the detentions of MDC-T activists just after the formation of the Inclusive Government.

Perhaps he has been bought. Or maybe he is getting quiet orders from Morgan Tsvangirai to go along with whatever Mugabe wants!

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ARVs: Zimbabwe has run out of the type of HIV/AIDS drugs used to treat those who have developed resistance to these normal ARV drugs and there is a fear that, within a short time, thousands of people could die as their immune systems are overwhelmed. The Government says it knows nothing about this, even though AIDS organisations have been inundated by HIV and AIDS patients in the last two weeks, who say they are on death's door because they are being told to go and find elsewhere if they can.

Harare, Zimbabwe, 07 February 2010

Zimbabwe has run out of second-line HIV/AIDS anti-retroviral drugs, leading health and HIV/AIDS experts to predict massive deaths within a very short of time.

Second-line anti-retrovirals are the medication taken by HIV/AIDS sufferers who have developed resistance to the first line of defence: the normal anti-retrovirals. This is mostly due to them not following the prescribed dosages.

In the absence of the second line drugs, health experts say, patients will see their immune systems rapidly overcome by the disease, leading to premature deaths on a scale never seen before in Zimbabwe.

The Zimbabwe National Network for People Living With HIV confirms that in Harare alone, 500 people have besieged its offices after being failing to access the second line drugs.

Those affected have been taking part in a trial to develop anti-retrovirals (known as DART), conducted by the Clinical Research Centre. They are now being told to seek the medication from pharmacies, but, even if the drugs could be obtained from pharmacies, they cost nine (9) times more than the normal ARV drugs, which are considered extremely expensive themselves in Zimbabwe.

Surprisingly, for such a grave matter, government is professing ignorance. The Director of the Aids and TB Unit in the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare (which is controlled by Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC), Dr Owen Mgurungi, says he knows nothing about the matter. He will "investigate", he says.

Because of brain drain, our drug supply systems have become weak. Some participants to the (DART) trials are now on the Government programme. I will investigate what is really happening."

I suppose, in the meantime, considering the slow pace at which government "investigations" take place, the Grim Reaper will be asked to lay off the sick people until the "investigation" is concluded. Perhaps they will have to threaten him with CIO if he refuses to cooperate.

All this is so uncalled for, really and exposes the fact that the government of Zimbabwe is sleeping on the job. Busy tending to their own personal needs, the Ministers in this so-called Coalition are paying no attention to their areas at all, to the extent that all they ever do is fight fires.

They are not in a hurry at all to attend to any of the matters vexing Zimbabweans because they are busy planning their next trip overseas, where they get US$5 000 a day allowances for sitting conference rooms and saying not a word, only slipping out now and again to go shopping for the luxuries that Zimbabweans do not even know exist.

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Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono (above), is still operating pretty much as though he were the de facto Prime Minister he was before the formation of the coalition Government between Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe.

Harare, Zimbabwe, 07 February 2010

Senior staff at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, headed by Mugabe's blue-eyed boy, Gideon Gono, have spent US$215 000 on food in the last month, with the money having been authorised by officials in Tendai Biti's Ministry of Finance.

Biti is also the MDC-Tsvangirai Secretary-General.

The Minister claims that this expenditure is being made without his knowledge and that he is being "circumvented"!

Gono has been emboldened by Biti's failure to have him fired. Mugabe has personally and publicly said "Gono is not going anywhere, show me what wrong he has done."

Quite a lot of wrong, he as done, it turns out. Recently, as Tendai Biti toured the world, going to America to lobby Congressmen to remove sanctions on Mugabe, touring the European Union etc, Gono, whose Reserve Bank is now starved of cash since all his money-making avenues were closed by Treasury (Finance Ministry), raided the statutory reserves deposited with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe by local banks to pay "bills".

The money plundered by Gono is reported to be in the region of "millions" and some of it is accounted for by a cryptic line item that refers to "the Presidency".

Meantime, a British newspaper is only discovering now what I have been telling you all along: that Mugabe pays allowances of anything up to US$5 000 to his CIO operatives when they guard him on his overseas travels.

The latest revelation appears to have been a leak from the Finance Ministry to the British newspaper after Happyton Bonyongwe, Director-General of the Central Intelligence Organisation, submitted a bill to the Ministry for the payment of allowances. These were specifically for Mugabe's trip to Switzerland for a Telecommunications Summit (the same one attended by MDC's Spokesman and Minister of ICT in Zimbabwe, Nelson Chamisa).

