Mugabe’s tactics still don't add up

And it came to pass. The election-which was meant to humiliate the opposition as usual, and give the maximum leader for 28 years another five years, turned the other way. Mugabe lost, Tsvangirai won. Like a drama, Mugabe cannot believe the verdict of the people and that it is time for him to step aside.
Even when the opposition went to court to ask for the release of the votes, the judge acted as if he was reading a script drafted by Mugabe forces, saying there was no urgency to warrant early release.
Surprisingly, while the court did not see anything wrong in still keeping the result under wrap, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission began a recount of the parliamentary results in 23 constituencies without being prompted by anyone. At the end of the recount, which has not boosted Mugabe's electoral standing, the ZEC has merely released results from 13 out of the 23 constituencies, which show that the MDC still won by more than two seats. But there is fear that the remaining ten may be added to Mugabe to upturn the victory of the MDC.
One can easily understand why the police immediately raided the six-storey building headquarters of the MDC and arrested no fewer than 215 supporters of the party and independent election monitors and took them into detention. They are to be charged for committing 'political violence'.
The coast is even clearer for Mugabe and his allies to inflict more assaults on the opposition as the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, has fled Zimbabwe, fearing for his safety.
It is heart-warming however, that the United States has already declared the opposition won the polls while the United Kingdom has called for >arms embargo on Zimbabwe. Gordon Brown on Saturday deplored the climate of fear in the country and called for a concerted effort by the international community to halt it. But will that force Mugabe to beat a retreat, as his tactics just don’t add up?

Links:

BBC

The Guardian

Allafrica.com

Theaustraliannews.com

Reuters

A vessel of controversy

I woke up smiling this morning without knowing when my breakfast would be ready. I did not win a jackpot either. But the news of the rejection of the Chinese ship loaded with assorted arms for the desperate Mugabe government elated me the most. It made my day.
The controversial vessel, An Yue Jiang, like a bad product, has been drifting like a shaft driven by the wave, since South African workers unions protested the shipment. The workers had threatened not to offload its contents ferried in by a Chinese firm. It was laden with ammunition as well as rockets, mortar bombs and mortar tubes ordered by the Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Defence.
The shipment weighed 77 tons and was valued at $1.245 million. The invoice was dated Jan. 21, and the goods left China on March 15, two weeks after the Zimbabwe general elections, whose result is now being unduly delayed. Angered by the shipment, Rubin Phillip, the Anglican archbishop of KwaZulu-Natal, and Gerald Patrick Kearney, public activist, aided by the Southern African Litigation Centre, approached a South Africa’s High Court to halt the transportation of the arms across South Africa and the court granted the request before long.
But on Friday evening, when the authorities went to serve the court order on An Yue Jiang, it pulled up anchor and sailed away. It is being said that the ship might be heading for Congo, Maputo or Beijing. But the Chinese government says it might recall the ship with its contents.
As things are, the best destination for the ship is Beijing and that should be done at once. Zimbabweans need the result of the vote they cast on March 29, 2008 and not weapons of destruction. Enough of Chinese arms build-up in Africa in the name of economic transaction.

Links:

Usatoday

Guardian

BBC

What does Mugabe want the world to believe?

There may be something seriously wrong with this man. However, being a country’s leader, many still think that Robert Mugabe is well and kicking. But could this really be true?
How can a leader who is in his real sense sit over the result of an election concluded about a month ago? The most annoying thing about the election is that the results were computed and pasted at all the pooling centres for all to see. It is an open secret that the results are now being tampered with by Mugabe’s agents, who not only seized and kept them in their own custody but also on their own started ‘recounting’ when the results are not yet officially announced.
The question then, is who ordered the recount? For what purpose is the recount when the ZEC has said that it is too ‘risky to declare the results’? The United Kingdom and the U.S. have become very uncomfortable with the atrocious delay in releasing the vote outcome while some monitors have said the recount is a fraud.
One can understand the desperateness and despondency of Mugabe and his clique in their unholy bid to hang onto power even though staples like bread and maize have since disappeared from the table of the ordinary people they claim to be serving. The unfortunate thing however is that there is no history of anywhere in Africa or elsewhere in the world that any leader sat on election result and ordered a recount on his own term just to be declared winner.
From the way things are going, Mugabe may soon be declared winner by ZEC but he by this open manipulation unwittingly dented whatever is left of his image and further carved in as a despot not willing to quit when the ovation is still loud. This may be one victory that he may be ‘given’ but I doubt if he can engage in an open dance after the declaration. The best he can get from his generals and war veterans is a muffled applause that will not endure in any case. I bet him.

