We now have reports that Libya is in negotiations with Russia about buying Sukhoi Flankers, probably the Su-35, which would imply that they are not going to buy the Rafale from Dassault, as I had previously noted.
Seriously, the number of times that a Rafale deal has gone pear shaped just boggles the mind.
Well, it’s been about a month, so it’s time to review again how screwed things up are in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe.
On the bright side, we are seeing push-back from various institutions in Zimbabwe, which seem all to be tied to the knowledge that Robert Mugabe, who is 85, will not be around for much longer.
The most obvious sign is the struggle within the ZANU-PF over who the next Vice President should be. It’s clear that everyone out there feels that whoever has this post is likely to succeed Mugabe, particularly given the earlier reports of his ill health.
On a more significant note, we are now seeing that banks are no longer considering Mugabe’s land grab letters as sufficient collateral for loans:
Zanu (PF) officials, for long used to free agricultural implements and inputs from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe after taking over large-scale commercial farms, could be facing a gloomy year.
Not only is the government prioritising small-scale farmers this time around, but banks have resisted pressure to accept ‘offer letters’ and 99-year leases as collateral for loans.
President Robert Mugabe and Zanu (PF) have been lobbying banks to accept as collateral the ‘offer letters’, which purportedly authorise the holder to forcibly take over a farm.
However, at the weekend, the Bankers’ Association of Zimbabwe reiterated that banks required “asset-based security”.
Basically, the banks are seeing Mugabe as not being long for this earth, and so they don’t want to be left holding the bag.
The push back is getting severe enough that even the criminal courts are actually starting to apply the law in something resembling a non-corrupt manner, with the Zimbabwe Supreme Court dismissing terrorism charges against human rights Jestina Mukoko, and declaring that she was terrorized by the state security apparatus, and, perhaps more significantly, the Office of the Attorney General declining to represent government officials who have been sued by her.
These are little steps, however, and we are still seeing things like Roy Bennett, the MDC’s nominee for Deputy Agriculture Minister, being indicted and imprisoned on what are clearly trumped up charges of terrorism….Gee…there are a lot of terrorism charges flying about the Zim courts, huh?
In the economy, we are continuing to see improvements in the economy, with inflation continuing to moderate, but the looting by ZANU-PF apparatchiks continues.
Most notably, we have seen the seizure of Meikles Group, a hospitality and import/export firm, and has placed the firm under government control, which, if the earlier seizure of Shabanie Mashaba Mine Holdings, where looting has been so extensive that workers and utilities are not being paid.
We are also similar actions against Nestlé, where the firm has stopped buying its milk from Mugabe’s wife’s farm in order to comply with Swiss sanctions, and the government has frozen the firm’s bank accounts.
Finally, we have the fact that Central Bank governor Gideon Gono and Finance Minister Tendai Biti tusseling over the spending of the recent IMF loan, with Gono, a Mugabe Ally, basically wanting to shovel money to Mugabe cronies, and Biti wanting the money to things like roads, bridges, and healthcare. (here and here)
Somali Navy Chief Farah Ahmed OmarIt may not be the world’s worst job, but it’s certainly in the top 10, though Tom Delay’s dance partner is a tough competitor.
Well, it’s been about a month, so it’s time for another update on what is happening in Zimbabwe.
The two biggest pieces of news are Robert Mugabe’s health, he is 85 years old, and there are officially denied rumors that he has gone to Qatar for prostate cancer treatment, and he has missed some significant meetings.
Additionally, we are beginning to see senior ZANU-PF members vying for position, with, for example, someone having put up the party youth group (I assume that this mean young adults) to call for the removal of John Nkomo and Joyce Mujuru from the party presidium.
We are also seeing the situation with the Chiadzwa diamond fields get out of hand,with a threat by the world Diamond Council to suspend Zimbabwe from the Kimberly Process certification, which would label one of their few sources of hard currency “blood diamonds,” though threat comes with a statement which immediately backtracks from the threat, though they are making noise about revisiting the issue in November.