The new boys in government, the MDC, have cottoned on and are also being compromised by Mugabe: they are also getting these ridiculous figures as daily allowances when they travel abroad, hence the rush by MDC ministers to jump on a plane whenever there is Summit that falls under their purview.

With the salaries of Ministers no different from those of normal civil servants, who are now on strike over the issue, these Ministers are using trips outside Zimbabwe to augment their earnings.

Mugabe has been a master at the game for a long time, carrying cash personally out of the country and never accounting for it when he comes back from his trip.

It is a form of corruption that has now also infected the MDC ministers. Their attitude is: :If you can not beat them, join them."

It does not bode well for the future of Zimbabwe. Should these people, with these new bad habits they have learnt, get into government, they will naturally pick up from where ZANU PF would have left off, justifying it by saying Mugabe used to do it when he ran the country. The MDC is already very intolerant of criticism, even when it admits corruption itself within its ranks.

But it is the continued profligacy of Gideon Gono that makes one's jaw drop. It is almost as if he is sticking a finger to Tendai Biti and the MDC, actively pursuing a policy of spending ridiculous amounts of money of trivial things just so he can show them they have not managed to contain him at all.

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A Botswana Game Ranger poses for a photograph: three such rangers have been arrested in Zimbabwe and are currently on trial at Hwange Magistrates' Court in Zimbabwe. They had crossed into Zimbabwe in pursuit of rogue lions and were intercepted as they tried to reenter Botswana. Zimbabwe has refused to release them and, as a result, the Botswana government has recalled its top Defence and Intelligence attaches from Harare, demanding that Zimbabwe does the same before the end of this month.

Harare, Zimbabwe, 07 February 2010

The Government of Botswana has recalled its military and intelligence attaches from Zimbabwe and has demanded that Zimbabwe recall its own attaches from Botswana within 30 days.

The diplomatic chaos is a result of the arrest of Tswana (Botswana citizens) game rangers who had allegedly crossed into Zimbabwean territory illegally. They were, say Zimbabwe authorities, also carrying "weapons of war".

The Botswana Foreign Minister, Phandu Skelemani, said in a statement:

"The Government of the Republic of Botswana expects the Government of the Republic of Zimbabwe to reciprocate by recalling its Defence and Central Intelligence Organisation attachés from Botswana.

The position of the Government of Botswana is that these two posts should be frozen and never to be filled.”

The Tswana game rangers were arrested near the Zimbabwe resort town of Victoria Falls on January 19 as they tried to re-enter Botswana. They say they had been tracking two lions that had killed cattle at a village on the Botswana side of the border.

They are now facing charges of border jumping, smuggling, and possessing firearms without a license.

Giles Mutsekwa, a Zimbabwe Government co-Minister of Home Affairs and a member of Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC responded by saying that there was nothing the government of Zimbabwe was able to do about the case of the two rangers because the matter was now before the courts. 

He says government intervention would have been interference with the due process of the law and the judiciary.

Says the co-Minister of Home Affairs:

"These (Botswana) are our neighbours and they should understand that the matter is before the courts. Government’s intervention was, therefore, limited.”

It is a lame excuse as it is well-known fact that, in diplomatic circles, the government could easily have intervened in in the national interests of Zimbabwe and sat down with Botswana authorities to ensure that an incident such as this would not happen again.

But the incident also exposes the utter powerlessness of Zimbabwe's so-called Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, who is allied to the Botswana government and considers them more friendly to him than they are to Mugabe and ZANU PF.

Yet he was unable to intervene to solve the problem to the satisfaction of his allies.

Most Zimbabweans, however, are not at all bothered by the actions of the Botswana government and they are fully supportive of what the Inclusive Government has done. They have their own grievances, specifically to do with the way Zimbabwean are treated in Botswana, where Zimbabweans who have broken Botswana law have even been subjected to the barbaric punishment of flogging in public.

Still, apart from the vindictiveness of the prosecution of the three game rangers from Botswana, it is an incident that should not have brought matters this far. For the Zimbabwe government, surely even they, paranoid though they are about Botswana (whom Mugabe has accused of training insurgents on behalf of Morgan Tsvangirai), should have realised that there was no way Botswana was going to launch an attack on Zimbabwe using three armed game rangers.

The trespass was clearly a blunder, a mistake on the part of the Tswana rangers and should have been treated as such. At most, they should have just been cautioned.

