Zimbabwe: Shock horror, government losing out on taxes.

 From AfricaNews, ‘Economy’ clutching its pearls and screaming pass the smelling salts, and giss us yer money!

Socialism is still the only answer.

‘Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, is undergoing a rapid transformation which has seen the proliferation of small, informal shops, known locally as tuck shops.

While they have created employment for many of the country’s citizens who are outside of the labour market, neither the stores nor their staff pay tax.

In the process, they are pushing out big retailers and wholesalers, presenting a complex challenge for the government which wants to formalise the economy.

Economist, Farai Mutambanengwe, says this is obviously not a good development as a country typically would want its economy to consist mostly of large formalised enterprises.

“The moment you start getting informal businesses taking over the economy, first of all, obviously, it reduces the quality of your CBD. It reduces the value of the properties,” he says.

“But it also results in things like people no longer remitting taxes, people no longer using formal business channels, and ultimately, informality, dollarisation of the economy.”

All of these things, he says, are negative for the economy. 

With most of the tuck shops selling illegal imported goods, the government is concerned about this trade bypassing the country’s tax system and therefore not bringing money into the state coffers.

As the number of informal tuckshops continues to rise, the evasion of taxes and regulations presents a thorn in the side of policymakers.

“There’s a proliferation of smuggled and counterfeit goods that are unfairly competing with local products, since the smuggled goods are not subject to taxation and import duties,” says Minister of Publicity, Information, and Broadcasting Services, Dr Jenfan Muswere.

As the ongoing drought continues to impact Zimbabwe’s economy, the finance minister in July warned that the 2024 budget deficit was forecast to be 1.3 per cent of gross domestic product.

Projected 2024 growth of the economy was at 2 per cent, down from 3.5 per cent forecast in November.’

https://www.africanews.com/2024/08/19/informal-traders-present-a-complex-challenge-for-zimbabwe-government/

Zimbabwe: New Currency. Same Old Capitalism.

 AfricaNews 6 April reports, ‘Zimbabwe has launched a new currency to replace its previous one that in recent months has been battered by depreciation, and in some instances rejection by the population. Authorities hope the new measure will halt a currency crisis underlining the country’s years long economic troubles.

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Gov. John Mushayavanhu said the new currency will be called ZiG, and will be anchored on gold reserves and a basket of foreign currencies. 

The Zimbabwe dollar has come under sustained pressure in recent weeks, making it one of the world’s worst performing currencies.

Since January, the Zimbabwe dollar lost over 70% of its value on the official market, and was plunging even further on the thriving but illegal black market.

Inflation increased from 26.5% in December last year to 34.8% this January before spiking to 55.3% in March, according to official figures.

Traders were increasingly rejecting lower denominations of the now scrapped currency, with many insisting on payment only in U.S. dollars, which are also legal tender in the southern African country.

“We are doing what we are doing to ensure that our local currency does not die. We were already in a situation where almost 85% of the transactions are being conducted in U.S dollars,” Mushayavanhu told reporters in the capital, Harare. People have three weeks to exchange the old notes with the new currency, he said.

The announcement is the latest of a cocktail of currency measures undertaken by the Zimbabwean government since the initial spectacular collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar in 2009.

The period saw the country at one point issuing a 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar banknote before the government was forced to temporarily scrap its currency and allow the U.S. dollar to be used as legal tender.

The country re-introduced a domestic note in 2016, marking the beginning of another round of currency volatility highlighted by changes to currency policy that included the banning of foreign currencies such as the U.S dollar for domestic transactions in 2019.

This was followed by the unbanning of the greenback a while later after few ordinary people took heed to the U.S dollar ban and the black market thrived, while the local currency quickly depreciated.’

https://www.africanews.com/2024/04/06/zimbabwe-unveils-new-currency-as-depreciation-inflation-stoke-turmoil/

The following is from the Socialist Standard November 1980

‘A currency unit is always in the end the name for a specific amount of gold (or silver). At one time—when paper currency was convertible on demand into a fixed amount of gold—this was obvious but has now become obscured in the system of “managed currencies’’ which grew up between the wars. In nearly all countries today the currency—the actual medium of circulation—is not gold nor even a paper currency convertible into gold but inconvertible paper notes and coins. Such a currency is said to be “managed” because the amount of it in circulation depends entirely on political decisions.

Before the era of managed currencies the link between a currency and gold was always clear. A law defined the meaning of the name of the currency (pound, mark, franc) in terms of a certain amount of gold (or silver, or both). This is no longer the case but the pound and other currencies continue to represent in economic reality a certain amount of gold. Gold is still today the money-commodity, the only real money, even though it has been replaced as the medium of circulation by paper and metallic tokens.

With a managed currency a government institution (Ministry of Finance, Central Bank) has to decide how much is put into circulation. The amount of currency needed to maintain a stable price level, however, is fixed by economic factors outside of government control, such as the total amount of buying and selling transactions, debts to be settled, velocity of circulation of the currency. The government is of course free to issue more (or less) than this amount, but if it issues more then the currency will depreciate.

The effect will be the same as if, under the old system, the government had passed a law re-defining the meaning of the word pound in terms of a lesser amount of gold—which is equivalent to increasing the prices of all goods expressed in the currency unit. This—overissuing an inconvertible paper currency—is what has caused the inflationary price rises which have gone on continuously in Britain since the beginning of the last world war. Inflation (properly understood as inflating, or overissuing, the currency) means that the currency has come to be defined in terms of lesser and lesser amounts of gold.

A managed currency only has a circulation within the borders of the state which manages it. No state can enforce the use of its paper currency outside its borders, though people there may choose to accept it. Paper currencies, however, can still be exchanged with each other. What determines their rate of exchange?

What we have said about the paper pound being the name for a certain amount of gold applies equally to the other paper currencies. The paper mark and the paper franc are also names for amounts of gold, though different amounts of course. In fact up until the end of 1971 the currencies of the member states of the International Monetary Fund were declared to the Fund in terms of weights of gold. Thus if the French franc was defined as 3gm of gold and the English pound as 39gm, then the rate of exchange between francs and pounds was £1 = 13 francs. The Member states of the IMF were supposed to maintain a more or less fixed rate of exchange between their currencies and those of the other members.

Had it not been for the inflationary policies pursued by all states this would have proved a relatively easy task. But in fact all states inflated their currencies, though not to an equal extent, so that the parities declared to the IMF came to no longer correspond to the economic reality. Those countries which had inflated their currencies more than average were sooner or later compelled to declare to the IMF that their currency should now be officially regarded as representing a lesser amount of gold. This devaluation meant that the exchange rate with other currencies had altered: their currency would now exchange for a lesser amount of all other currencies. On the other hand those countries which had a below average inflation were compelled to up-value their currency, known as revaluation, as happened a number of times to the D-mark and the Swiss Franc.

A devaluation then was a recognition on the international level of a currency depreciation that had already occurred internally. This was why Wilson was in a sense right when he declared in his famous 1967 statement that devaluation left unchanged the value of the pounds in our pockets. It did, because the depreciation had already taken place before! (As the Wilson government continued the policy of currency inflation, the pounds in our pockets did in fact continue to shrink, but because of the continuing inflation of the currency rather than because of the devaluation).

