http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Tel/Fax: 02380 879675
General: 07714736382
P O Box 248, Hythe, SO45 4WX, United Kingdom
BY GIFT PHIRI
HARARE - President Robert Mugabe is now running the country under an undeclared state of emergency by invoking sweeping presidential powers, openly encouraging violence with rhetoric invoking war and depicting opposition and civic groups as traitors, analysts said this week.
Political analysts said there was shocking judicial tampering and legislative engineering through the circumvention of Parliament by Mugabe’s excessive abuse of his presidential powers. Analysts said Mugabe’s continued use of the police to harass and torture opponents had effectively imposed a state of emergency through the backdoor. In this culture of impunity, violent threats against the country’s core democratic institutions, including the judiciary, have become commonplace.
“In almost every way, Mugabe is now running this country under an undeclared state of emergency,” said Dr. Lovemore Madhuku, a constitutional law lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ).
Madhuku, who is also chairman of the militant pressure group National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), was interviewed as he led a democracy march demanding a new constitution last week.
“Mugabe is using the Presidential Powers Act to amend existing laws and create new ones without having to put them to Parliament. The way he is operating, he does not need to declare a state of emergency,” he noted.
Mugabe has invoked his presidential powers three times this year alone. In July he signed into law a statutory instrument granting immunity to security officers, including the notorious youth militia, tasked with seizing currency and merchandise from innocent citizens. The cash search and seize operation, ostensibly aimed at crashing the black market, was widely condemned by countless human rights bodies as patently unconstitutional and illegal. But caution was thrown to the wind.
Mugabe is currently crafting a statutory instrument, which will further postpone the eagerly awaited Harare mayoral and council elections. His ruling Zanu (PF) party’s supreme decision-making body, the Politburo, has also unanimously adopted a resolution to use its two-thirds parliamentary majority to amend the constitution and delay presidential elections from 2008 to 2010.
Professor Greg Linington, a UZ constitutional law expert, said Zimbabwe was now under an unofficial state of emergency because of the way Mugabe abused his presidential powers.
“It is a very sad situation. The Presidential Powers Act enables President Mugabe to do exactly the same things he would do under the Emergency Powers Act in an official state of emergency,” said Linington.
“All regulations created by President Mugabe under the Act are unconstitutional,” said Linington, adding that he saw no reason why Zimbabwean courts should not adopt the South African constitutional court’s view of the presidential powers.
Prof. Welshman Ncube, another leading local constitutional law expert, said Mugabe was relying on the use of violence and coercive tactics to consolidate and maintain his iron-fisted 26-year rule. He said there was also a strong repressive backlash towards the opposition and its supporters in reaction to shows of discontent.
Ncube said Zimbabweans were now at the mercy of Mugabe and he could do whatever he wanted to trample on their fundamental rights.
“The Presidential Powers Act permits Mugabe to make whatever regulations he wants and even to repeal primary legislation instituted by Parliament. The safeguards against the abuse of the Act are so ineffectual as to be any safeguards at all,” said Ncube, who is also a senior official of the Mutambara-led faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Analysts said Mugabe has also increasingly circumvented Parliament, ordering troop
deployments, ruling by decree and branding critics as “terrorists.”
In the past Mugabe has used the Presidential Powers Act to pass legislation banning private radio stations and regulating other broadcast media.
The same Act has banned strikes and been used to pardon perpetrators of political violence, most of them members of his ruling Zanu (PF) party. A ruling made under the Presidential Powers Act is valid for six months before it can be turned into draft legislation and put to Parliament.
Mugabe has also used the Act to take away the rights of white farmers to facilitate his
controversial land acquisition drive for black resettlement that he conveniently used as his re-election ticket.
His government recently announced plans to bulldoze through the House legislation that will empower him to snoop on private communications of citizens.
MDC legislator David Coltart urged the international community to start planning for the consequences of Mugabe postponing the elections.
Coltart said the Harare authorities have already made it clear that they would postpone elections to 2010.
Last week, Mugabe told off U.S. President George Bush and Britain Premier Tony Blair for “lecturing” him on human rights and the rule of law.
