Taking it all in

A JUSTIFIABLY ANGRY UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS OFFICIAL, MANUEL NOWAK
I am sure I am not alone in finding it difficult to get my thoughts down after reading/hearing the news each day. No sooner have I composed my thoughts and opened this new blog page than some newer development (sometimes personal) intervenes and the moment is lost.
For this reason I shall blog more like a twitter-er, or give lengthy tweets on this page at whatever level in time and space the day allows.

Starting today: all oppressed Zimbabweans' hopes for help or redress in the realm of Human Rights have been dashed by the coarse behaviour of the ZANU (PF) representatives of the government. Nothing unusual here. What is cheering, in a perverse sort of way is the full coverage given to the angry statement from the UN's Manuel Nowak. This capering of ZANU(PF) is a further demonstration of the weakness and insecurity of the so-called ruling party. One must use this latter adjective because we know that the MDC's part in `ruling' has been rendered almost useless, except for the efforts of the noble Tendai Biti who has managed to make a little progress in Finance, allowing people to get a few US dollars with which to feed themselves and stay alive a little longer.

The deliberations of SADEC today will be more interesting, if not more meaningful than usual.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

Tsvangirai in London too ambivalent

THIS IS BAD NEWS! MUST I `EAT CROW'?
A reliable friend in Zimbabwe is patently angry with me for `blogging' re my feeling upbeat about Morgan Tsvangirai's overseas visit and my welcoming his prospects for persuading his audiences that he will bring change to Zimbabwe. Here is my worthy friend's argument:

"We would like to see how/why you can feel upbeat, even vaguely; but we cannot afford to go online to read blogs any more at US42 cents a minute! As far as we and most people we know, things are worse by the day-----water (despite amounts of aid unseen for years), electricity, phones , violent crime (we have spent more on security in last 4 months than in previous 40 years) , inflation (only country in world to have inflation in real terms), extortionate charges by government, parastatals, utilities etc, decline in economic activity ([a family business], amongst many, closing down--worst 4 months ever), corruption, farm-grabbing, harassment of MDC members, civil society groups, journalists etc etc. Mr T and MDC are delusional and ineffective, their MPs unapproachable and out of touch with their supporters and reality; the only issue on which they have been vocal, forthright and united is the affront they have suffered by being given twincabs instead of something superior (i.e. Mercedes). The only exception to this sorry state is Coltart who has had some impact in education.
The current joke doing the rounds is that despite all this, Eddie Cross still writes interestingly------but about another country. They are losing urban support by the day and our ZANUPF acquaintances becoming quietly confident that if there is no dramatic change they will be able to win next election even without tricks.
The jeering at Southwark Cathedral is indicative of general feeling here. Of course one still hopes all this will change but what is the evidence out there, that we don't see here, that it might? What we saw on TV today was'nt it."

My previous blog, `Tsvangirai Telegenic..etc' was greeted by the rest of the folk I sent it to, with no comment. Does this silence speak volumes?

I will keep this missive short and await more commentary from those on the spot who clearly know better than I just how much hope there is or is not for the current regime in Zimbabwe.

In conclusion I must repeat, however, that the image of Robert Mugabe and his cronies basking in the sunshine of goodwill that warms Morgan and the MDC is not a pretty one.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

MORGAN TSVANGIRAI UNDER INTERNATIONAL SCRUTINY

TELEGENIC, ARTICULATE BUT NOT WHOLLY UNDERSTOOD
That Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is currently Zimbabwe's best hope for an end to its glaring problems is not generally doubted. What is still in the realms of wishful thinking is that the ordinary folk should experience the extraordinary turnaround that Morgan himself has recently experienced. From political pariah, target for murder, traitor, and police punchball this brave leader is now embraced by none other than the author of all his sufferings. It almost beggars belief.

So it is with intense interest that those of us Zimbabweans involuntarily exiled in Britain are watching, listening and praying - if so inclined - for his success. Today he performed well for watchers in Britain on the Andrew Marr show which is almost as good an annointing of an emergent national leader as you can get.

He has been given wide exposure in Europe and America: shaking the hands of world leaders of the stature of Angela Merkel and Barak Obama for instance. Its a great change from the ancient tyrant, Mugabe's indiscriminate embrace of everything non-Western.

When he smiles and his rotund, faintly scarred face lights up, he looks every bit the charismatic, friendly yet serious person I first met when continuing in my Whos Who, political-pundit-mode back in 1998. It was then that I asked Trevor Ncube, editor of The Independent newspaper at that time, if he would publish an interview I wanted to do to promote Morgan for his paper's readers. My subject's brisk, intelligent delivery of answers to pressing questions of the day hasn't changed either.

He certainly looks confident. Every inch the leader. My concern is that he has got his time cut out trying to make Mugabe look respectable. His sincerity in believing that this is the only route to delivery from the evil wrought by that man and his cronies, is not in doubt.

My only concern is the disjuncture of `then and now' for the people he hopes to rule. He waves away Marr's valid questioning the continuing grabbing of the last remaining farms (he knows as we all do that this is the only way through to the stony heart of his new partner) and of the continued infringements on the freedoms, - never mind the human rights - of those Zimbabweans perceived to oppose the ruling party. In essence, these, his MDC followers are the people who have so joyously elevated Morgan Tsvangirai to his present high position. Beatings, rapings, stealing farms? "That was then and this is now" is not a reassuring approach.