Links:

Inthenews.co.uk

Yahoo News

Guardian

China’s aiding Africa’s despotism

America and Britain very often disappoint many of their followers and incur their wrath for obvious reasons. They most often talk but do little to curb the excesses of some tyrannical regimes. Take the case of China and the Olympics and then come back to look at the way China is making unhindered forays into African markets and beyond despite its awful human rights records.
If Beijing’s brutalisation of Tibetans is not worrisome enough to both nations, then one would have expected them to rise up and confront Robert Mugabe who woefully lost last month’s general elections but defiantly and shamelessly sat on the results. But painfully all we got was an oral vilification from Washington and a terse rebuke from London a few days ago. All that looks like pouring water on the feathers of a hen- it falls away leaving the hen to fly away safely.
Because China and Zimbabwe are being treated by the big powers with kid gloves, China has gone ahead to ferry deadly weapons into Harare while the controversy over the election results is yet to be resolved. China remains the largest supplier of arms and weapons to Sudan, thus escalating the killings in Darfur while at home it is suppressing any voice of dissent against the hosting of the 2008 Olympics and Tibetan autonomy.
Expectedly, with this type of lackadaisical attitude from the leading nations, China will continue to saturate despotic African nations with arms to fight their opponents and destroy democratic structures as long as no one shouts against its impunity. Nigeria for instance, has already signed a multi-million dollar oil and rail deal with the despotic regime. It stands to gain from China what the democratic nations have denied it. What a shame and dishonour to the colonial powers that once dominated the black continent?

Links:

International Herald Tribune

Guardian

Usatoday

International Security Energy

Timesonline

Chasing shadows at the expense of daunting dilemma

Nigeria has undoubtedly reached a crossroads as far as the unresolved Niger Delta problem is concerned. Imagine the level of impunity with which youths who started as street urchins are now squaring off with innocent persons on the streets and in the creeks of the Niger Delta without any serious challenge from those whose duty it is to ward off these malevolent elements. The youths, who could easily be sent packing with a bark in 2003 when they first hit the streets, are now a terror to all. From kidnapping of foreign oil workers for ransom in 2006, the vile elements have now enlarged their profile. They now kidnap children, women and Nigerian oil workers, politicians and any person of note. In all this, the law enforcement agents are always caught unawares and are often compelled to engage in persuasion with the evil poachers to free their victims.
Apart from engaging in full time oil bunkering, the militants have also made it impossible for innocent fishermen and traders to go about their daily business along the creeks. While that happens with the full knowledge of security agencies, innocent American filmmakers who were documenting the impact of oil production in the region were promptly arrested in Warri on the allegation that they did not get clearance to carry out their assignment. If the soldiers who arrested the ‘Sweet Crude’ crew had been as stern with militants, perhaps the problems in the Delta would have been over by now. There is no reason for the security agents to abandon their surveillance duty against the militants to tackle innocent civilian filmmakers. Doing that would amount to what philosophers call ‘Argumentum Home mien’-leaving the issue to tackle the shadow. Although the crew have been freed following the intervention of American congressmen, the act is a complete violation of the rights of the Americans and is not in anyway useful to Nigeria or its image abroad.

Links:

Google images

The mustardseed

Chigaco Sun-Times

NewsDesk

Mugabe's 'mad dogs' on rampage

Is there any one out there who is still surprised over the news that Mugabe's security men raided Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC's office in Harare today? I am the last person to be shaken by such news. Why? I had predicted barely 24 hours ago that like a wounded lion, Mugabe would move against Tsvangirai for trying to give the impression that he won the presidential poll.

I had also predicted that Mugabe's ominous silence was merely to allow him time to perfect plans on how to stage a comeback after the electorate had given him a 'red card' in last week's presidential and parlimentary poll.

Now, the chickens have come home to roost. Apart from raiding the offices of the opposition party, which had only on Wednesday declared victory in both parliamentary and presidential vote, Mugabe's 'mad dogs' descended on journalists at the Meikles Hotel and arrested a number of foreign journalists, amongst them, New York Times correspondent, Barry Bearak, a winner of a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for allegedly violating journalism law.

These are issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with the main that is agitating the minds of ordinary Zimbabweans who trooped out last Saturday to vote for change in the poverty-ridden nation with over 100,000 percent inflation and unprecedented hunger and starvation.

While Mugabe uses iron fist to clamp down on the ordinary people, journalists and the opposition, the world is increasingly getting fed up with him. Like an opium, not even his comrade-in-chief and friend Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has come out openly to support him in his darkest moment.

New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists, CPJ, has condemned the arrest and detention of the journalists by the Zimbabwean security forces and has called for immediate release.

"It is imperative that all journalists, foreign and domestic, be allowed to work freely," said Joel Simon, the group's executive director.