But the tension between Harare and Gaborone is such that even small, petty issues like these are used to score political points.

It is unlikely that the rangers will now be released before their case is heard in the courts. Botswana's reaction will only make Mugabe want to stick the knife in further in order to infuriate these allies of his Prime Minister even more. 

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Zimbabwe civil servants attend a rally in Harare on Thursday to press home their demand for decent wages. On Friday, Government was effectively brought to a standstill as the civil servants announced a strike action which will go on indefinitely. The civil servants currently earn around US$150 per month and are demanding a salary of US$630 as a minimum for themto go back to work.

Harare, Zimbabwe, 07 February 2010

The Inclusive Government of Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe has effectively been shut down by a civil servants' strike, which the strikers say will not end until their demands are met.

Teachers and all other civil servants have downed tools after the government failed to meet their demand of a minimum salary of more than US$600 per month. Tendai Biti, the Minister of Finance in the Zimbabwe Inclusive Government and also MDC-T Secretary-General, says the demands are ridiculous since the government is "not a productive entity". He says he can not "draw water from a stone" and that the civil servants have to understand that the Inclusive Government is essentially broke.

Biti on Friday offered the civil servants a minimum salary of US$137, with the highest-paid civil servant earning US$248 per month. The salaries would have been backdated to January this year.

Apart from this, the Zimbabwe Finance Minister had no good news for the civil servants, saying he was willing to put another US$4 million towards civil servants' compensation. This US$4 million, which had been slated to be released in April, would be available immediately, he said. The money would be used to fund a US$8 housing allowance for each civil servant, as well as US$7 transport allowance.

You can see why the civil servants of Zimbabwe felt this was no good news. Transportation to and from work for any civil servants would cost a minimum of US$20 a month, yet Biti was offering them US$7! Of course, there is nowhere in Zimbabwe where anyone can find accommodation for US$7 a month.

Zimbabwe Teachers Association (ZIMTA) boss, Mrs Tendai Chikore, told a rallyheld by the civil servants:

"The issue of remuneration has been neglected by the employer for many years. Government has been taking us for granted and now we are saying enough is enough.

When the GNU was formed we rejoiced as we thought it was the political panacea to our socio-politico and economic challenges but today we wonder whether this was a correct premise."

Zimbabwe Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, has been at pains to want to rehabilitate Mugabe's disastrous legacy, telling all and sundry since the formation of the Inclusive Government that he and the dictator had managed to achieve success in several fields. He cited the fact that "schools have reopened and teachers are back at work" as well as alleged success in the health delivery system to justify his optimism.

But Manuel Nyawo, CEO of Zimbabwe Teachers Association, says this is not so:

"With the little we are getting obviously we were not delivering quality service and so all civil servants countrywide, let’s work in unison and see how they will react."

It is now clear that all this was a joke. A lie, basically.

The strike has affected most arms of government, with even the courts not escaping. The High Court locked its doors at 12 noon on Friday as staff heeded the call for them to go on strike.

You have to feel sorry for the police and the army, though, who are not allowed to go on strike, although they feel the pain as keenly as any other civil servant.

As I have pointed out before, the government calls on everyone else to tighten their belts while it loosens its own. Millions of dollars are spent on travel and allowances for ministers while the workers can not get by.

The Inclusive Government could find money for such idiotic things as hiring of cars and buying office furniture at inflated prices while civil servants starve. Even Members of Parliament got allowances and loans to buy cars after having been loaned some by the Reserve Bank, yet no money can be found for civil servants.

It all boils down to priorities and the priorities of this government at the moment is to ensure that ministers and party functionaries from both ZANU PF and the two MDCs fill their own pockets and stomachs first before they turn their attention to the rest of the long-suffering population.

Even former allies of Morgan Tsvangirai, like Raymond Majongwe of the Progressive Teachers' Union, have had enough. He told a rally in Harare:

"We have been neglected for so long and we have become a soft target for alternative saving options in Government spending.

"Time has come for us to unite against our employer."

With all this going on, it is no surprise that the MDC apologist brigade does not want an alternative opposition to Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC. They want to make sure that the people of Zimbabwe are presented only with one choice: Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC. They will do all they can to make sure they have discredited Simba Makoni and his formidable new party, Mavambo, because the man represents the strongest challenge yet to both Mugabe and Prime Minister Mini-me.

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While Morgan Tsvangirai was busy enjoying himself at the Davos World Economic Forum (above), back home in Zimbabwe, he was having the rug pulled from under him by Mugabe, who has instructed all ministers, including Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, to report to the two Vice presidents of Zimbabwe.