I don't know how he could do better but I do know that the begging bowl will fill more rapidly when we see indisputable evidence that the security of persons and property has been convincingly and irreversibly restored to that great country.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

Andy Young and the Obama feeding frenzy

Like everyone else on the planet, I was interested, first in the election of Barak Obama to the office of President-elect of the United States. I watched it while visiting my family in Connecticut. This state was pretty solidly behind the Democratic candidate and it was a rare event for me to find myself on the winning side. So many times in my former incarnation in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, I lost. This was because I was, and remain, an unrepentant `liberal'. However, this term is subject to constant re-definition. In Rhodesian-speak this description meant, to those of us who called ourselves liberal, that we were non-racial. I have said this many times before but it bears repeating: in the days of RF rule we were accused of being `commies' and, more ignorantly, by the more racist element of our society `kaffir lovers'.

The term`liberal' if applied to our Rhodesian/Zimbabwean ilk has taken on a negative meaning in the past decade or so because it implies that we were/are bending over backwards to advertise or prove our non-racial outlook, thus offending or irritating people of colour. `Patronizing' is possibly the best word for it.

How to escape all this in the new age of Obama?

I was fortunate to get a copy of Time magazine last week in which leading Afro-Americans gave their views on Barak Obama, before that great `inauguration' event. One of these famous men, Andy Young, visited Rhodesia before it became Zimbabwe: he was a part of the `Anglo-American' thrust to end Rhodesian isolationism and bring Zimbabwe back into the international fold. We `liberals' in Rhodesia's Centre Party were privileged to meet him briefly and so it was with great interest that I read his particular `take' on Barak Obama. Of all the acres of newsprint and media-speak, his words were the first to express something I hoped would eventually be admitted by some guru, some individual whose credentials regarding race are untainted by the historic complexities of a racially unbalanced world order. This, in part, is what he said:

"... He [Obama] never set himself up as the saviour of the world. He set himself up as someone who articulates and represents and can hopefully lead us to be the best Americans that we can be. He isn't just black; he's an Afro-Asian-Latin European. [my emphasis]. That means he's a global citizen.... he defies categorization"

That's an attitude I have long awaited - in the hope that some inspired leader would shape it - as the `new world order' we were promised at the end of the Cold War, in the last decade of the 20th Century.





Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

WILL MISHEK SIBANDA BECOME CHIEF SECRETARY TO AN ILLEGAL CABINET?

SIBANDA Mishek

I am prompted to write yet another `People I Once Knew’ entry here, having been reminded some time ago by a VOA News report (Jan 2, 2009 - see ZWNEWS Jan 3) of my encounters in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe with Dr Mishek Sibanda. I know that he has served for some years as Zimbabwe’s Chief Cabinet Secretary. At the time of writing, a new cabinet, shortly to be appointed by the usurper, Robert Mugabe, will be an illegal one.

Mishek was my former lecturer at the University of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe in 1978 when I was in my final year of part-time studies for a Masters degree in African History. He was employed at that time as a lecturer in the History faculty along with Dr David Beech, a towering scholar. Now sadly deceased, Beech wrote learned books on Shona history. Sibanda had come fresh out of the University of Sierra Leone to teach in his home country but clearly knew little about the particular aspect of history that I was being taught. David Beech rather showed off his very superior knowledge while Sibanda remained mute most of the time. It was an unusual situation: I was the sole surviving M.A.student (two others having dropped out along the way). There were these two pairs of eyes staring at me while I racked my brains to remember what history had been told to absorb and prepare for the lectures.

Dr Sibanda and I were to meet again several times in different circumstances and this was before he was sent off to Moscow as Ambassador for Zimbabwe. The first reunion came in the eighties while he was employed – presumably by ZANU PF - as the private secretary to President Canaan Banana and was resident at Government house in the eighties. I wanted to present Banana whom I had met years earlier during the seventies – (and this is another story which will be to be found eventually in my memoirs) with a copy of my 1980 update of my Who’s Who of African Nationalist leaders in Zimbabwe. The book included a portrait with a brief, captioned CV of the President. I had contacted Sibanda who, to my surprise (and delight at the time), invited me to tea at government house. I was ushered into the presence of his boss who, even more surprisingly, personally served me tea out of an exquisite filigree patterned china tea set AND offered delicate cucumber sandwiches. I think the Reverend Canaan Banana was still performing in Socialist mode but was somewhat confused by the residual protocol of the old colonial Government House. His secretary, Sibanda looked on quietly while we conversed very formally, the President and I, about our past encounters in Bishop Muzorewa’s office in Harare more than a decade years earlier and we exchanged polite views on the future of a country now freed from Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front government.

The Rev. Banana lost his job when Zimbabwe’s Constitution changed in 1987. He was removed from the office of non-executive President while Mugabe was anointed (you could say now that he was self-apointed) as the country’s first executive President.

The next time I met up with Mishek (we were always on first name terms) he was ensconced as a civil servant in government offices in Harare’s Central Ave (Compensation House) - as was my civil engineer husband in another department ( Water Development). Mishek worked for a government Ministry whose description I have forgotten for the moment. This time, the ubiquitous Dr Sibanda had undertaken (moonlighting, I suppose) the editing of the history section of an Encyclopedia of Zimbabwe which was being produced by Quest publishers. Among my contacts and friends was Kay Sayce, overseeing the project, and it was she who suggested that I should be asked to submit updates for the encyclopedia of the current political leaders’ biographies. Mishek was to be in charge of the work which I submitted and for which I was paid 5c per word.