The EU, which Mugabe has accused of being a “Goliath”, has already set in motion a process leading to the Zimbabwe crisis being put on the UN Security Council agenda.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Zim student heckles Mabuza
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Tel/Fax: 02380 879675
General: 07714736382
P O Box 248, Hythe, SO45 4WX, United Kingdom
BY LANCE GUMA
LONDON - Lindiwe Mabuza, the South African High Commissioner to the UK, was heckled by a Zimbabwean student during her visit to Oxford University last week. Mabuza was delivering an address on the state of post apartheid South Africa at Oxford’s Exeter College when an unidentified student managed to take over the question and answer session.
The student is said to have questioned South Africa’s foreign policy in terms of its perceived success in the Ivory Coast, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and yet the Zimbabwean crisis remained unresolved. Before Mabuza could respond, the student declared, ‘I have a present I would like to give you on behalf of all Zimbabweans.’ He reached inside his satchel and produced a placard, on which “Shame on South Africa” was emblazoned.
Although the student tried to walk out of the venue the commissioner asked him to sit down so she could answer his queries. This was in stark contrast to Zuma’s outbursts in London after she was heckled and declared that Zimbabweans were busy sitting in the diaspora doing nothing. Mabuza decided to respond and said, “There has been loud diplomacy from critics of Zimbabwe other than South Africa and what has loud diplomacy achieved?”
The student quickly responded by saying, ‘And what has six years of South African quiet diplomacy achieved?’ Mabuza is said to have angrily replied “Zimbabwe is not South Africa’s tenth province, we will not send our army into Zimbabwe and neither will we apply economic sanctions because we believe Zimbabweans should solve their problems by themselves. Only Zimbabweans can solve Zimbabwe’s problems. “Zimbabweans in the Diaspora must shame South African officials whenever they are out and about making hypocritical utterances of an African Renaissance. I am calling on all of them to maintain the precedent that has been set in the last two weeks,” declared the student, believed to be a member of the activist group, Free Zim Youth. – SW Radio Africa
Tel/Fax: 02380 879675
General: 07714736382
P O Box 248, Hythe, SO45 4WX, United Kingdom
BY LANCE GUMA
LONDON - Lindiwe Mabuza, the South African High Commissioner to the UK, was heckled by a Zimbabwean student during her visit to Oxford University last week. Mabuza was delivering an address on the state of post apartheid South Africa at Oxford’s Exeter College when an unidentified student managed to take over the question and answer session.
The student is said to have questioned South Africa’s foreign policy in terms of its perceived success in the Ivory Coast, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and yet the Zimbabwean crisis remained unresolved. Before Mabuza could respond, the student declared, ‘I have a present I would like to give you on behalf of all Zimbabweans.’ He reached inside his satchel and produced a placard, on which “Shame on South Africa” was emblazoned.
Although the student tried to walk out of the venue the commissioner asked him to sit down so she could answer his queries. This was in stark contrast to Zuma’s outbursts in London after she was heckled and declared that Zimbabweans were busy sitting in the diaspora doing nothing. Mabuza decided to respond and said, “There has been loud diplomacy from critics of Zimbabwe other than South Africa and what has loud diplomacy achieved?”
The student quickly responded by saying, ‘And what has six years of South African quiet diplomacy achieved?’ Mabuza is said to have angrily replied “Zimbabwe is not South Africa’s tenth province, we will not send our army into Zimbabwe and neither will we apply economic sanctions because we believe Zimbabweans should solve their problems by themselves. Only Zimbabweans can solve Zimbabwe’s problems. “Zimbabweans in the Diaspora must shame South African officials whenever they are out and about making hypocritical utterances of an African Renaissance. I am calling on all of them to maintain the precedent that has been set in the last two weeks,” declared the student, believed to be a member of the activist group, Free Zim Youth. – SW Radio Africa
SA govt supports Mugabe – Leon
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Tel/Fax: 02380 879675
General: 07714736382
P O Box 248, Hythe, SO45 4WX, United Kingdom
BY FRANCO HENWOOD
LONDON - The South African government has a de facto policy of support for the Mugabe regime said the main opposition Democratic Alliance party leader Tony Leon in London last week.