At the end of 1971 the IMF system of fixed parities, with periodic devaluations and revaluations as necessary, broke down. Instead countries just let their currencies float. What this means is that an internal depreciation of a currency resulting from its inflation is now immediately reflected in its rate of exchange with other currencies instead of building up towards an eventual devaluation.

Some countries link their currencies to others, agreeing that they will not let their currencies fall or rise above or below a certain margin compared with the other currencies in the system. One such system was the famous “snake” of European currencies, of which Britain was a member for a short while. The European Monetary System (EMS) is another such system.

For such systems to work each of the states involved has to have more or less the same rate of inflation. For if one state had a greater rate of inflation than the others, then its currency would tend to fall below the lower limit and in order to maintain itself in the system it would have to use up its reserves to buy its own currency so as to maintain its price (exchange rate with the others). The EMS does provide for the establishment of a special fund to help states in difficulty but its clear aim is to try to keep inflation rates down to the German level.

The last Labour government, presumably anxious to have a free hand to continue inflating the pound as it wished, refused to give an undertaking to keep inflation down that much and so Britain didn’t join. The present Conservative government has announced its intention to join, but is waiting for the time when (if!) the rate of inflation in Britain is at a more internationally acceptable level.

All these “systems” in the end are just makeshifts since none of them openly recognise that the only real money in the world today remains gold. Capitalists are more realistic—which explains the rise in the price of gold, and why it likely to keep on rising: nobody wants to be left holding worthless paper money as the international monetary system staggers from crisis to crisis.

Adam Buick

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/09/international-money-chaos-1980.html

Promoted by The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street,  London, SW4 7UN

Zimbabwe faces famine

 Almost forty per cent of Zimbabweans live in extreme poverty. 

In capitalist terms two billion dollars is small change compared with the sums given to warring states.

‘Zimbabwe declared a national disaster on Wednesday as the El Nino weather pattern continues to cause drought across southern Africa.

The declaration follows a similar move by Malawi late last month. Neighbouring Zambia designated the regional drought a national disaster late in February.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa said that Zimbabwe needed $2 billion (€1.85 billion) in aid to help millions of people who are going hungry.

"No Zimbabwean must succumb or die from hunger," Mnangagwa told a press conference. "To that end, I do hereby declare a nationwide State of Disaster, due to the El Nino-induced drought."

He said that over 2.7 million people, or around a sixth of the country's population, have not had adequate access to food this year due to low yields produced during the drought.

Mnangagwa appealed to UN agencies, local businesses, and religious charity organizations to contribute to humanitarian assistance.

The World Food Organization (WFO) has already rolled out an assistance program for 2.7 million people in Zimbabwe from January to March.

More than 60% of Zimbabweans live in rural areas. Much of the country's rural population lives off subsistence farming, occasionally selling small surpluses.

Zimbabwe was once a major grain exporter, but has in recent years increasingly relied on aid agencies to avert famine.’

https://www.dw.com/en/zimbabwe-declares-national-disaster-amid-el-nino-drought/a-68733615

Promoted by The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN

Southern Africa's land reform

Twenty-two years after the end of apartheid, South Africa is still grappling with land reform. Progress is slow under the current approach to shift land from white back to black people and many are becoming impatient. Land ownership is a contentious issue in South Africa. With the end of apartheid in 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) party promised to right the wrongs of the past by shifting land from white farmers back to the black population who lost most of South Africa's fertile land under colonial rule. But the government is still far from reaching its initial target of redistributing one third of the land by 1999. 90 percent of the farmland that has been redistributed is not productive anymore, meaning that land reform has not been commercially viable.

"We haven't given it enough time," said Professor Nick Vink, chairman of the Agricultural Economics Department at Stellenbosch University. "It's something that's going to be with the country for the next two or three generations."

Left-winger,Julius Malema, renewed his call for blacks to occupy white-owned land. The Economic Freedom Fighters party has won public support with by campaigning against inequality in South Africa and calling for non-violent occupation to redistribute the land.

"They have been living peacefully. They have been swimming in a pool of privilege, they have been enjoying themselves because they always owned or land,” said Malema about South Africa's white, land-owning minority.

Robert Mugabe wanted to use his land reform program to eliminate the traces of colonialism by giving farms to black Zimbabweans. 15 years later the country can no longer feed itself. Some 4,500 white farmers were dispossessed, sometimes forcibly, and a million black Zimbabweans were settled on their land. A number of new medium-sized farms were created but by and large the land was redistributed to small-scale farmers – and to people who had good connections to the Mugabe regime. As a result of the land reform, some 300,000 black farm workers lost their jobs. Like the dispossessed white farm owners, they received no compensation for their losses. With the implementation of the land reform, the government failed to seize the opportunity to abandon traditional hierarchies and give women more of a say in the running of the expropriated farms. Less than 40 percent of land is currently being used productively, he told DW. One reason for this is that no real work is being done on many of the new large farms now in the hands of members of the political elite. Small farmers lack the necessary know-how and do not have enough capital to purchase the equipment they need, seeds, fertilizer or fuel.

Land reform seems to have become a symbol of how deep racial divisions still run in the country.

  

http://www.dw.com/en/south-africas-land-reform-a-never-ending-story/a-36491026

http://www.dw.com/en/zimbabwes-fast-track-land-reform-shows-little-benefit-15-years-on/a-18461592

THE MATCH FIXING SCANDAL THAT GRIPPED ZIMBABWE

What a match-fixing scandal!

Zimbabwe’s 2017 Orange Africa Cup of Nations soccer qualifies in Gabon was once again marred by another clandestine match-fixing scandal. That was unearthed prior to the Group L encounter where Zimbabwean players were to rub shoulders with Swaziland. The former Zimbabwe international, Edzai Kasinauyo was implicated in the match-fixing scandal. For this reason, Kasinauyo was instantly suspended on pending investigations. The Zimbabwe Football Association headed by the business magnate, Phillip Chiyangwa boastfully indicated that it had evidence that Kasinauyo was working with popular Asian match fixers to rig the outcome of the match pitting Zimbabwe and Swaziland that was slated for 25^th of March this year. As Kasinauyo was named in the match-fixing scandal, thorough investigations were conducted. Zimbabwe Republic Police had to summon the national team’s coach (The Warriors) to testify in the case that had claimed Edzai Kasinauyo who had been on the Zifa board as well as Pasuwa’s Assistant, Nation Dube. Despite investigations reached an advanced stage, Kasinauyo and company who were shell-shocked stuck to allegation denial insisting that they had made no contact with anyone in Asia. The former Zifa Chief Executive Officer, Henrietta Rushwaya was also dragged into the matter. Unfortunately, that brought no fruition but only capitalism proved that it sucks from all angles of the status quo.

Going back memory lane, Zimbabwean soccer was once again hard-hit by another similar multimillion-dollar betting scandal in Asia named. Around 80 players were implicated in a major match-fixing scandal that rocked local football in 2012. The coaches and players were accused of receiving payments from an Asian betting syndicate - involving the now convicted and imprisoned guru Wilson Raj Parumal - to lose friendly matches on trips to Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Oman, Jordan, Bulgaria, China, Yemen and Thailand between 2006 and 2011. 15 players and officials received life bans and more were suspended.

