http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1006
Zimbabwe – Hell in Paradise
By DEBKAfile Special Correspondent
March 27, 2005, 10:41 PM (GMT+02:00)
Amid rampant unemployment (est. 70%), repression, unbridled
lawlessness, hunger, intimidation and an unchecked, untreated AIDS
epidemic, Zimbabweans go to the polls Thursday, March 31. So
secretive, brutal and repressive is the quarter-of-a-century old
regime of President Robert Mugabe, 81, and his all-powerful ZANU PF
party, that no one believes in the official figure of 5.6 million
registered voters for 120 seats in parliament. Thirty are handpicked
by the president.
Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube of second largest town of
Bulawayo called Sunday, March 27, for peaceful Ukraine-style street
protests to overthrow the ruler, because Thursday's election was
certain to be rigged. If he were to put on his vestments and lead a
march on Mugabe's palace, he feared he would be alone. "The people are
so scared."
Since Mugabe came to power, Zimbabwe has been transformed from an
African paradise with a 4.5% growth rate to the fastest shrinking
economy in the world. Three quarters of the population live below the
poverty line. Life expectancy has dropped from 61 to 39.
Yet Mugabe is expected to engineer another win for his ZANU-PF as he
did in 2000 and 2002. He trumpets the poll as free, open and
democratic and is echoed by his lone patron, South African president
Thabo Mbeki.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, head of the opposition Movement
for Democratic Change, the MDC, predicts that widespread crop failure
and drought in the once thriving country could leave seven out of 12
million Zimbabweans hungry before the end of the year. The quarter of
a million-strong white population has been whittled down to no more
than an estimated 35,000.
Tsvangirai, a former trade union head, has managed to survive long
enough to run against Mubabe after being in and out of prison for
years and constantly hauled back to face fresh charges ranging from
plots to kill Mugabe to plans for sabotage against the country. More
than 400 MDC partisans have been murdered by government militias since
his party emerged in 1999. He himself escaped an assassination attempt
last July.
Now, says the opposition, the ruler's strong-arm tactics have "eased."
The thugs who raid government opponents' homes by night no longer
murder and torture; they merely threaten to cut off food to whole,
starving communities. Not surprisingly, Tsvangirai's campaign attracts
very small, albeit enthusiastic, audiences.
DEBKAfile's special correspondent reports: The anti-torture group
"Redress" says that no free elections are possible in the current
climate of fear. Countries deemed hostile to the ruling clique have
been banned from sending monitoring teams for the vote, even former US
President Jimmy Carter's peace center in Atlanta, which Mugabe brands
a "terrorist organization." Zimbabwe's supreme court has barred more
than three million expatriates from voting.
The last independent paper, Daily News , has been bludgeoned, beaten
and bombed into silence. The foreign press is absent or rigidly
monitored. Any real reporting is done with hidden cameras.
Mugabe's anti-Western and anti-White rhetoric has increased as polls
approach. The MDC is accused of acting as a proxy for the government's
enemies.
The country, isolated by sanctions, is acutely short of foreign
exchange. The World Bank's lending program is "inactive due to
arrears." Western donors have frozen economic assistance; the European
Union bans visas for Mugabe and his top associates, while the US has
lumped Zimbabwe with Iran and North Korea as an "outpost of tyranny."
North Korean advisers are known to have spent most of the 1980s in the
country, training Mugabe's infamous Fifth Brigade and his bodyguards.
They came with $18m worth of military hardware, T-544 tanks, armored
personnel carriers, artillery and small arms.
No one knows if and when they left. They set up compulsory
indoctrination centers for young people, teaching them blind loyalty
to the ruling Party and its leader and hatred of political opponents,
especially Whites and any other non-Black communities. They were also
inducted into Korean martial arts and such assassination techniques as
strangling with bootlaces. Young female inductees were rumored to have
been forced to provide sexual favors to instructors and officers.
An ever-present scar on the Zimbabwean psyche, especially in
Matabeleland, is the memory of the terrible massacre, pillage and rape
- The Gukurahundi - unleashed during the North Korean era by the Fifth
Brigade. No one knows the number of victims.
The writer, Peter Godwin, in his memoir "Makiwe" (the African word for
white man), ventured into the site of the massacre in its immediate
aftermath and found a scorched land, a ghost-land of silence and
destroyed villages, and survivors too traumatized to speak.
In 2000, after the opposition won almost half the seats in elections,
Mugabe loosed the "war veterans" with their machetes on white-owned
and even black-owned farms, pillaging, destroying, murdering, raping
their victims. Fire burned throughout the country. But the White
owners were not the only victims. More than 400,000 Black farm workers
and their families were thrown out of work and have been utterly
destitute ever since. The captured white farms were not turned over to
landless peasants but commandeered by party hacks and ZANU PF
apparatchiks.
In 2001, a second rogue state leader, Muammar Qaddafi, became Mugabe's
best friend. Giving up on influence on the Arab world, he preached
African jihad against the Whites and lavished cash and oil to buy
influence. Together they spread hate of Whites, including Jews.
Mugabe's new patron pledged $1m for his campaign fund, signed a $360m
oil deal and handed out several loans to rescue the country from
collapse. Today, Zimbabwe is mortgaged to the hilt, its ruler believed
to have signed over to Qaddafi most of the country's high-value
assets: a stake in or ownership of its refineries, the
Mozambique-Zimbabwe oil pipeline, the Harare Sheraton, Victoria Falls
hotels, some 20 large ranches and mansions and even the famed Hwange
national game reserve.
There are stories that poachers are killing off the game in this and
other reserves out of desperation for food.
With inflation at a rampant 700%, bread is priced out of reach of the
poor.
Hospitals are bare of the most basic equipment and supplies – even
aspirin; surgical nurses bring kitchen rubber gloves from home. More
than 700 die every week from AIDS, a million AIDS-orphaned children
roam the streets in packs.
In 2002, the UN reported DR Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe had
systematically plundered Congo's mineral wealth during the 4-year war
in which 2 million died. "Zimbabwean troops drafted to support the
Kinshasa government were reinforced in places like Kasai where
Zimbabwean parties own interests in diamond mines," said the report,
accusing Congolese and Zimbabwean government and military officials of
transferring at least $5 bn to private pockets.
Commander of Mugabe's defense forces, General Vitalis Zvinavashe,
dismissed the UN report as a Western plot to tarnish his country.
Despite fears of the ubiquitous secret police, Zimbabweans know quite
a lot about Mugabe's foreign adventure in DR Congo. They revealed to
DEBKAfile's special correspondent that more than 11,000 Zimbabwean
soldiers were sent to the country during the Congo war to guard
Mugabe's diamond and mineral mines, his payback for guarding the
Kinshasa government. The planes returned home loaded with incredible
wealth amassed by their ruler and top military brass and also the body
bags of the soldiers who had been killed or died of horrible diseases
rife in the DR Congo hell hole.
Delivering the Easter Mass at Bulawayo's St. Mary's Cathedral, Bishop
Ncube urged worshippers to remain hopeful. "Somewhere there will come
a resurrection for Zimbabwe."
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
DonorsChoose. A simple way to provide underprivileged children resources
often lacking in public schools. Fund a student project in NYC/NC today!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/EHLuJD/.WnJAA/cUmLAA/TySplB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
--------------------------
Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL
PROTECTED]
--------------------------
Brooks Isoldi, editor
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.intellnet.org
Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has
not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of
The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT
YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of
intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods,
techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other
intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes
only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material
as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use
this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,'
you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