The Parliament has also opened an investigation into the accusations of brutality, corruption, and slave labor, and the World Federation of Diamond Bourses has made a call for the prompt release of the Kimberly report.
The reason that this is significant is because it is a sign of loss of control by Mugabe. It’s fairly clear that he feels that he cannot give the order for the Zimbabwean military to stand down in Chiadzwa because it would eliminate one of the few remaining means that he has to bribe reward loyalists, and it is unclear if the army would obey if he were to give the order.
This is an indication that Mugabe is losing power within ZANU-PF as people look to his exit.
On a more prosaic level, it looks like Mugabe is trying to kill Tsvangerai again: He has had to sack somemembers of his security team for “misplacing” transport for a significant portion of his security detail, which left him ill-protected…..Then again, maybe I’m just a cynic.
Meanwhile, the Mutambara faction of the MDC appears to be in the process of self destructing, with conflicting claims as to who leads the MDC-M, reports that the party has split in 3 parts, 3 MDC-M MPs moving to join the MDC-T, and Mutambara being unable to convince an MP from his own party to step down and take an ambassadorship in order to allow deputy president Gibson Sibanda to keep his position on cabinet as Minister of State for National Healing and Reconciliation. (The constitution prohibits a cabinet post being held by someone not an MP for more than 3 months)
We had Zuma taking over for the completely useless and biased Mbeki as mediator, and while we got some strong language, such as Zuma calling Mugabe’s behavior in negotiations deviant, but the results, despite Tsvangerai’s pleas for action, have not gone beyond a SADC call for an extraordinary summit.
Most notably, you have the issues of Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Gideon Gono and Attorney General, Johannes Tomana, both tremendously corrupt and incompetent ZANU-PF loyalists, which means that the power of the purse and state violence (though both the police and military) remain firmly in the hands of Mugabe.
With the elimination of the $Z as a currency, this has reduced Gono’s power to pay off people, but he is once again attempting to reintroduce the local currency, though Finance Minister Tendai Biti is fighting him tooth and nail on this.
The harassment of MDC members of parliament continues, with police making trumped up arrests of opposition MPs.
It’s clearly an attempt to reduce the MDC majority in parliament, since once convicted, they can no longer serve, and so there would have to be by-elections.
The problem for the ZANU-PF with this strategy is that they are polling in the single digits, (also here).
ZANU-PF has proposed 5-year extension on the current 1-year freeze on elections, but the MDC has made it clear that it has no interest in such a proposal.
The 2nd of ZANU-PF is to make elections impossible, either by pleading poverty, or by refusing to staff the election board created by the unity government agreement.
Meanwhile, the IMF has issued $400 million in foreign currency reserves, which would be good news, except for the fact that Gideon Gono (remember him?) is insisting that he is in charge of disbursing all these funds.
I’d sooner have Bernie Madoff managing that money.
But was he guilty in the first place?
Normally, I’d put this sort of question firmly into the tinfoil hat category, but a number of people believe Libya was not the perpetrator of the bombing, with Iran and the PFLP-GC being the most frequently cited alternative, and it appears this release was a quid pro quo for his dropping his appeal of his conviction. (See also here)
My guess is that the reality is somewhere in between, that al-Megrahi is the one who done it, but that the prosecution was handled by a bunch of PR glory boys, who screwed up various parts of the trial, and there was a very real worry that he would embarrass the British courts on appeal, so they cut a deal.
That’s my guess anyway.
In a move that has “Epic Fail” written all over it, the Police are attempting to staff up by actively recruiting ZANU-PF youth militia members to the force.
As if the state security apparatus were not brutal, politicized and corrupt already.
We also have Arthur Mutambara, head of the MDC-M, stating the obvious, and noting that neither the MDC-M nor Tsvangerai’s MDC-T have any meaningful control of the government.