 It was insane for these players and their leaders fooled everybody in Zimbabwe pretending that they had the country at heart yet there were after clandestine activities with global match fixers. Even President Robert Mugabe used to treat them to state banquets before sending them out on national duty.  The episode is the sending of the fake Warriors team to Malaysia and what transpired at the Merdeka Cup that is Malaysian tournament of independence celebration. The then famous world match fixer Wilson Raj Perumal, is said to have been in charge of the team and their welfare including paying the players to throw away matches. Team officials were offered 5-Star Treatment including chauffeur rides, drinks, and sex. Fingered as the engine room to this madness, the then former Zifa CEO, Rushwaya was arrested by police and hauled to court to answer charges on match fixing involving 11 counts of concealing transactions from a principal, two counts of fraud and 15 counts of bribery involving $1,000,000. She was remanded on $500 bail. 13 players were banned for life and nearly 70 received their suspension for their part in the then Asiagate scandal.

 However, this was put to a halt and everybody was spared from the noose following the intervention of the world body, FIFA, led by the then Seth Blatter. Fifa cited irregularities on how the investigations were carried out thereby refusing to sanction the penalties. What a mad system that siphoned a scandal that brought a devastating impact on the now declined Zimbabwe’s football standards. The Zimbabwean government and its Zifa should be aware that soccer is a big business project being cogged by the head of imperialism that doesn’t value concrete investigation findings. Not that in this unfair world, even if the players are well paid by their governments, offers by those involved in soccer betting are exorbitant and ever attracts the watchful eyes of wealth gathering soccer players. To express this, read about 1915 British football betting scandal

Bigboy Musemwa

       

$300,000 a month for knowing people

 South African businessman Niko Shefer is siphoning millions of dollars from the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration as facilitation fee for the $206 million loan accessed from the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) to refurbish the Plumtree-Mutare Highway.

It emerged Zinara is depositing a staggering $300 000 in Shefer's FNB account in South Africa monthly and that contract is running for 10 years. All Shefer did to deserve such a golden handshake was to link Zinara and DBSA.

He charged 2 percent of the loan amount extended to the road fund. At the lapse of the 10-year contract between Zinara and Shefer, the road fund would have paid him $36 million. The money that Shefer is receiving is over and above the interest that Zinara is paying to DBSA for the $206 million loan.

Quote of the Day

"They are thinking that what happened in the Arab Spring is going to happen in this country but we tell them that it is not going to happen here," Mugabe told state television

Time to Go Mugabe

In the first anti-government rally in years, thousands hit streets of Harare in Zimbabwe to protest against economic mismanagement. Thousands marched through the streets calling for an end to the rule of longtime President Robert Mugabe. Police had initially threatened to ban the  protest but were eventually ordered by the High Court to allow it to go ahead.

Zimbabwe's economic crisis has worsened in recent months, taking a toll on employment rates and government expenditure.

IT WAS A HEAVY HUMMER FOR THE WORKERS FROM THE SUPREME COURT IN ZIMBABWE!

Going back memory lane, we recall how the Korean wife of Charles Ray, the then US Ambassador to Zimbabwe had been spitting venom as she terrorized desperate workers taking advantage of the employment crisis gripping Zimbabwe. We also recall how Morgan Tsvangirai left workers in the cold by dumping the ZCTU and ventured into politics by launching the MDC Party in 1999. That was after he attracted imperialism’s ever winking eye by staging successful food riots and mass workers demonstration - the harbinger that ruined the then country’s intact economy from 1998. Since then, Zimbabwean workers who chose not to be brain drained continue battling at their work places. Day by day, we continue noting how lives of the workers who most of them earn salaries below Poverty Datum Line and the unemployed are worsening while workers’ unions including the Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions (ZFTU) and Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) are taking no actions but political sides. In a nutshell, it is clear that these trade unions are simply defensive organizations of the working class with the limited role of protecting wages and working conditions and it is by their empty actions that their effectiveness ought to be judged. However, to rub salt to the starving workers’ wounds, the Supreme Court echoed a landmark judgement on 17 July 2015 that left tongues wagging!

The Supreme Court unleashed this newly-discovered power of employers by allowing the termination of employment by employers on notice without benefits. This judgement triggered massive job cuts as big business politicians with companies with a bloated workforce and had been struggling to pay workers were the biggest beneficiaries as they took advantage in cutting jobs. Before, the Labour Act made it impossible for the employer to hire workers on contract basis because if the worker is continuously offered for up to 3 months, there were deemed to have been permanently engaged and any plans to terminate their services would force the employer to go through the complicated and often expensive retrenchment route. Thence, state enterprises and parastatals also joined in this madness of getting rid of workers namely the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Coporation, Grain Marketing Board, CMED, Air Zimbabwe et cetera. Profit making giants like ECONET were not left out! Within a month, about 10 000 workers have since lost their jobs. Also taking advantage of this was the local Buddhist Congregation that had been in labour dispute with its employees for over a year over underpayment of salaries. This emerged after the Management Committee of the Buddhist Congregation planted a class struggle within the workers. For this reason, those paid less had to file their grievances via the ZFTU that ended up stewing on the worker’s peanut buttered salaries. It was a surprise to see the representative from the ZFTU endorsing the forced retrenchment made by this Management Committee on the 30th of April 2015 and before the Supreme Court judgement was announced. It boggles my mind that how come the issue of outstanding back pay that has been subject to an Arbitral Award of about $100 000,00 had not been dealt with first. Why did this muscled man at the Buddhist Congregation unsympathetically chose to fire the workers first before the issue of underpayments was resolved? And following to this, it was a pity that towards end of July, the workers were given $30 000 to share as their Arbitral Award and they were urged to accept this by their ZFTU representative who fooled them that there were lucky while vexing the uneducated worker’s minds with the Supreme Court ruling. From this, the ZFTU representative took $8 000 from the workers just for efforts he made: leaving the workers jobless. On their retrenchment packages, he too deducted $500 from each forced to quit employee. To the ZFTU, is this fighting for the worker’s rights? According to law, these employees has a right to claim their Arbitral award grossly as they had been battling to make ends meet on underpayment for years and applying the Supreme Court ruling was totally unconstitutional.

Though these toothless workers representatives threatened the government to stage street protests and civil unrest unless it was to stop the ongoing massive job losses. These workers representatives fooled workers that they would not sit and watch while they were being fired. Over 200 workers representatives on protruding tummies staged a meeting at Stoddart Hall in the high density suburb of Mbare where they vociferously denounced the Supreme Court ruling pointing out that employees would embark on massive and crippling strikes to stop the job cuts that definitely would cause untold suffering to the sacked workers. Further, they reached at a resolution to on massive demonstrations as well to ensure that Cde Mugabe invoke Presidential Powers to restore order in the labour market as employers are willy-nilly firing workers cheaply without the provision of retrenchment packages. Amazingly, promises by these workers unions to stage nationwide went with a goose chase and up to now nothing has been put in place to save the workers from the calamity! 

It is apparent that the Supreme Court ruling was a declaration that permanent employment is no longer guaranteed as employees are destined to be engaged on contract. Even if one has worked for 30 years he/she can only get three month notice pay which is downright peanuts. Latter, it was then the government through the Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare indicating that it would amend the Labour Act hastily so as a panacea to the working class plea. We are not aware if these to be made amendments would bring a smile to the let down worker’s face requiring job security, labour market security and a living wage… However, as workers are bound to the wages system the amendments to be made won’t rescue them from the very jaws of exploitation. Obviously, the workers would remain in chains within this wage system where they enter into contracts with employers whereby the value they create for their bosses is more than the value they receive in wages. Thus how the current system makes profit through exploitation!