It was an age of innocence: I was truly shocked when, in the course of the work, Mishek corresponded with me using government stationery for what was essentially a commercial operation and for which he too was being be paid. “On Government Service”, writ large across big, brown envelopes had replaced OHMS (On Her Majesty’s Service). Formerly, a colonial civil servant would scarcely have dared to use these for anything but government business. Some time later, postage stamps were added because it had become clear to the postal service that it would be swamped, cleaned out perhaps, by new civil servants availing themselves of what they regarded as a free-for-all postal facility (In the final event, even these stamps went out of fashion and I know not how the system worked after that)

Cautiously, I kept my thoughts about Mishek’s irresponsible behavior, or call it petty thievery, to myself because I needed help from his wife who had a job in the National Art Gallery and I wanted her collaboration with an International Artists Workshop which I had been asked (by Mrs Pat Pearce) to organize. But that is a story for another blog. This quiet man, Mishek Sibanda clearly knew which side his bread was buttered: working for the ruling party may have had its glory at the beginning. What a shame that his name, like the rest of them in that dreadful trough will go down in ignomy when the history of a once great country is written.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

WHAT HAPPENED TO HELEN SUZMAN'S INSIGNIA FROM MANDELA

The Late, Great Lady's Gong from Mandela is in a Harare Township
I have admired Helen Suzman for as long as I can remember. I never dreamed that I would meet her - this long-serving champion of justice and freedom for fellow South Africans who expressed herself so calmly and brilliantly in her career in Parliament. But not only did I meet her, but I shared with her an adventure in Harare's Mbare which I am sure she would have been anxious to forget.

The story goes like this: Wilf Mbanga a journalist who had (still has) a talent for persuading the great and famous - Desmond Tutu, Alister Sparks, Wole Soyinka were among his scoops - to agree to address large audiences of their admirers. Helen Suzman flew in to Harare about fifteen years ago, to address Zimbabweans attending a Willie Musarurwa Memorial banquet in Harare on the subject of Freedom of Expression. I served with Wilf on the committee of the Trust and had been involved in the usual planning and organization of this annual event.

I was more than pleased when Wilf called me the morning after Helen had delivered her speech and asked me to join him and a British journalist, taking Helen in his Mercedes on a tour of Harare's places of interest on her way to Harare's airport. We picked her up, together with her light, overnight luggage from her hotel. She was immaculate in a navy blue suit with matching handbag; her silver hair, groomed to perfection did not conceal the expensive gold stud ear rings. I wore my favourite grey tracksuit and carried a large matching, sack-like bag. It was a hot day and Helen removed her jacket as she entered the car and sat beside Wilf on the front seatwhile I (for reasons I cannot explain) sat on my bag beside the Brit on the back seat.

The tour included a visit to the Borrowdale Shopping Centre (Sam Levy's Village) and an uphill walk from the parking lot to the top of Harare's `Kopje' to see the 180 degree view of the City of Harare and the sourrounding countryside. We made small talk as we passed the Law Courts in Rotten Row, when Helen remarked "What I really want to see is a Zimbabwean African township" Okay, Wilf turned off after we crossed the flyover into the crowded lane behind the Rufaro football stadium. The pavements were filled with street vendors and Wilf had to slow down to make his way along the narrow road. Helen had just remarked "Is this your Zimbabwe's Soweto" when Wilf gave an alarmed shout as a strong black arm came through his window. At the same time a young vendor opened the front passenger door, grabbed Helen's handbag and her jacket from her lap and made off with them. It all happened with lightening speed. Wilf leaped out of the car, picked up a large stone and with the Brit gave chase, disappearing among the buildings on the roadside.

Helen was livid. "My insignia! It was on my jacket lapel - its my insignia from Nelson Mandela!" she wailed and she too leaped out of her seat, and stood beside the car calling down some amazing curses on the thief. Rich language, I thought, and perfectly justified. Meanwhile, what was I doing? I was sure she was going to be mugged on her feet. I leaned over and slammed Wilf's door shut, jumped out and hustled Helen back into the car. My own almost invisible handbag was untouched. Wilf and the Brit returned empty handed, matching Helen's language. A a quick u-turn and we were out of there, shouting at a passing police vehicle that we had been robbed.

Helen's stolen handbag had contained her plane ticket, her cash, her glasses, her keys to her house in Johannesburg's Houghton suburb - everything a woman keeps on her person when travelling.

"I have to get that plane, we've only got two hours before it flies" pleaded Helen. The next couple of hours were astonishing to say the least.

First stop after the robbery is the South African High Commission whose official town offices at the time were in the Sanlam Building in the city centre. But it is a Saturday morning and the offices are closed. We dash into a clothing shop on the ground floor, below the offices. In desperate haste we approach a young woman who is holding a telephone to her ear. She does not recognise Helen and, looking annoyed, says we must wait for attention.. "Where is the manager?" I demand. "I am the manager," she says archly. No progress here and we dash off like a bunch of rabbits to a shop beside the Treasure Trove in second street where we know that there is a Chinese who runs an efficient photograpy business. He recognises the urgency in our wild eyes and allows us to jump the waiting queue. Minutes later we have passport photographs of Helen. No mobile phones on us, we decide to split our forces. Wilf and Helen go in one direction to get a new ticket, using his credit card after I am dropped at the gate of the South African Ambassador's suburban home in Kew Drive, just half a block from my own home in Highlands. The iron barred gate is firmly locked and behind them a startled security guard, sees a middle-aged matron in a track suit dancing about like a monkey, clutching the bars, demanding to see the boss and claiming to be a friend of Nelson Mandela. (I knew the young man would not recognise the name of the famous lady we were trying to rescue). Nervously, the guard picks up his intercom phone and calls the Ambassador the estimable Mamabulo. By great good luck he is in the house. Miraculously, I am allowed inside. The ambassador comes running down the stairs, recognises me as I pace anxiously in his reception area. Getting the message pretty damn quick, he moves into action. We roar off in his official car to the SA passport offices in Princess Drive, the High Commissioner instructing some officer to meet us there, open the gates and the doors and get Helen Suzman a temporary passport.