Now, it is clear to the world that Mugabe has no intention to allow the will of the impoverished people of Zimbabwe to prevail over his inordinate ambition of presiding over the affairs of the country, which has been held hostage by him and other scavengers for about three decades.

Links: Guardian

Guardian

BBC

Committee for the Protection of Journalists

The wounded 'lion' of Zimbabwe

He has temporarily lost a voice and gone into hibernation. But, make no mistake, the 'revolutionist yesterday, today and tomorrow' may be strategising on the next line of action to pin his arch opponent-Morgan Tsvangirai, to the ground.
Tyrants, like Mugabe would rather believe in voodooism and hang on to power rather than see the handwriting on the wall and quit the stage before the ovation ebbs. Mugabe has gone into an ominous solitude like an orphan and a bruised serpent but would not allow the results of the vote concluded since Saturday to be announced. He may be trying to re-enact the rare courage portrayed by Ernest Hemingway in his famous 1952 'The Old Man and The Sea' novel or may be playing Shakespeare's Macbeth outright.
Whichever way he chooses to go, the world is against him. Although the UK and the US may not roll in tanks to drive him away like they did to Saddam Hussein in 2003, they have strongly warned him to respect the democratic rights of the electorate. Gordon Brown warned on Tuesday that the results be released at once while David Miliband and other ministers took turns on Wednesday to vilify Mugabe. This was in addition to a verdict by Desmond Tutu that Mugabe had no reason to have stayed on till now. Same date, the US insisted the results be released.
It is common knowledge that having won 99 out of the 210 parliamentary seats against Mugabe's ZANU-PF's 94, Tsvangirai's MDC has won both the presidential and parliamentary votes.
Disappointingly, the ZEC has not published the results. By its own tally, the MDC says Tsvangirai has won the race with 50.3 percent to Mugabe's 43.8, thus eliminating the need for a re-run.
However, like soldiers of misfortune, ZANU-PF describes the MDC's claim as a mere 'wishful thinking'.
With soldiers and riot policemen already mobilised on the streets of Harare, the stage may be set for Mugabe to fight back like a wounded lion or a viper bruised but not dead. Get the point?

Links:

The Old Man and the Sea

Macbeth

BBC

Guardian

Voice of America

UK: pursuing asylum-seekers with sledgehammer

Removing failed asylum-seekers

A cacophony of voices, one would say, has been raging this week over asylum seekers, migrants' contributions to the economy on one hand and their nuisance to the country in another breadth. Sounds funny. Isn't it?

Like a well rehearsed drama plot, the events have been unfolding in a pattern that gives the impression that they had been well scripted and acted to release maximum effect on the imperilled audience.
First to fire the salvo of seeming hope and cheer was the Independent Asylum Commission, which released a damning verdict on what it considers the inhuman treatment of asylum-seekers by immigration officers, accusing them of falling below the standard expected from a leading democracy like the UK. To bring the story home, the co-chairman of the commission, Sir John Waite and former Appeal Court judge, described the work of the immigration officials as a blemish' on the UK reputation.
The body made up of eminent Britons noted:

“Overall, the treatment of asylum-seekers fell below the standards expected of a
humane and civilised society."

The commission was not yet done with its findings on the system, which appears to have been driven by a belligerent spirit over the years.

It slammed further: "We are concerned at the level of the treatment of children, the treatment of women, the treatment of those with health needs, particularly mental health needs, torture survivors.”
But like a judge in its own case, the Head of the Border and Immigrations Agency, Lin Homer, fired back at the IAC, saying, "I totally refute any suggestion that we treat asylum applicants without care and compassion. We have a proud tradition in Britain of offering sanctuary to those who truly need our protection. "We operate a firm but humane system, supporting those who are vulnerable with accommodation and assistance.

Perhaps in a bid to damage-control the 'damage' done to the immigration system by the IAC, the House of Lords Committee on Immigration released its own report on the impact of migrants on the UK workforce, saying that they offered little or no impact on the economy.

However, Gordon Brown, who had held fort at the Treasury for a long time, came out to defuse the tension generated by two sides, pointing out today that migrants had contributed substantially to the UK economy. According to him, migrants make a minimum of £6 billion annually into the economy. I believe him because he was speaking from a vantage position.
Brown's open-minded submission on the issue may at least restrain those charged with the responsibility of taking care of asylum seekers from manhandling them like condemned criminals or those seeking independence for Tibet.
As one human rights activist, Paul Collins, observed in London following the release of the report by the IAC, the streets of London are neither paved with gold nor are they close to heaven to warrant attacking migrants with sledgehammer and chainsaw.

Links:

BBC

BBC

The Daily Mail on Sunday