It is open that the current insane system discards improving the conditions of the majority working class but simply oils the functions it was adapted to perform while enabling the pursuit of profit for private gain regardless of other external outcomes by a privileged minority. We can only get rid of this unfair sucking system by establishing a society which can be organized democratically in the interest of all the people regardless of race or creed. Such a society can only be organized on the basis of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use – a moneyless stateless society where employment will be a thing of the past and where nobody would be bossed. Thus real socialism! Let us speed the day! 

  B. Musemwa 

 

Mugabe's Racism

Increasing Numbers of Homeless and Landless

There is a “I can give you an example of the Chisumbanje ethanol fuel project here in Chipinge. The project resulted in thousands of villagers being displaced to pave way for a sugar plantation so that thousands of hectares of land space could be created for the ethanol-producing project, consequently displacing poor villagers,” Dliwayo told IPS. The 40,000 hectare sugar cane plantation which started in 2008 left more than 1,754 households displaced, according to PYD.
Fifteen years ago, Zimbabwe embarked on a controversial land reform programme to address colonial land-ownership imbalances, but activists have dismissed the move as disastrous for this Southern African nation. “To say African nations like Zimbabwe addressed the land problem is untrue because land which African governments like Zimbabwe grabbed from white farmers was parcelled out to political elites at the expense of hordes of peasants here,” Terry Mutsvanga, an award-winning Zimbabwean rights activist, told IPS. “Land grabs in Africa have helped to perpetuate economic inequalities similar to the colonial era economic imbalances,” he added. In 2010, ZimOnline, a Zimbabwean news service, reported that about 2,200 well-connected black Zimbabwean elites controlled nearly 40 percent of the 14 million hectares of land seized from white farmers, with each farm ranging in size from 250 to 4,000 hectares, with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his family said to own 14 farms spanning at least 16,000 hectares.
 
Further up in East Africa, according to a 2011 presentation by Uganda’s Joshua Zake titled ‘Land Grabbing; silent pain for smallholder farmers in Uganda’, key characters of land grabbing in that country are also a few wealthy or powerful individuals against many vulnerable individuals or communities. Zake is Senior Programme Officer Environment and Natural Resources and Coordinator of the Uganda Forestry Working Group at Environmental Alert. According to Zake, land grabbing in Africa, particularly in Uganda, is promoted by the suspected presence of oil and other mineral resources beneath the land, such as in Uganda’s Amuru and Bulisa districts. Zake’s remarks fit well with Zimbabwe’s situation, where more than 800 families were displaced by government from Chiadzwa in Manicaland Province after the discovery of diamonds there in 2005.
 
But land grabs in Africa may also be rampant in towns and cities, according to private land developers here. “There is high demand of land for the construction of homes in towns and cities across Africa owing to the sharp rural-to-urban migration,” Etuna Nujoma, a private land developer based in Windhoek, the Namibian capital, told IPS. “The wealthy and the powerful as well as the corrupt politicians are taking advantage of the land demand and therefore often parcelling out urban land amongst themselves for resale at exorbitant prices at the expense of the poor.” Last year, irked by corrupt local authorities appearing to be dishing out land among themselves for resale, a group of informal settlement dwellers outside Namibia’s coastal holiday town of Swakopmund occupied municipal land with the intention of settling there.
 
With land grabs at their peak in Zimbabwe, members of the ruling Zanu-PF party are measuring out land pieces which they then give to people who pay in the range of 10 to 20 dollars for 30 to 50 square metres, depending on the areas in which they want to obtain housing stands, according to Andrew Nyanyadzi of Zanu-PF. “We don’t need permission from local authorities for us to have access to the land which our liberation war leaders fought for. It’s our land and we are therefore selling at affordable prices to ruling party loyalists,” Nyanyadzi told IPS.new scramble for Africa, with ordinary people facing displacement by the affluent and the powerful as huge tracts of land on the continent are grabbed by a minority, rights activists here say.
“Our forefathers cried foul during colonialism when their land was grabbed by colonialists more than a century ago, but today history repeats itself, with our own political leaders and wealthy countrymen looting land,” Claris Madhuku, director of the Platform for Youth Development (PYD), a democracy lobby group in Zimbabwe, told IPS.
 
Civil society activist Owen Dliwayo, who is programme officer for the Youth Dialogue Action Network, another lobby group here, said multinational companies were to blame in most African countries for land seizures. Consequently, lobby groups in Zimbabwe say havoc rules supreme in the country’s towns and cities. “In Harare, land belonging to the city has been taken over by known militant groups of people with links to Zanu-PF, whom police here are even afraid to apprehend,” Precious Shumba, the director of Harare Residents Trust, told IPS. “This is exactly what happened to Harare’s urban land in Hatcliff high density area, where housing cooperatives belonging to the ruling Zanu-PF leaders have grabbed council land using their political power,” Shumba said. However, like other countries across Africa, Zimbabwe’s local authority by-laws prohibit individuals or organisations from selling land that does not legally belong to them.
 
Meanwhile, in Mozambique, the poor are losing out to foreign investors on land rights there despite the state being the sole owner of land. Under the country’s constitution, there is no private land ownership – land and its associated resources are the property of the state – although the country’s Land Law grants private persons the right to use and benefit from the land whether or not they have a formal title. However, loopholes have emerged in the law. A survey last year by Mozambique’s National Farmers’ Union showed that there was a colonial-era style land grab there, with politically-connected companies in the former Portuguese colony seizing hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland from peasants.
According to GRAIN, a non-profit organisation supporting small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems, peasants in northern Mozambique have difficulties keeping their lands as foreign companies set up large-scale agribusinesses there. The NGO says Mozambicans are being told that these projects will bring them benefits, but this is not how Caesar Guebuza and other Mozambican peasants see it. “Agricultural investments by foreign companies have not benefitted us, but rather we have lost land to these companies investing here and we are being treated as aliens in our own land,” Guebuza told IPS.
Economists blame the Mozambican government for favouring foreign investors, who now possess large swathes of state land. “The Mozambican government is known for siding with foreign investors who now occupy huge tracts of land for their own use as local peasants lose out on land, which is their birth right,” Kingston Nyakurukwa, a Zimbabwean independent economist, told IPS.
 
With foreign investors acquiring huge tracts of land ahead of locals in Africa, ActionAid Tanzania earlier this year said that through the European Union, United States and several European countries, the European Union’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition plans to invest 7.57 billion euros in agricultural development and food security across Africa. However, said Nyakurukwa, these will be business ventures that will strip Africans of their hard-earned money as they buy agricultural produce.
 
Similarly, in Nigeria, Mozambique and Tanzania, smallholder farmers are being moved off their land, paving the way for sugarcane, rice and other export crop-growing projects backed by New Alliance money, according to ActionAid Tanzania’s findings.
For Africans in Tanzania, big money might be gradually rendering them landless.
“Money from investors seem to be elbowing us out of our native lands here in Tanzania as no one has been offered the choice of whether to be resettled or not as we are being forcibly offered money or land for resettlement,” Moses Malunguja, a disgruntled peasant from Tanzania, told IPS.

from here

Chopping down the forests

Zimbabwe's lush forests, home to many animal species are being cleared for tobacco growing, to log wood for commercial export and to supply local area charcoal sellers. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Zimbabwe lost an annual average of 327,000 hectares of forests between 1990 and 2010. 