The great lady, her photos, her passport and her ticket home are united. She catches the plane. Well done Ambassador, well done Wilf.

Helen wrote to thank us after she had replaced her lost possessions - but not the the treasured insignia.

With every one of the multitude of her admirers, I mourn her passing.


Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

REVELATIONS RE RHODESIA FROM 1978 ARCHIVES

KEN FLOWER A `DOUBLE AGENT' AND HICKMAN A WOULD-BE `TURNCOAT'

At last, when most adult and middle-aged Rhodesians who lived through the eventual political and military turbulance of a bush war at the climax of the Rhodesian crisis - which began with Smith's UDI in November 1965 - are dead, I have lived to hear Matthew Parris and David Owen confirm what we `white liberals' suspected, but would not have dared to suggest. Ken Flower, the CIO boss and the military man, Col. John Hickman were no friends of Ian Smith, although at the time, this was not well known.
The opening up of new files (1978) at the British national archives has enabled these sensitive secrets to move into the public domain.
Martha Carney's UK Confidential programme on Radio 4 hosted two men (why never any women, Martha?) who were involved in Rhodesia's history in one way or another. She gave space to Lord Owen (Dr David Owen, the former British Foreign Secretary, as we white liberals knew him when we met him in Rhodesia in 1978), and Matthew Parris (whose mother Terry was partially responsible for setting me on my political path in Rhodesia in 1966). The program was given advance notice of these archival revelations and my ears were bent firmly towards the radio, only to hear mighty little of Rhodesia's history other than the features outlined here, but it was enough. Speculation has given way to documented proof.
Researching through the few books I was able to bring with me into exile in England I find that Godwin and Hancock's " `Rhodesians Never Die' " (Oxford, 1993) were aware of these little hidden truths and gave them their first airing, but with some caution.
I never met Hickman although my husband was at school with his rival, General Peter Walls and knew him well as a boy). But we were friendly with Ken Flower in a careful sort of way (we played tennis on his Hoggerty Hill tennis court, but never discussed politics). His daughter will forgive me for this commentary because she probably knows that I was among those who persuaded her late father to write his memoir `Serving Secretly' about his work as a top man in Rhodesia's Central Intelligence Organization who went on to serve Bishop Muzorewa and eventually Robert Mugabe. (He died before this latter individual turned really nasty). My favourite story about Ken is of how I met up with him during the Independence party to host Prince Charles at Government House in Rhodesia in 1980. He and Emerson Mnangagwa were a little tiddly, to use a polite expression, and were hanging on to a tent pole in a great Marquee, reminiscing over their top security roles on either side of the Liberation Struggle. I boldly asked if they would help me to have access to their files so that I could write more biographies of the leading lights among the political and military of Zanu PF and ZANLA.

They fell about laughing, clutching the tent pole. I don't remember which it was but one of them gasped "We got a lot of our information from your published Whos Who!"
Ah well, so much for all that and God rest you, dear Ken Flower.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

ALL HIS, MUGABE SPEAKS TRUTH

"Zimbabwe is mine" announced Robert Mugabe to his party Congress this week-end.
The Times added "all mine". That was closer to the truth: all the pain, the suffering, the torture, the starvation, the ruined economy, the devastated farming industry, the unholy killings of illegal diamond panners, the collapse of the health and education systems.... the list would fill this page, all these belong to Mugabe. That is all his; that is what this so-called liberator now rules over as Zimbabwe approaches the status of a failed state, HIS failed state. It is his failed state. Somebody must make him give it back to the people and then he must take the punishement for failing HIS Zimbabwe.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

Kirsty's success is something else

When I read of the garlands (and cash) being thrown at the successful, brilliant Olympics performer, Kirsty Coventry by the despicable Mugabe regime I wondered how they cope with their own internal contradictions. Kirsty, after all is a white Zimbabwean. All Zimbabweans are proud of her achievement, she has worked hard for it and deserves recognition from the country of her birth.

However - and this is a big `however' - the same recognition should go for countless hardworking and once successful people in Zimbabwean both white and black and who are not at all favoured by Mugabe because they support a legitimate opposition party, the MDC. Mugabe blames whites, especially British whites for the existence of the MDC and for all of his own many failures. In exalting white Kirsty, Robert Mugabe is going directly against his announcement that `the only good white is a dead one' and the many other uncharming expressions of distaste he has disgorged from his bilous and uncouth mouth over the past few years.

Surely, if we follow through this argument, Mugabe should wake up to the fact that there is (or was) a huge resource of talent, not only for sports individuals, in Zimbabwe. This was before he either stifled it because of the severe doubts about his own talent, doubts that have led people to reject him at the polls or caused a massive flight of talent out of the country. Kirsty was famous when she lived in Zimbabwe. Now she is an Olympian and travels the world but is based in the US. Mugabe hates the US, he hates whites but he loves success. At this time, unfortunately for him and his henchmen who regard Zimbabwe as their personal fiefdom, the success is not his, nor is it theirs.