He said President Thabo Mbeki’s policy of ‘silent diplomacy’ was in reality a policy of ‘silent approval.’
“Mbeki’s own deadline for the policy to have delivered results by 2004 – the staging of free and fair multi-party elections in Zimbabwe – came and went. Mbeki’s self-proclaimed policy failed, yet his credibility survived unscathed. Why then the absence of pressure from below to make good his assurances?” said Leon.
He attributed this to a variety of factors: South Africans are weary of Zimbabwe. They perceive the crisis to be hopeless and intractable, perceptions reinforced by the MDC’s recent split. For these reasons the country has slipped off the news agenda.
Controversially, Leon noted that many South Africans question why Zimbabweans do not do more to emancipate themselves. He conceded that Mugabe was ruthless – there would be ‘cost and consequences’ for those standing up to him – but no less perhaps than borne by those resisting apartheid in the 70s and 80s.
“None of this belittles the heroic efforts to diminish the heroic efforts made by organisations like Women of Zimbabwe Arise and the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions. It is easy for those in the comfort zone to exhort those on the front line to do more,” said Leon.
In the days of the anti-apartheid struggle, those in the diaspora made a critical contribution. The disinvestment campaign which removed the apartheid regime’s financial prop was on account of massive lobbying efforts by the diaspora.
Leon said, considering the size of the Zimbabwean diaspora in South Africa, it was astonishing that Zimbabwe was off the news agenda in the one country where it ought to matter most.
“If salvation is to come from the South Africans, then it will come through the efforts of the diaspora. If the diaspora does not stir itself, then this prospect is dim indeed,” he added.
Leon acknowledged the post-apartheid government success in maintaining stable macro-economic policy, and said indications of a deepening trend towards authoritarianism and corruption in the governing ANC threatened the consolidation of post-apartheid democracy. – Franco Henwood writes in his personal capacity
Tel/Fax: 02380 879675
General: 07714736382
P O Box 248, Hythe, SO45 4WX, United Kingdom
BY FRANCO HENWOOD
LONDON - The South African government has a de facto policy of support for the Mugabe regime said the main opposition Democratic Alliance party leader Tony Leon in London last week.
He said President Thabo Mbeki’s policy of ‘silent diplomacy’ was in reality a policy of ‘silent approval.’
“Mbeki’s own deadline for the policy to have delivered results by 2004 – the staging of free and fair multi-party elections in Zimbabwe – came and went. Mbeki’s self-proclaimed policy failed, yet his credibility survived unscathed. Why then the absence of pressure from below to make good his assurances?” said Leon.
He attributed this to a variety of factors: South Africans are weary of Zimbabwe. They perceive the crisis to be hopeless and intractable, perceptions reinforced by the MDC’s recent split. For these reasons the country has slipped off the news agenda.
Controversially, Leon noted that many South Africans question why Zimbabweans do not do more to emancipate themselves. He conceded that Mugabe was ruthless – there would be ‘cost and consequences’ for those standing up to him – but no less perhaps than borne by those resisting apartheid in the 70s and 80s.
“None of this belittles the heroic efforts to diminish the heroic efforts made by organisations like Women of Zimbabwe Arise and the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions. It is easy for those in the comfort zone to exhort those on the front line to do more,” said Leon.
In the days of the anti-apartheid struggle, those in the diaspora made a critical contribution. The disinvestment campaign which removed the apartheid regime’s financial prop was on account of massive lobbying efforts by the diaspora.
Leon said, considering the size of the Zimbabwean diaspora in South Africa, it was astonishing that Zimbabwe was off the news agenda in the one country where it ought to matter most.
“If salvation is to come from the South Africans, then it will come through the efforts of the diaspora. If the diaspora does not stir itself, then this prospect is dim indeed,” he added.
Leon acknowledged the post-apartheid government success in maintaining stable macro-economic policy, and said indications of a deepening trend towards authoritarianism and corruption in the governing ANC threatened the consolidation of post-apartheid democracy. – Franco Henwood writes in his personal capacity
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