On the brighter side, we are now seeing divisions in the ZANU-PF over who should succeed late Vice President Joseph Msika, and it appears that the split is between the people originally from ZANU (Robert Mugabe) and PF-ZAPU (Joshua Nkomo).
One hopes that the MDC, both -T and -M, can use this discord to get some meaningful influence in this dynamic.
Well, the drafting of a new constitution is a complete mess, with ZANU-PF busing in thugs to disrupt the charter meeting.
In a darkly humorous development, it appears that ZANU-PF did not think it out fully, as they did not include transport back home for their thugs, who were stranded for a few days at the hotel at which the meeting is being held.
From the other side, there have been threats of boycotts from civil society groups, who claim that they have not been fully included in the process, and that parliamentarians have complete control of the process.
As a historical aside, this sort of stuff makes the US Constitutional convention, which was conducted in secret, look awfully attractive.
In terms of the current government, it appears that ZANU-PF is engineering trumped up charges against MDC members of parliament, in order to get them suspended, which, if done in sufficient quantities, would flip control of the chamber back to the ZANU-PF.
Notwithstanding the rhetoric about an inclusive government, I really don’t think that there will be any progress without a some external entity, and South Africa is the entity best suited to this, having a boot on Mugabe’s neck to coerce “good faith” moving forward.
Finally, it appears that the situation in the Zimbabwean diamond mines is getting worse. While the government has agreed to remove the army from the mines, “in phases”, but the army has refused to leave.
First off, we have a row between Mugabe and Tsvangerai over the Bank of Zimbabwe Governor, Gideon Gono.
This is a non-trivial row, because the spectacularly corrupt Gono was the architect of Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation, and he did so in order to pay off the various ZANU-PF constituencies to support Mugabe.
It’s gotten heated enough that the (ZANU-PF member) military and security chiefs have said that his removal would be unacceptable.
Members of the MDC have approached the Southern African Development Community asking for an intervention, but non seems forthcoming.
The regional association of governments is sticking with precedent, and being generally useless, so the MDC is moving toward changing the law chartering the Zimbabwean central bank so as to reduce Gono’s authority.
Things are improving a bit though at least in economy, with inflation moderating, though the persecution of civil rights activists continues.
In mining, which will necessarily be a source of much needed foreign currency, you have the good and the bad
On the good side, you have Zimbabwe Zimbabwe moving to ban raw chromium ore exports, and insisting that it be smelted first, which will greatly increase the benefit to society, as there is 10x the profit post smelter. (as an aside, the US and EU have filed a case against against China for doing this at the WTO, because under neocolonialist WTO rules, poor countries are not supposed to develop industries based on their resources)
We also have some gold mines reopening.
On the down side, mines minister is still one of Mugabe’s cronies, which means that he is still on the EU’s sanction list, and was denied a visa to enter the UK, and all indications are that this was well justified, as civil rights violations at the mines seem to be pretty horrific.
Specifically it appears that the Zimbabwe army is using slave labor to operate diamond mines in the east of the country, as a way for Mugabe to continue to pay off the military for its support. (See also here)
We are starting to see some aid resuming to Zimbabwe, with Norway being among the first western nations to do so, though most nations are taking steps to ensure that the aid does not pass through government agencies, which are still compromised.
Well, it’s been about a month, so it’s time for another update on Zimbabwe.
Basically, things are still screwed up, and it’s all thanks to little Bobby Mugabe.
While, the IMF is offering technical assistance to the government again, most of the potential donor nations are unwilling to provide aid until the see evidence that the government has gotten it’s sh%$ together.
The lofty phrase used is, a “Commitment to economic stabilization, restoration of the rule of law, respect for property and human rights, and freedom of expression,” but it basically comes down to the fact that everything that ZANU-PF touches becomes a miasma of corruption and incompetence.