As a post script to this rave, I have today read of the elevation of Mugabe's slavishly loyal Minister Aeneas Chigwedere to a position of Provincial Governor (of course, if all goes well in the current talks about power, he might not keep the job). I happened on this same day, to be re-reading Judy Todd's valuable testimony to the lives of the Todd family in her recent book Through the Darkness. I find the same `cognitive dissonance' or call it schizophrenia or split personality - or whatever in regard to race, in the fact that as recently as December 2001, this same Chigwedere delivered himself of a great eulogy, giving fulsome praise to a fine educationist. This was a white woman, Mrs Grace Todd, who he called `a great daughter of Zimbabwe'. He had formerly presented Mrs Todd with his manuscript entitled The White Heroes of Zimbabwe. I ask myself why this MS has not been published. Chigwedere, who stands so high in Mugabe's favour did not protest when Grace Todd's husband, a great, white Zimbabwean man, Sir Garfield Todd was, as a very old man, assaulted by ZANU (PF) thugs. I do not recall and have not read of any effort made by this same pompous historian and former schoolteacher to protest at the disgraceful treatment of the famous Grace's equally famous daughter, Judith who fought hard for black nationalism's cause. I hardly need to remind readers that Judy was virtually exiled by the ruling ZANU (PF), many of whose Ministers and top officials had been educated and even protected in the dark days of racial discrimation by the Todds. Judy, racially discriminated against, has been declared a foreigner in Zimbabwe, the country of her birth. Watch out, still young - and great- Kirsty!
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

Deary me, Arthur Mutambara has a problem

`I am coming out of Oxford. None of your prime ministers can challenge me intellectually'

Arthur is in a muddle. He was invited to lead the Welshman Ncube faction of the MDC when the split came in the wake of Mugabe's divisive, tactical move, restoring Senate seats in Parliament in 2005. He was last seen by this writer as a young student revolutionary, braving the teargas and the beatings of the Zimbabwe Republic police because students dared to take issue with the corruption of the Zimbabwe government's ruling ZANU (PF) party.
When he popped up again, he was a rocket scientist - the genuine article. Could he steer into his political laboratory the mass support that Morgan Tsvangirai had built up in the country over seven years? It seems not and clearly, his failure is hurting this vain man.
In his interview with Australian Geraldine Doogue he lost it. After a good start, denying reports that he was cosying up to Mugabe, he proceeded with a credible upstaging of Mugabe's anti-western, Afro-centric, self-regarding trumpet blowing. Trouble is Mugabe had already occupied mount Olympus and laid claim to the highest authority: "Only God can remove me from power" is what the old man revealed to us when he found himself with his back to the wall this year.
As for Mutambara's rudeness, crudeness really, in calling his interviewer stupid - was that really necessary in order to prove his own mental superiority?
Perhaps he should go back to exercising his great mind in the field for which he is best qualified. He is clearly and demonstrably not much good as a politician thus far.
I am sorry for the good people in his party - they are some of the best that the country has to offer and it is a pity that their principles would not allow them to stick with Morgan Tsvangirai. The country needs their integrity and good minds even though they did not go to Oxford.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

CORRECTION: MUTAMBARAS DODGY MOVE, TSVANGIRAI 'S RUSSIAN ROULETTE

On reading further reports it seems to me almost certain that Arthur Mutambara was prepared to sign a deal with Mugabe if Mbeki had allowed it. We can be quite certain that Tsvangirai has the full support of his party to withold his signature if there is the slightest possibility that Mugabe will be up to his usual tricks. This time the old rogue remains determined to hold on to authority while pretending to be willing to share it. It now comes to a final race between the spectre of starvation and the person who blinks first at the negotiating table.
I hope I am right in putting my faith, as I always have, in the extraordinary courage of the majority who are willing to die if it comes to that, for democracy.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

NO "DEAL": Mbeki & Mugabe vs Tsvangirai & Mutambara

Bronwen Maddox in The Times today quoted Richard Dowden saying "a deal stitched up by Mugabe, Mutambara and Mbeki isn't going to stick". This is true but somewhere along the line, the media had fallen, initially, for the line that on Tuesday night, Mutambara " struck a deal for a coalition government with Arthur Mutambara, leader of a faction of the MDC" (Maddox).

Like all Zimbabweans, expat and the rest, I have been keeping a sharp eye on President Thabo Mbeki's power-brokering in Harare. I have it on good authority - from both factions of the MDC - that Arthur Mutambara had struck no "deal". My own understanding is that he had agreed to a "key issue" (his words) in the ongoing negotiations, one which did not have Tsvangirai's agreement. My informant revealed that it was Munangagwa giving out calculated disinformation, (as I would assume, to an eager press) who claimed that they - Mugabe's lot - had done a deal with Mutambara. There was some confusion because Mutambara was saying different things to different journalists - he is, after all, quite new to international negotiations. It is clear that he is kept firmly in line by his supporters.

With Munangagwa's shadow cast 0n the curtained stage, we should be wary of a plot to pour poison into the ears of those who so desperately need to know when the tragic show called Zimbabwe will end. We can be sure that Munangagwa has good reason to deceive, being the front man for the JOC. Those overfed fat cats running the military expect him to hang on to the key to the Congo larder as well as Zanu (PF)'s licence to plunder what is left of Zimbabwe's assets.

The bait offered to Mutambara Maddox has made clear, would be attractive enough on the face of it. On paper he can dictate the balance of power: Mugabe's Zanu PF party, together with Mutabara's MDC faction would hold 109 seats in the March 29 elected Parliament, to Tsvangirai's 100.

Today's news that Tsvangirai has had his passport confiscated as he prepared to depart for South Africa is an ominous sign. It is clear that he was planning to brief international supporters and /or to contact SADC leaders who will meet this week-end to hear from their Chairman whose mission to settle the Zimbabwe issue has not yet succeeded. Speculation on all this continues, drearily and wearyingly, back at square one.

A last thought: those of us with long memories can look back at a "deal" that the country's previous, white, colonial government of Zimbabwe Rhodesia struck with several factions of black nationalist politicians leaders (predominently Bishop Muzorewa) in the March 3 1978 transitional government agreement. It didn't stick because it became clear that the number of blacks occupying seats in Parliament did not amount to a grip on power. The military, the civil service, the police and the security branch was where the power lay - then as now.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

ITS GOT TO BE BAD ENOUGH TO LET HIM GO

Isn't it too ghastly for words to have to face the fact that Robert Mugabe's personal escape from his just deserts may yet come about because of the very depths of depravity to which his ZANU (PF) regime has plunged?
A writer called Yarik Turianskyi whose question "Will Robert Mugabe face trial?" I noted on ZWNEWS yesterday, concludes that the answer may be a reluctant "Yes"

Certainly, the people who have suffered grievously at his hands, indirectly, we assume, through his abominable lieutenants would find it almost impossible to forgive him. It seems that you can get away with murder, as long as your victims are legion.

