{"id":191621,"date":"2009-07-18T20:51:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-19T01:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/07\/18\/zimbabwe-update-6\/"},"modified":"2009-07-18T20:51:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-19T01:51:00","slug":"zimbabwe-update-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/07\/18\/zimbabwe-update-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Zimbabwe Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, the drafting of a new constitution is a complete mess, with ZANU-PF busing in thugs to disrupt the charter meeting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From the other side, there have been threats of boycotts from civil society groups<\/a>, who claim that they have not been fully included in the process, and that parliamentarians have complete control of the process.<\/p>\n

As a historical aside, this sort of stuff makes the US Constitutional convention, which was conducted in secret, look awfully attractive.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, which, if done in sufficient quantities, would flip control of the chamber back to the ZANU-PF.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, “in phases”, but the army has refused to leave<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So the the “Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) has called for a temporary ban on trade in diamonds from Zimbabwe\u2019s Marange fields<\/a>“.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1095,971,1009],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-civil-rights","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}