"The rate at which deforestation is occurring here will convert Zimbabwe into an outright desert in just 35 years if pragmatic solutions are not proffered urgently and also if people keep razing down trees for firewood without regulation," Marylin Smith, an independent conservationist based in Masvingo, and former staffer in the government of President Robert Mugabe, told IPS. Smith blamed Zimbabwe's deforestation on the growing numbers of tobacco farmers who were cutting "millions of tonnes of firewood each year to treat the cash crop." According to the country's Tobacco Industry Marketing Board, Zimbabwe currently has 88,167 tobacco growers, whom environmental activists say are the catalysts of looming desertification here.

"Curing tobacco using huge quantities of firewood and even increased domestic use of firewood in both rural and urban areas will leave Zimbabwe without forests and one has to imagine how the country would look like after the demise of the forests," Thabilise Mlotshwa, an ecologist from Save the Environment Association, an environmental lobby group "But really, it is difficult to object to firewood use when this is the only energy source most rural people have despite the environment being the worst casualty," Mlotshwa added. A gradual return of people from cities to lead rural life as the economy worsens is adding pressure on rural forests as more and more people cut down trees for firewood. Developing countries rely heavily on wood fuel, the major energy source for cooking and heating. In Africa, the statistics are striking: an estimated 90 percent of the entire continent's population uses fuelwood for cooking, and in sub-Saharan Africa, firewood and brush supply approximately 52 percent of all energy sources. For many rural dwellers, lack of electricity in most rural areas is creating unsustainable pressures on forests in Zimbabwe. Even Zimbabweans with access to electricity are at the mercy of erratic power supplies from the state-owned Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA), which is failing to meet electricity demand owing to inadequate finances to import power. "We will only manage to fight deforestation if government brings electricity to our doorsteps because without electricity we will keep cutting down trees for firewood," said Chikono, 61-year-old Irene Chikono, a teacher from Mutoko, 143 kilometres east of Harare.

"There are thousands of timber merchants who have no mercy with our trees as they see ready cash in almost every tree and therefore don't spare the trees in order to earn money," Raymond Siziba, an agricultural extension officer based in Mvurwi, a district approximately 100 kilometres north of the Zimbabwean capital Harare. According to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat), there were 66,250 timber merchants nationwide last year.

"We are into the timber business not by choice, but because of joblessness and we therefore want to make money in order to survive," Mevion Javangwe, an indigenous timber merchant based in Harare.

"Politicians are plundering and looting the hardwood forest reserves since they own most sawmills, with their relatives fronting for them," Owen Dliwayo, a civil society activist based in Chipinge, an eastern border town of Zimbabwe, told IPS. "For all the forests that politicians plunder, they don't pay a cent to council authorities and truly how do people get motivated to play a part in conserving hardwood forests?" Dliwayo asked.

 Disappearing forest cover is also a particular problem in Ghana, where non-timber forest products provide sustenance and income for 2.5 million people living in or near forest communities. Between 1990 and 2005, Ghana lost over one-quarter of its total national forest cover. At the current rate of deforestation, the country's forests could completely disappear in less than 25 years. Current attempts to address deforestation have stalled due to lack of collaboration between stakeholders and policy makers.

In west equatorial Africa, a study by Greenpeace has called logging the single biggest threat to the Congo Basin rainforest. At the moment, logging companies working mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are busy cutting down trees in over 50 million hectares of rainforest, or an area the size of France, according to its website. An estimated 20 to 25 percent of annual deforestation is thought to be due to commercial logging. Another 15 to 20 percent is attributed to other activities such as cattle ranching, cash crop plantations and the construction of dams, roads, and mines.

No money - no eating

Zimbabwe has a total population of just over 13 million people, according to the 2012 National Census – of these, 67 percent now live in rural areas while 33 percent live in urban areas. According to the 2013 Human Development Index of the U.N. Development Programmer (UNDP), Zimbabwe is a low-income, food-deficit country, ranked 156 out of 187 countries globally and UNDP says that currently 72 percent of Zimbabweans live below the national poverty line. As unemployment deepens across this Southern African nation and as the country battles to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ahead of the December 2015 deadline, thousands of urban Zimbabweans here are facing starvation.

According to the Poverty, Income, Consumption and Expenditure Survey report for 2011-2012 from the Zimbabwe Statistical Agency (ZIMSTAT), 30.4 percent of rural people in Zimbabwe are “extremely poor” – and are also people facing starvation – compared with 5.6 percent in urban areas.

For many Zimbabwean urban residents like unemployed 39-year-old qualified accountant Josphat Madyira from the Zimbabwean capital Harare, starvation has become order of the day. “Food stores are filled to the brim with groceries, but most of us here are jobless and therefore have no money to consistently buy very basic foodstuffs, resulting in us having mostly one meal per day.” 

Madyira lost his job at a local shoe manufacturing company after it shut down operations owing to the country’s deepening liquidity crunch, thanks to a failing economy here that has rendered millions of people jobless. Asked how city dwellers like him are surviving, Madyira said: “People who are jobless like me have resorted to vending on streets pavements, selling anything we can lay our hands on as we battle to put food on our tables.” For the many hunger-stricken Madyiras in Zimbabwe’s towns and cities, meeting the MDGS by the end of next year matters little. “Defeating starvation is far from me without decent and stable employment and whether or not my country fulfils the MDGs, it may be of no immediate result to many people like me,” Madyirasaid.

 “Remaining in towns and cities for many here is better than living in the countryside as every slightest job opportunity often starts in urban areas in spite of the expensive living conditions in towns and cities,” independent social worker Tracey Ngirazi told IPS.

According to Philip Bohwasi, chairperson of Zimbabwe’s Council of Social Workers, urban starvation is being caused by loss of jobs – the World Food Programme (WFP) estimates unemployment in Zimbabwe to be at 60 percent of the country’s total population. “The current inability of the economy to address people’s basic needs is leading to hunger in most urban households, with almost none of urban residents in Zimbabwe affording three meals a day nowadays”.

The donor community, which often extends food aid to impoverished rural households, has rarely done the same in towns and cities here despite hunger now taking its toll on the urban population, according to civil society activists. “Whether in cities or remote areas, hunger in Zimbabwe is equally ravaging ordinary people and most of the donor community has for long directed food aid to the countryside, rarely paying attention to towns and cities, which are also now succumbing to famine,” Catherine Mukwapati, director of the Youth Dialogue Action Network civil society organisation,said.

Economists and development experts here say that achieving the MDGs without food on people’s tables, especially in cities whose inhabitants are fast falling prey to growing hunger, is going to be a nightmare, if not highly impossible for Zimbabwe.

 “Be it in cities or rural areas, Zimbabwe still has a lot of people living on less than 1.25 dollars a day, which is the global index measure of extreme poverty, a clear indication that as a country we are far from successfully combating hunger and poverty in line with the U.N. MDGs whose global deadline for world countries to achieve is next year,” independent development expert Obvious Sibanda explained.

Missing billions

A September report by the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZIMVAC) estimates that 63 percent of Zimbabweans are poor, with 16 percent of the country’s 12.5 million people deemed extremely poor. Yet Zimbabwe has lost 12 billion dollars in illicit financial flows over the last three decades and experts say this illegal practice is perpetuating social inequalities and poverty.