Auschwitz and concentration camps the world over have shown skeletal victims of the cruelty that humans (can we call them that?) visit upon each other. "How terrible! How wicked! This must never happen again!" we exclaim. And then we have gone back to our business, and we have let it happen again. Zimbabwean victims of Robert Mugabe are starving in a country capable of feeding not only inself but most of sub-Saharan Africa too.




Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

Acquaintance with David Steel

This is not a trumpet blowing exercise and I have hesitated with the title. This is because my old friend Heidi Holland titled her book `Dinner with Mugabe' about the man whose ignominious life touched us both very profoundly. She explained that it was really a dinner FOR Mugabe that brought her briefly within arms reach of her subject. In my case, I reminisce, vaingloriously about attending a dinner with a group of opposition politicians in former Rhodesia with Sir David Steel more than thirty years ago.

David Steel, leader of Britain's Liberal Party in 1976, appeared on BBC television's `Empire's Children' this evening. The program took me back to the year 1977 (if I remember rightly) when he visited Rhodesia. It was at a time when a flurry of VIPs from Britain and America were calling in to meet the country's political leaders and members of a formal opposition party of which I was an executive member. He found time to meet members of the National Unifying Force, a party I helped to found towards the end of my long and unsuccessful quest to defeat the Rhodesian Front at the polls. I remember Steel as young, dark haired, keenly intelligent and an earnest enquirer into the complexities of Rhodesia's rebellious and illegal status as a former British colony. We exchanged a few words but it was only through today's TV revelation that I discovered that a little his life's experience has been linked with gossamer-thin threads to my own.

For starters, I too am one of Empire's children but Steel's reminiscences are of Kenya, a kind of `sister-colony to the Rhodesia where I was born and where I lived for 70 years. David Steel the younger lived in Africa until he was twelve years old and his Empire story reveals him in a journey of re-discovery of the important episode in Kenya of his hugely respected father, also David Steel, a Presbyterian Minister of St Andrew's Church in Nairobi. The Rev. Steel spoke out powerfully and bravely against the colonial government's harsh treatment meted out to Kenya's blacks at the time of Kenya's `emergency' when the majority (mostly Kikuyu) took to the warpath, led by the Mau Mau. It was a very violent time and the BBC's photographs shown on the programme left viewers in no doubt of that.

My late brother, also a David, was a forensic photographer in the Kenya Police during that time and I felt sure that he took some of those pictures. He carried a collection of them and showed them to me when he left Kenya, horrified and embittered about an Africa he had loved and lived in for his first quarter century. David Steel's journey of enquiry into the past told me much that I needed to know about that period of colonial history. Much of it chimes with Rhodesia's story of African nationalist struggle to repossess the land. No Mau Mau-type oaths there, but many more violent deaths - many thousands of blacks and a couple of thousand whites in Zimbabwe's struggle for independence. I joined with a minority of Rhodesia's whites in an effort to deflect Ian Smith's RF party from the path of war. As in Kenya, there were brave and outspoken Christians in Rhodesia: the Catholic Bishop Lamont, Anglican Rev Sam Wood, Methodists, the Rev. Fred Rea and Ken Mew to name a few.

I looked up David Steel's biography in Wikipedia and noted with interest that he succeeded the disgraced Jeremy Thorpe as Party leader. I met Jeremy Thorpe (over two lunches, no dinners), when he visited Rhodesia to see his old school friend who was my political mentor, Jeremy Broome. Even more interesting: I learned that Steel and David Owen, another, more powerful British politician whom we (opposition to Smith) met in Rhodesia was closely linked, not always amicably, with David Steel's political party life.

Finally, after meeting many and various of his father's admirers, inclluding a group of ancients who remain bouond in solidarity together in a Mau Mau veterans association, David Steel is recorded most recently searching the Kenyan National Archives in Kenya in order to learn more of his illustrius father's life in that colony. He discovers an impressive collection of letters revealing Rev. Steel's struggle with British officials on behalf of his African flock.

This last puts me in mind of the fact that I must hasten to see that my papers (the lifetime collection of an ancient, `colonial relic') - both personal and political - must continue to be safely stored. The first twenty years from 1962 when the Rhodesian Front came to power in Rhodesia are safely archived at my old Cape Town University; the next twenty, to 2003 will soon be on their way to the Hoover Institution at Stanford in America. Insignificant though my personal role in the greater scheme of Zimbabwe's history might have been, there are often many marked down truths from long-gone witnesses to be found in carefully preserved documents, wherever they may be.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) flag's official prayer.

I found a poster among my papers today and found I have forgottern how to copy to my blog. Originally, it was a full colour illustration "inserted on behalf of the Government" as Advertisement Supplement :The Sunday Mail - The Sunday News. September 2, 1979.

The advert was published on the day the Zimbabwe Rhodesia flag was raised on September 2 at thirteen centres throughout the country and six months before Zimbabwe's Independence was formally ushered in on April 18, 1980 . The "Rhodesia" bit was forever dropped but the colours remained the same and the design was varied to match the aspiration of a new Zimbabwe. Unhappily the message now is more true than ever - 28 years on on the accompanying logo "The people want peace - That is what the people want". This appears at the foot of every one of the full colour, A3 pages.