What they are really saying is that Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono has got to go, after creating the hyperinflation that made multi-trillion $Z banknotes necessary, and also the stealing from private accounts.
Finance minister Finance minister Tendai Biti has accused the RBZ of operating illegally, and he’s probably right.
Meanwhile Gono has complained to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai about the “attacks” against him.
Dude, in any sane world, a the word to describe a central banker who engineered a 516,000,000,000,000,000% inflation rate, prices doubling every 2 days or so, would be unemployed.
Just be glad that they are not trying to throw you in gaol…Yet.
Gono is where he is because he is a ZANU-PF loyalist who manages to create enough money to keep the ZANU-PF cabal satisfied.
This has led various aid agencies to take measures to avoid the government, and government agencies when distributing aid.
The MDC has called for his removal, see here and here, and have called for international intervention to remove him, see here, here, here, and here.
This has, of course, upset the delicate sensibilities of ZANU-PF officials, and Mugabe has dug his heels in on this too, probably because he needs him to, “pay the entourage.”
What a damn mess.
Not a whole bunch of movement, just updates such as the fact that the Zimbabwe Central Bank (RBZ) took money from private bank accounts, and that Finance Minister Tendai ordered parliament members who received cars from the RBZ to return them immediately.
It’s probably a prelude to the bank chief’s firing.
There is some relatively bright economic news with gold mining companies restarting operations after the government said that they could sell gold directly on the world market, which cuts off an avenue for Mugabe to pay off his associates, and the UK has pledged $21 million in humanitarian aid, and its African neighbors have pledged $400 million in credit lines.
They hafve set up a commission to investigate European illegal fishing off Somalia, which is a good thing, since the pirates started out as fishemen who are being starved by the depletion of their waters by illegal fishing.
It should have happened 5 years ago.
Not a whole bunch of conflict lately, and inflation is beginning to moderate, though much of that is because the economy is moving off the local currency.
It’s a good sign, as are reports that media restrictions will be relaxed.
It also looks like the MDC majority in Parliament is actually doing something, as they are looking to probe reports of police abuses.
We also have the Blanket gold mine reopening.
Unfortunately, at least on the symbolic level, 19 MDC ministers have accepted the offer of Mercedes Benz autos from Mugabe, which looks very bad.
We also have the IMF doing what it does best, making a financial disaster worse, and crushing the ordinary people beneath its treads.
What Mugabe won’t destroy, the IMF will.
South Africa has relaxed restrictions on Zimbabwean refugees, offering a 6 month visa.
It makes sense.
Khaddafi has signed a deal for 6 months exclusive negotiations for the Rafale.
This purchase actually makes sense for Libya, because they have a reasonable chance of being able to continue to operate the aircraft even in the face of an embargo by the US, such as the sort that grounded the Venezuelan F-16s, and the competitors, the Eurofighter Typhoon, and SAAB Gripen, both have significantly more US content.
This would be the first foreign sale of the Rafale, and I’m sure that the French foreign ministry and Dassault are both drooling at the prospect.
So it now appears that foul play has been ruled out in the Tsvangerai crash, and MDC official Roy Bennett has been released from custody.
That being said, Mugabe’s attempts to maintain his political power have gotten truly surreal:
On his first day as education minister in a government so broke that most schools were closed and millions of children idle, David Coltart said he got a startling invitation.
“Come and get your brand-new white Mercedes,” an official told Mr. Coltart, a veteran opposition politician, as President Robert Mugabe peered down from a portrait on the minister’s office wall.
The offer of an E-Class Mercedes to every minister in the month-old power-sharing government was vintage Mugabe, an effort to seduce his political enemies with the lavish perks he has long bestowed on loyalists.
(I would have offered him silver, or metallic blue, myself.)
I’m an optimist, and see this as a sign of weakness.
Mugabe had previously dismissed the MDC entirely, and how he is trying to bribe them.
I guess that the lede is that Morgan Tsvangirai has been injured in car accident, though at this time, his injuries appear “non critical”, though it has also been reported that his wife was killed.
The rest of developments have judicial with human rights campaigner Jestina Mukoko having been freed, but reporter Brian Hungwe is still in detention, albeit at a hospital.
We also had a judge ordering that MDC activist, and Deputy Minister of Agriculture designate, Roy Bennett be released on bail, though he is still in detention pending a review by the Supreme court, and the judge who issued the bail order has been arrested.
Needless to say, things in Zimbabwe remain unsettled.
Good. It’s about bloody time.
So, now we have a “unity government”, only Mugabe continues to make appointments unilaterally, though Tsvangerai is disputing them, for what that is worth.
In any case, we are seeing an increase in political violence, and government elements allied with the ZANU PF are continuing arrests and detentions of political prisoners, including a “terrorism” charge against senior MDC official Roy Bennett, who is still in detention despite a court order realeasing him on bail.
Seriously, one of the two only good pieces of news coming out of here are reports that Robert Mugabe has bought a $5.7 Million house in Hong Kong, because that might mean that he is preparing to leave.
The other good bit of news is that the new Finance Minister, and Tendai Biti (MDC) is starting to pay some wages in foreign currency.
If Tsvangerai and Biti are smart, they will make sure that the foreign currency goes to organizations that aren’t just a bunch of Mugabe’s thugs.
Unsurprisingly, the seizure of farms is continuing unabated, because it’s about the only currency left for Mugabe to use to buy continued support.
So, Tsvangirai is finally PM, though, rather tellingly, his acceptance speech was not carried on state radio or TV.
Note that arrests by ZANU-PF aligned elements in the state security apparatus, and there is apparently an arrest order out for deputy agriculture minister nominee, Roy Bennett, and human rights lawyers have been placed arrested.
Meanwhile, treason charges against Tendai Biti have been dropped, which is a good thing, as the nominee for Finance Minister.
Truth be told, considering the state of finance in Zimbabwe, I might have gone with jail time.
On a less snarky note, Biti might very well be the person bets positioned to counterbalance Robert Mugabe, because he is the one who determines when, and how, civil servants get paid, and with Zimbabwe moving to abandon its own currency, the decision of who gets paid in $Z, and who gets paid in USD or Euro or Rand would be a very good way to create real disincentives for those agencies most willing to do Mugabe’s dirty work.
There are some new structures in place intended to create a more transparent and less political state security apparatus, but I am not optimistic that this will make much of a difference.
Well the Zimbabwean parliament finally passed the constitutional amendments to enable a power-sharing government, though cabinet positions are still not set, and a number of MDC and human rights activists remain detained.
Governments in the west have softened their rhetoric, for a while, at least, but are maintaining the sanctions against Mugabe and senior ZANU-PF officials.
As to whether things are going to get better, the fact that Robert Mugabe’s wife just seized a farm, from a judge on Zimbzbwe’s high court….Damn….It takes stones to steal from a judge in broad daylight, so I’m not expecting things to turn better at any time soon.
In the meantime, Cholera is continuing it’s Zimbabwe concert tour, with the WHO saying that cases have broken 65,000.
I’m not sure if I am a realist, or a pessimist, but I don’t think that things are going to turn out well for the people of Zimbabwe.
It appears that their parliament has passed a bill allowing for a unity government, as a result of the strong-arming of former South African president Mbeki and the South African Development Community (SADC).
As I’ve said before, I think that this will work as well as Nkomo’s incorporation into Zimbabwe government, as in not at all.
Meanwhile the EU will maintain sanctions against ZANU-PF officials, even though the
African Union has asked them to be lifted.
This is a good thing. The upper levels of ZANU-PF are nothing more than thieves, and denying them easy access to banks to hide their ill-gotten gains is a good start, particularly when Zimbabwe was just forced to issue new dollars worth a trillion times more than the old ones, because of hyper-inflation.