  Zimbabwe has vast natural resources, the blessings of its natural wealth has not benefitted its people. The nation has of some of the largest diamond and platinum reserves in Africa and the world, and has over 40 exploitable minerals. All of this could potentially transform the lives of Zimbabwe’s citizens.

The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) points to a dearth of transparency and accountability in the management of the Marange diamond mines. Minister of Finance Patrick Chinamasa said in December 2013, during his presentation of the 2014 national budget, that the government did not receive any diamond dividends in that year.

Corrupt ZANU-PF Linked Public Officials Behind Illegal Structures

Thousands of residents in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare and surrounding areas are facing eviction from their homes as local authorities embark on an operation to demolish all illegal structures. At the end of last month, city authorities turned 70 residential and business buildings into rubble overnight in the dormitory town of Chitungwiza, 25km north of Harare, and served 324 settlers in the high-density suburb of Glen Norah with 48-hour eviction notices. 
However, the demolitions in Glen Norah did not proceed, as residents armed with axes, knobkerries and other objects faced off with police who eventually retreated.  Last week, hundreds of houses in Epworth, a high-density settlement southeast of Harare, were also demolished before a high court ruling on 10 October granted residents a temporary reprieve.

A government audit of illegal structures made public in December 2013 found that more than 14,000 residential stands in and around Chitungwiza had been illegally sold by housing cooperatives, councillors and village heads, all of them with ties to Zimbabwe’s ruling party ZANU-PF. Much of the land where stands were illegally created for the building of homes and businesses, had been earmarked for other purposes such as for clinics, schools, cemeteries, roads and wetlands.
Following the release of the report, Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Deputy Minister Biggie Matiza was quoted in the state-owned daily, The Herald, as committing to a “well organized, humane” process in demolishing the illegal structures that would ensure all affected families were offered alternative land.

However, residents like Eleanor Magaya, whose house in Chitungwiza faces demolition, have not been offered alternative land. “I will not leave my home,” she told IRIN. “I am living in fear that the demolishers can come and I can’t even sleep. They have served us with a seven-day ultimatum to vacate the area as it is reserved for recreational purposes and built on wetlands.”Magaya showed receipts of payment she made for the stand to former ZANU-PF Chitungwiza Councillor Frederick Mabamba, who was behind one of the housing cooperatives identified in the government audit as illegally selling stands in the area. “We were even given the go-ahead to start building and occupy the land before the general elections [in July] last year,” she said.

 

read more here

 

 

'Casualisation Of Labour' = Exploitation - Zimbabwe

Ethel Maziriri, 27, holds an Honours Degree in Social Work from the University of Zimbabwe, but instead of working in her chosen profession, she works as a cashier in one of the country's leading clothing retail company. And it's not by choice.

Casual workers in Zimbabwe usually work for long hours without safety clothing. Labour unions say that many employees are hiring people as casual staff to avoid providing benefits.

Maziriri, who graduated in 2010, has been employed as a casual worker at the store for the past 12 months.

In a country that is reeling from a liquidity crisis and a crumbling economy, company closures and downsizing have forced many into unemployment here.
She earns 80 dollars each fortnight, for working 10-hour days. But the working conditions are less than ideal.
Maziriri told IPS that most of the workers at the company are causal workers, employed on temporary contracts for six weeks at a time. She says that as contract workers they have to be very cautious to avoid their contracts being terminated prematurely without any wages or benefits.

But she's more concerned about earning money rather than the unfair working conditions here.
"I do not think it is necessary for a contract worker to join a labour union and I do not have any money for subscriptions to pay the union. I treasure my job and if am dismissed I will just go home and wait until I get another one," she said.

But the Federation of Food and Allied Workers Union of Zimbabwe (FFWUZ), a union which represents more than 50,000 members in the food processing industry, says the "casualisation of labour" is leading to a new form of exploitation here.
"A new form of labour exploitation has erupted as employers prefer to hire short-term contract workers to escape from the costs incurred by permanent workers," Gift Maoneka, FFWUZ paralegal officer, told IPS.
He said that since January, more than six companies have retrenched and that most industries were retrenching at least 450 workers a week.
"Most of the companies are abusing the retrenchment board in doing away with permanent workers and the law does not provide an appeal against retrenchment," Maoneka said.

FFWUZ says that Zimbabwe's crumbling economy and lack of investment has forced companies to downsize and retrench workers. Many are doing away with formal employment, according to FFWUZ, and are instead offering contracts to workers as a way of avoiding providing benefits such as medical aid, funeral policies and pensions.
"Casual workers endure years of work with no terminal benefits, pensions, medical aid for them and their families," Maoneka said.
Maoneka pointed out that while employees were "putting workers on short contracts," the jobs were in fact "permanent of nature."

The latest annual Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme points out that across the world formal employment lacks social, legal or regulatory protection.
According to the report, nearly half the world's workers are in vulnerable employment, trapped in insecure jobs usually outside the jurisdiction of labour legislation and social protection.
According to FFWUZ, many casual workers here are afraid to join labour unions for fear of being victimised and hence continue to have their rights infringed, through lack of knowledge and representation.

Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa in his budget statement in December, 2013 said that government was reviewing the labour law to make the hiring of employees easier.
"The minister responsible for labour should seriously consider amendments to the Labour Act that relates work to productivity. It is also necessary that we introduce in our labour laws flexibility in the hiring of workers, as well as alignment of wage adjustments to labour productivity," Chinamasa said during the 2013 to 2014 budget announcement.  

The current Labour Relations Act makes dismissals and retrenchments a slow process as employees have to go through a number of hearings. The hearings start at company level and a dissatisfied party can appeal to labour courts.  
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions maintains that workers in Zimbabwe have no rights when faced with retrenchment, and this creates a situation where they can be manipulated by their employers.

Meanwhile, FFWUZ points out that the few people employed by foreign Chinese employers are also being subjected to unlawful working conditions, but lack the knowledge on how to deal with the matter of exploitation and unfair dismissal.
"Foreigners take advantage of the language barrier when we engage them on discussing labour laws and unfair dismissal of their employees. Non-provision of protective clothing, total disregard of labour laws are some of the matters that affect most employees," Maoneka said.

For Gareth Makaripe, who is casually employed at a Chinese-owned bakery in Msasa industrial area in Harare, the conditions of services are dehumanising.
"These people are slave masters and they use fear to intimidate workers."

from here

Divine inspiration: Mere hallucination/infatuation!

I wish to debate the issue at any possible platform or through any available/affordable media. Perhaps there are other people like my neighbours, the Yirira: abandoned, ignored, neglected by evangelists, politicians and fortune hunters. Despite centuries of the spirit of the ‘saviour’ the Yirira are not even aware of their ‘inspired’ and miracle-performing kinsfolk who were caught in the imperialist net or submitted to the colonising authorities. Reasons why such people remained/remain isolated:

The first lot of venturers to the continent were Christian missionaries, empire and wealth hunters. The area around Chewore (and as most in the Zambezi Valley) is composed of mostly very rugged terrain, arid and non-arable, and with no prospects of minerals there was/is no prospect of Mighty Jesus realising the plight of those in such an area. Let there be found some diamonds, platinum etc in Mbire District – Jesus’ controlling disciples will say – ‘Let there be a super tarmac to Mbire yesterday’. In fact, even protesting EU, US will provide means to relocate the Mbire residents to a more habitable environ (as if there never was one before). And some preacher/prophet will propound that Jesus knew of the Mbire plight long before he was born, it is just that he was waiting for the inspired ‘Man of God’ (the preacher/prophet).