The expressions of great and good intentions advertised in the September poster show how tragically Zimbabweans were duped by Mugabe and his gang of political assassins and thieves into believing we would be well ruled after the liberation struggle was ended.

If I can master the technology I will copy another page of the advert in another blog. It tells us the meaning of the dumped flag's five colours:

GOLD for the bird of Gold that tells our country's wealth;
GREEN, our land that grows food for all and fulfils our needs;
BLACK that says the government belongs to the people;
WHITE that promises home for every minority and faith;
RED that speaks of our nation's sacrifices.

Only the black and the red now speak truth. Especially the red; the sacrifices are still being made while their true purpose has, since 2000 been utterly betrayed.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

What more is there to say?

I bought a copy of The Guardian newspaper today because the front page blared out "Exclusive:secret film reveals how Mugabe stole an election". I followed this up on the internet. The video was brief but plausible. Brave Shepherd Yuda seems to have done his best to give his testimony to history before he escaped to a safer place.

Mr Yuda went along with a despicable regime for a long time. Thank God he got away. I know dozens of Zimbabweans who at various times "saw the light" and either left the country, changed their careers or made an effort to support one of several political parties opposed to the ZANU PF regime. Until the MDC arrived nothing changed, except for the worse. Things changed with the MDC all right, but now they are worse than ever.

What I find so galling is that Mugabe's elections have been stolen over and over again and by attrition - nobody beyond the country's borders with any influence has ever made any but token efforts to stop him - his demonic rule has prospered while the country has slipped over the precipice.

Can it be that the oft repeated call to Zimbabweans to solve their own problems is, in the final analysis, going to be the only way back? Morgan Tsvangirai has given a lead and has earned himself huge respect for his refusal to be goaded into a civil war where a military machine would face unarmed peasants and townspeople in a dreadful bloodbath, a fight to the finish. For now, there is a stalemate with a lot of secret maneuvering going on.

A defiant Robert Mugabe spits his venom at enemies manufactured entirely in his deranged imaginings. Pity the crowds who scream with delight as they watch him caper before them. Their screams, will echo through the blackest darkness as their children die of malnutrition, their young perish with AIDS and almost every able bodied adult who is unable to escape across the borders scrabbles for food. I hope I am wrong in my own worst imaginings.

I lived 70 years in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia where I was born). Like the majority of Zimbabweans today, I find it hard to believe that a nation with so much going for it could be destroyed by one man. Admittedly his military cronies will hold him up because they are even more corrupt than he is.

I foresaw that the camps set up to forcibly indoctrinate young, innocent school-leavers would seriously damage if not destroy the peaceloving nature of Zimbabwe's people. Those "green bombers" doing the bidding of their Zanu PF masters would set in motion unstoppable waves of violence throughout the country.

Today we are seeing the consequences of a great historical error: we were duped in 1980 into believing we would be well led by Robert Mugabe. I was among the believers until he slaughtered those 20 000 in Matabeleland. We allowed a mentally unstable, liberation leader to destroy hopes of a peaceful and prosperous future in a beautiful country for us all - black, white - everybody, including those in the feeding trough, the destroyer's allies and their progeny. Zimbabwe was a potentially great country. The craven collaborators of SADC are as blameworthy as his party aparachiks for the Robert Gabriel Mugabe catastrophe which will affect all Africa.

Until "Chinja"becomes more than a word, I will write only of the past. There is nothing more to say about the future.

(I have been making a feeble start at mastering links

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

GETTING TOGETHER - Zimbabwe's last hope

A VERY PERTINENT PETITION
I have just spent an hour of my extremely limited time responding to an Avaaz call per email to get my friends to join me in signing a petition to help save Zimbabwe.

The Avaaz.com email includes a mock-up of a poster advertisement the organization will flight in the press, particularly in South Africa. It is very pertinent. I can't reproduce it here but it states: "Mugabe Saved Zimbabwe from Colonialism - Now Help us to Save Zimbabwe from Him".

I am not sure that petitions will have any effect, but one can only hope. Meanwhile, I must get on with my memoirs of a lifetime in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, sadly interrupted by the serious illness of my best friend, my husband. I have resolved, for now, to concentrate entirely on the work and close my eyes to any further petitions, and even to limit my news-watching (very hard to do) until the work is done.

One final hope, when I look around again, Mugabe will be gone and the man's madness that has almost destroyed my former home will have gone with him, together with his abominable friends and supporters.

There is still hope for the more distant future of Zimbabwe. Here is how I see it:

Genocide is the wrong word for what is happening in Zimbabwe. Massacre and scorched earth would be better words to describe the actions of Mugabe's storm troopers.

A Genocide is a lethal attack by one ethnic group upon another. The MDC is made up of representatives from every every racial or tribal group of its citizens. Mugabe is hell bent to rid himself of every Zimbabwean who no longer admires him or recognises him as a legitimate President.

I was in at the founding of the MDC; was present when Morgan Tsvangirai was elected, unopposed as the party's leader. The split in the party's ranks was unfortunate but the two sides are now reconciled.

That is the hope for the future: never before has such unity among the people been
so bravely and so determinedly pursued. The old racial and tribal divisions
have been forgotten and that is what the liberation struggle aspired to.

This last step of a united people, ruled by democrats awaits the departure
of Mugabe....

... and the rest is repetition. So far, endless repetition.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

MUGABE'S GUN VS OPPOSITION'S "X"

Just as we began to think that the old man was being driven to unstoppable violence by the forces that he himself unleashed in 2000, he confirms what we have long suspected: he really is, always has been, a violent, cruel and mentally unbalanced tyrant who will kill his own people rather than give up power. The words have come out of his own mouth in the week before the critical election that could seal his fate or that of the majority of the Zimbabwe people. His collaborators in crime are now seeing the punishment they must endure if he is defeated or he dies. They hope - they plan - to escape retribution if they can achieve everlasting rule by the gun.