Harare, Zimbabwe, 05 February 2010

First of all, apologies to Isaac and other avid readers who have fired off emails DEMANDING that I update the blog!!!! (I appreciate your keen interest).

The lapse in updating the blog has been the result of a few developments over here in Zimbabwe that took me away from my computer for a few days - out in the bush, my other means of connecting are not as reliable as the broadband in Harare.

Now to today's story.

In a stunning development revealed by The Independent here today, one of the men I have previously identified as one of the three most powerful men in Zimbabwe, Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Misheck Sibanda, has written to all Ministers telling them that they should no longer report to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in the absence of Robert "The Solution" Mugabe, aka Dr Evil.

The instruction was prompted by confusion over the January 2010 period when Mugabe was on his official leave and Tsvangirai stepped in to have ministers report to him on government business.

This did not go down well with Vice President Mujuru, who was Acting President during the period and she took it up with Dr Evil.

Mugabe is now accusing Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai aka Prime Minister Mini-me, of trying to stage a palace coup in his absence.

But Tsvangirai is being defiant.

He has fired off a counter memo to ministers asking them to ignore the communication from the Secretary to the Cabinet and continue reporting to him. Tsvangirai's memo is going even further to suggest that the ministers should report to him even if Mugabe is back in office. His argument is that he conducts government business through the Council of Ministers to which all ministers belong. Tsvangirai in turn then reports to Mugabe on government business conducted in the Council of Ministers.

It is a messy little tiff that Tsvangirai is guaranteed to lose, primarily because of the huge blunders he made within the Global Political Agreement that serves as the foundation of the Inclusive Government (the coalition government between Tsvangirai and Mugabe that now runs Zimbabwe).

To understand the reason why Tsvangirai is losing this particular battle, you have to understand that the MDC-Tsvangirai blunder in signing the GPA was in retaining Mugabe's powers intact, pretty much.

When Mugabe goes on leave or is outside the country, therefore, he appoints an Acting President, who nominally assumes the powers Mugabe has in the GPA and in the Constitution of Zimbabwe as it stands now.

That means, in Mugabe's absence, there is always a Vice President executing his official duties (except Cabinet meetings, which are suspended if Mugabe is on leave on out of the country and can only ever be chaired by Mugabe, not even by an Acting President from ZANU PF).

Tendai Biti, MDC-Tsvangirai Secretary General and Zimbabwe's Finance Minister, is dismissing the memo from the Cabinet office as irrelevant and not enforceable, but he misses the point, as the MDC-T often do.

They really have to understand that they are dealing with a ZANU PF and a Zimbabwean president (Mugabe) who consider the Coalition with MDC-Tsvangirai as a trifling inconvenience that they have to put up with for a short period before assuming total control of government and Zimbabwe again (almost certainly through another deeply flawed "electoral process")

Further to all these dynamics, Sibanda's memo to Zimbabwe cabinet ministers is an attempt by Mugabe to accommodate his new Vice President, John Nkomo, who replaced the late Joseph Msika.

The circular specifically says Vice President Nkomo will oversee the "economic areas of administration of government business." This is further clarified by naming the ministries Nkomo will oversee: Ministries of Finance, Economic Planning, Small and Medium Enterprises and Cooperative Development, Mines, Industry, Energy, Regional Integration and, finally, Environment and Natural Resources Management.

The other Vice-president (who has been Acting President in Mugabe's absence this year), Joyce Mujuru, is responsible for the "general supervision" of ministries responsible for the social, agricultural and infrastructural business of Zimbabwe.

In essence the memo is designed to strip Morgan Tsvangirai of any pretensions to any power and have him report to the two Vice presidents instead of to Mugabe. It is designed to send Tsvangirai teh message that, far from being "on par" with Mugabe as claimed by the MDC, he actually ranks below Mugabe, Mujuru and Nkomo.

All this, of course, is coming after ZANU PF decided that it would not make any more concessions to the MDC-Tsvangirai, especially, until and unless sanctions are lifted "unconditionally". ZANU PF says the statement by British Foreign Secretary David Milliband that the UK would only lift sanctions on the advice of the MDC shows that Tsvangirai is the one in charge of the strangling of Zimbabwe's credit lines and balance of payment support from international donors and Bretton Woods institutions.

After this, there can be no doubt in anybody's mind that Mugabe can not be rid of this government soon enough.

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