The current equally selfish ruling elite will as usual blame the plight of the Yirira on the ‘negligent racist colonial regime, as if they (current leadership) did not adopt the same cruel, selfish and self-glory-seeking mentality, exaggerating their role in the struggle to overthrow the exploitative colonial system. As if they did not instead adopt it and indeed worsened it; much worse than the colonial leaders: the colonialists had to prove to have some substantial wealth acquired before getting into the legislature; our self-proclaiming ‘messiahs’ from colonial exploiters are exploiting the followers much worse. They use just political clout/rhetoric (hollow promises) then abuse donor and public funds to enrich only the ruling elite and their relatives, loot and share spoils with even (former) colonial exploiters like the Sam Levis, Bill Irvines, Thomas Meikles, Rautenbachs etc, even allocating them diamond fields, platinum fields, gold fields etc.

The best people such as the Yirira can benefit (if minerals are found around their home) is the ‘generosity’ of leadership to relocate them, as if the leadership ‘moulded’ the relocation site. All in all what it now proves is that our leaders were only bitter because the colonialists denied them participating in the splendour (looting from the public and donor coffers, abuse of power) overall, in religion – politics – general system (socio-economic). What has changed is the complexion of leaders, the imperial system is further entrenched in the so-called opposition groups are for the same selfish imperial system socio-economic (just different sides of the same – worthless – Zimbabwe banknotes) vying to abuse the powers that the current are abusing, e.g. did we not have thousands of homeless people in Zim while our president and recent prime minister built/refurbished extra palaces/castles in Borrowdale, Highlands, Pleasure Mountains (Mount Pleasant) apart from already existing plush residencies (private/personal)? And that in 2008 many of us had our funds frozen by RBZ decree, courtesy of Governor Gono, endorsed by central government (during the period of limited withdrawals the elite were allowed to withdraw as much as they wanted), but no redress to the non-elite.

You will find that given the Zim population and the Zim bounty of nature, our poverty is not a result of scarcity of basic necessities. It is the direct result of downright selfishness: please note: despite claims by African leaders and claiming to be revolutionaries, they have all been won back by imperialism. Look at Zim in particular: the same Westminster-type parliament, with the same pomp and glory as king/queen when opening parly after of course the 5-yearly circus called poll (here it is just to endorse the leader to dictate for the next 5 years and be foiled again with campaign rhetoric). How does anyone claim to be a revolutionary when he/she adopts (and worsen) the imperial religion (during the colonial era struggle against Christianity was banned by the fighting cadres, leadership pretended to support the comrades perhaps to impress non-religious China, Russia, DPRK), socioeconomic and the imperial legal system anyway?

Well, back to the heap of bullshit called divine inspiration: the reality is that every parent or leader wants to groom his offspring/followers according to his ideals. The reasons I have given concerning the Yirira cover many people in similar situations (e.g. islands undiscovered by religionists/propagators. I do not know enough about the Koran, but the maker of the environment/universe can never be the selfish pompous, tribalistic, cruel (warmonger, ruthless in Deuteronomy 7:1) despot and erratic – at first the claims to have created a perfect man, later the man is found to be defective and needs circumcision etc, as depicted in the Bible. The story of the resurrection proves the lies: he Jews are not the most stupid people in the universe (perhaps my timid and gullible fellow Zezurus are), i.e. he was sent specifically to save the Jews. If indeed he had resurrected, even the most ardent critic/doubter would have been proved wrong. As it reads (apart from the gullible) we have the story of a king/queen who can be seen by all before death but, when he/she resurrects is seen by the co-called royal ones only! (Blessed are they who believe without seeing.) Gullible! Imaginative!

How effective, how powerful is divinity when a criminal selfish Jacob gets divine blessings which should have gone to honest diligent Esau, fair and infallible god? Should not Jacob have got the same result as Ananias and Saphira? Again, we get a selfish, cruel adulterous king David, instead of being pelted to death, he grandsires ‘The King of the Jews’. Wonderful, infallible divinity! Thus, in the name of primitive humanity, in the desire/wish (a prayer is a wish) for eternal life (Oh! How I wish there were!), people have created rival monsters (imaginary –God and Satan), always at each others throats, no winner but also imagined answers. Hence when primitive dreams/hallucinations are interpreted by Daniel: … primitive mathematicians (a) Seventh Day Adventists come up with 31-08-1844, (b) Jehovah’s Witnesses come up with 1914 as the return of Jesus Christ. We have many people who were teenagers by 1912 still around, among my associates no-one saw or heard of Jesus then. However, if he did not come then that means he is still coming yesterday. As usual, the divine answers are all imaginary (interpreted by chosen seers). In my personal perception/perspective, the reason many shun reality is the false grooming plus respecting wishes. Hence, by suspending logic I cite two orators:

(1) ‘… when you die you cease to exist like the beasts you kill often to feed yourselves, the maker (nature) loves everything it made, equally, no favours to any particular species…’

(2) ‘… if you obey me, because I often talk to the creator, who says I have domain over all other species, you will be resurrected after death and live for ever…’

Of course, orator 2 gets favour most. It is hope/wish versus fact/reality. Despite millions of years of human existence with continuity by offspring, there is no single person, despite highly propagated fables, who was ever resurrected. According to scientific (and reality) explanation of death only wishful thinking and the suspension of logic make people think there ever was/will be any resurrection. If the leading humans were not egoistic (selfish), the most selfish animals in fact, and primitive hallucinations/dreams and their propagation aside, who can confirm to you (humans) that the maker/creator loves you more than the lion, tiger (rats– pests), cattle, moths etc?

Face reality!

GODWIN HATITYE, HARARE, ZIMBABWE

Rising Levels Of Poverty Attributed To 'Resource Curse'

The loss of land and a gender hierarchy, among other factors, are forcing some young girls – with parental consent – to forsake school and turn to sex work on diamond mines in the Marange region of eastern Zimbabwe.

“Commercial sex among girls as young as 12 years has become a natural way out of poverty for these children and their families. They are using it as a coping mechanism in the wake of the negative effects on household livelihoods caused by mining activities in Marange,” Melanie Chiponda, programme manager of the Chiadzwa Community Development Trust (CCDT), an NGO, told IRIN.

Nationally, about 2.2 million people are faced by food insecurity, but food shortages and rising levels of poverty in communities in Manicaland province’s diamond fields are being attributed to the “resource curse”.

In 2008, artisanal miners were flushed from the Marange diamond fields by government security forces, and the state then issued commercial mining licences. Seven companies now mine the 60,000 hectare fields, but proximity to wealth has undermined rather than improved livelihoods.

“The mines took away pastures and farmland from the locals... This worsened hunger and affected household income, as families traditionally sold some of their crops and livestock to raise money for food, school fees and other basic needs,” Chiponda said. Local communities have also been excluded from low-skilled jobs on the mines because companies have branded them as lazy and disobedient, and rely on migrant workers from other provinces instead.

"Unfortunately, girls become part of the dirty game. Some of the girls get food handouts as payment for sex"

“Thousands of married men live in [single-sex] hostels at the mines and women are not allowed inside them. Given that most of the men come from faraway places, they end up resorting to commercial sex and, unfortunately, girls become part of the dirty game. Some of the girls get food handouts as payment for sex,” Stella Washaya, 50, a Marange villager and volunteer counsellor for vulnerable young girls, told IRIN.

Mine companies have now banned villagers from selling their produce, but between 2006 and 2008, artisanal miners stimulated the local economy by buying foodstuffs from the community. The companies also have a policy of confiscating livestock roaming onto their concessions, and mining activities have destroyed forests. In times of food insecurity, livestock are seen as a last resort, and wild fruits from the forests are eaten or sold along highways.

Freeman Bhoso, executive director of the Zimbabwe Natural Resources Dialogue Forum (ZNRDF), an NGO advocating sustainable and equitable exploitation of mineral resources, told IRIN that child sex work was a “natural offshoot” of the community’s exclusion from the diamond fields.

“Communities are not benefiting from the exploitation of resources, but are getting further impoverished. As a result, household members are forced to engage in activities - some of them life-threatening - that guarantee them bare survival. Child commercial sex is a symptom of poverty,” he said.

Washaya said, “Commercial sex among young girls has become a social crisis here. There are several thousands homesteads in Marange and I would say one in every five of these has at least one [girl] teenager engaging in sex for money.”

A nurse at one of the few health centres in the area, who declined to be identified, told IRIN: “We attend to at least 20 girls a month who have contracted STIs [sexually transmitted infections]. The men… insist on unprotected sex, a trend worsened by the fact that there are no programmes designed to educate them against the risky practice. Many young girls have dropped out of school due to unwanted pregnancies.”

"Now that I have a child, the burden has grown and sex with men is the easiest way to get some money"

In Marange, the prevalence of Apostolic religious communities advocating a boy’s education ahead of a girl’s, has seen some parents encouraging their daughters to enter the commercial sex trade to support the family, Washaya said.

Read more here

Zimbabwe Government Failing To Pay Farmers For Food Produced

A Zimbabwe state mechanism designed to promote food security is being blamed for exacerbating the country’s chronic food shortages.
The failure by the 83-year-old state-run Grain Marketing Board (GMB) to pay producers for their grain in recent years has short-circuited the ability of small-scale farmers to generate cash flow to fund agricultural inputs for the following season - a problem recognized by President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party.

The Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee, with a membership drawn from the government, the UN World Food Programme and other partners, estimates that 2.2 million people, or a quarter of the rural population, require food assistance during the 2014 “lean season” - the few months before the harvest in March.

Small-scale farmers are the backbone of the country’s food security and provide about 70 percent of its staple crop, maize, according to agricultural analysts and government estimates. Denford Gwara, 48, a small-scale farmer who used to produce wheat and maize on 40 hectares of land in Mazowe, Mashonaland Central province, told IRIN the GMB owed him US$9,000 for produce he had delivered in the past two harvests.
“I have visited GMB on numerous occasions but they keep telling me that government has not given them money to pay me. Last year, they offered to pay off part of the debt with fertilizer and maize seed, but only gave me a few bags, which were too little for me to make any meaningful farming,” he said.
As a result, he has had to reduce the area of land he tills to only five hectares, and had to sell his old truck to raise money for inputs.

 The GMB’s primary role is to ensure national food security by promoting crop production - mainly cereals - as well as the procurement, free distribution and sales of harvested grains, and managing the country’s strategic grain reserves. It also has a commercial department that processes and sells agricultural products such as oil seeds, rice, groundnuts, coffee and popcorn.

At a recent media briefing in the capital, Harare, minister of agriculture Joseph Made said, “At the moment, most farmers are using limited financial resources. They need the money that GMB owes them. Government cannot expect farmers to produce when it is failing to pay them for their produce.”
Made acknowledged that the GMB owed farmers more than US$6 million. He said his ministry was “battling with treasury” and hoped the finance ministry would “assist, so that farmers have the money they need to finance their operations”.

 Even before the land reform programme in 2000, when about 4,500 white-owned farms - accounting for about 39 percent of the country’s land - was redistributed to an estimated 245,000 black farmers, small-scale farmers were a central pillar in the nation’s food security.
After independence from Britain in 1980, price controls on maize increased the trend by white commercial farmers to resort to cash crops like tobacco, paprika, cut flowers and cotton, and growing yellow maize for stock feed, entrenching cereal production as largely the preserve of communal black farmers.
In the aftermath of the land reform programme, large-scale agro-businesses collapsed, as did the access of small-scale farmers to cheaper agricultural inputs facilitated by the large-scale demands of commercial farmers. The imposition of sanctions for human rights abuses further squeezed an already fragile economy.


Eddie Cross, a farmer, agricultural consultant and member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, told IRIN the failure by GMB to pay farmers timeously was “a serious issue that requires urgent government intervention”.
“In the old days, farmers would get their money within a week after delivering produce. The farmers would then start planning for the next farming season and know how much to set aside for personal consumption. They would be able to buy inputs on time and before prices shot up, unlike now,” Cross said.
He estimated the number of small-scale farmers in Zimbabwe - those on communal land as well as those resettled through land reform - at about 700,000, noting that about half of them had been “severely affected” by non-payment or delayed payment from the GMB.
“It is confusing that the government is prepared to annually hunt for money to import food, when it should be prioritizing raising money to allocate to GMB for farmers’ payments as a way to ensure that production improves,” he said.

Wonder Chabikwa, the ZCFU president, told IRIN, “Granted, drought and the delayed distribution of inputs are also behind poor agricultural production - particularly that of maize - over the years,” he said. “But one untold story is that GMB’s inability to pay farmers is a major factor that has affected their capacity to prepare and produce meaningful yields, leading to recurrent food insecurity.”


Whole article here

The Trauma of being a Migrant

"In South Africa this situation of forced labour is typical," explains Marija Nikolovska, project manager of irregular migration programmes for International Organisation for Migration (IOM) South Africa. "Migrants are unaware of their rights and are afraid to go to the police because they don't want to be deported or are afraid the police will not act." The migrants who manage to secure work often face exploitation, Nikolovska adds. "Those who find employment are paid less than South African workers and sometimes have their salaries withheld for months. If they protest they risk losing their jobs or being reported to the authorities."

Recent figures released by the South African authorities show that of the 2,000 illegal migrants repatriated each week, up to 20% are unaccompanied children. About 350-400 Zimbabwean children cross the border each day without passing official checkpoints, according to Save the Children Zimbabwe.

 While some malaishas (taxi drivers/smugglers) operate solely as middlemen, many are part of a network who rob, sexually assault or enslave the migrants.  Girls are sometimes forced to work as prostitutes, says Natalia Perez, programme director of IOM Zimbabwe. "Beitbridge and Musina are busy transit routes, many young girls work in prostitution where the risk of being exposed to HIV is high." Boys are also vulnerable and can be found begging, sleeping rough or in low-paid jobs. They are sometimes targeted by magumagumas (gangs of robbers) and face mistreatment by the police.

According to Médecins Sans Frontières, the international medical organisation, more than 75% of the 4,000-5,000 migrants they treat each month have been raped while crossing the border, with nearly 60% violated by more than one perpetrator.

From here