There is not much more to be said, but here is a little history: a review of the words spoken by one of his own former guerrilla commanders speaks loudly, decades later of the perceptions of the liberation fighters about the negative features of rule by the gun.

"Recalling his transfer from the military into the political arena of the Party (ZANU PF) Robson [Manyika] says: `We were aware that politics comes first; the military is born from politics. After the war, we reform. The Party CONTROLS the gun [his emphasis], the gun does not control the party' ".
(interviewed by me, Diana Mitchell, for "African Nationalist Leaders in Zimbabwe Whos Who” 1980"

That surely might be how the cunning Mugabe got to rule the gun. A number of former military men, good men, have died `in suspicious circumstances’ throughout Mugabe’s rule. Clearly Manyika’s words needed closer attention. Could he have known that Mugabe, formerly ZANLA’s Commander-in-Chief, although never holding the gun himself, would continue to direct the gun while pretending to have transferred himself - transformed himself rather - to lead the triumphant ZANU (PF) party?

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

"Barbaric" says Mugabe

Yes, Mr ex-President Mugabe. You have chosen the right word:

`Mugabe, who faces MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in a presidential run-off on June 27 described the violence as "barbaric" (Mail & Guardian (SA) 3 June 08).

Barbaric, is undeniably the description of your own followers' current misbehaviour. You will have to wear that label yourself, tied to your toe, unless you can stop the cruel punishment of your own, brave people for voting against you. When your generals say that Tsvangirai will never rule, when your wife says he will never enter state house, when you boast of "degrees in violence" and you continue in denial of your well-deserved loss of power in the recent general elections, nobody needs to be very clever to conclude that the ongoing barbarism is indirectly your responsibility.

You spoke at a world food crisis summit in Rome on June 3, 2008. The barbarians destroyed Rome in the 5th century A.D. In the 21st century, Robert Mugabe, a disgraced former liberation fighter, who can be seen by the world as a spokesman for a clique of barbarians taking their orders from him, has entered the gates of Rome. Without your bullying, murderous militia, your suborned police,your disgraceful generals and your pathetic, juvenile `war vets' you confronted world leaders whose facial expressions, as revealed on television, betrayed no great fear of a balmy little leader of bone-headed and greedy barbaric hordes.

Shame on the UN for allowing you to display in that great, rebuilt city of Rome your utter ignorance of history, modern economics and your personal spite against a civilized, post-colonial western world.

"... The barbarians, who destroyed Rome, destroyed it to take its wealth not its knowledge...

...The shortage of farmers led to Romans depending on foreign nations for food, a basic staple of life. During this anarchy, civilization deteriorated to its most basic level"(Mega Essays.com).

Your destroyed Zimbabwe has no shortage of farmers as such; the shortage is of wealth. Your craven cronies have stolen the nation's human and material wealth built up over a relatively short 120 years. Even your most ardent African admirers are not
able to comprehend the depths to which you have brought a once-prosperous nation.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

TRIALS OF GORDON BROWN AND MORGAN TSVANGIRAI COMPARED

Britain's Prime Minister, Labour leader Gordon Brown is struggling to come to terms with his party's recent catastrophic losses in the local government polls. He is faced with much the same uncertainty for the future as is Zimbabwe's Morgan Tsvangirai (pronounced changiraiyi). In Africa, Tsvangirai who is the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party leader, is known to have won handsomely in recent general and Presidential elections, albeit the ruling party with its boss, Robert Mugabe, is attempting to steal the MDC's victory.

How can you compare these two men, Brown and Tsvangirai? Brown bleakly watches his political fortunes plummeting while Tsvangirai's hopes, aye, even his chances of attaining high office appear to be rising. Simply: neither man has much chance of being able to deliver on any but the most elementary of promises to their supporters in the short term.

That is as far as can be seen right now.

Brown is accused of failing to listen to voters whose concerns are of a rapid decline in their spending power. Credit is being cut off, banks are nervous and mortgages are no longer easy to find while houses are getting harder to sell. Brown failed a former Chancellor of the Exchequer to save during the fat years. No need to extrapolate. The word recession is too frightening to use, but the British are entering the lean years.Its not going to be easy for government, any British government.

Tsvangirai has to stay alive and is currently in voluntary exile, awaiting the long-overdue acknowledgement by Mugabe's government that its days of plenty for the few (while the rest starve) are coming to an end. When a new government comes into power, no matter what its name or who its leader, Zimbabwe's economy, like so many in Africa, will have to be dredged up from the bottom of a very murky lake (there is no sea in Zimbabwe). The expectations of Zimbabweans for an improvement in their lives will be high. Government is not going to be easy for any new Zimbabwe government.


Brown is accused of failing to listen to voters whose concerns are of a rapid decline in their spending power. Credit is being cut off, banks are nervous and mortgages are no longer easy to find, while houses are getting harder to sell. No need to extrapolate. The word recession is too frightening to use, but British people are entering the lean years

Its not going to be easy for government, any British government.

Tsvangirai has to stay alive and is currently in voluntary exile awaiting the long-overdue acknowledgement of the Mugabe's government that its days of plenty for the few while the rest starve, are coming to an end. When a new government comes into power, no matter what its name or who its leader, Zimbabwe's economy, like so many in Africa, will have to be dredged up from the bottom of a very murky lake (there is no sea in Zimbabwe). The expectations of ordinary Zimbabweans for an immediate improvement in their lives will be high.

Government is not going to be easy for any new Zimbabwean Party leader.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell