Lands and Agriculture Minister Joseph Made has finally admitted that the government has failed to ensure food security for the famine-stricken nation. This more than a year after repeatedly dismissing warnings of a serious grain shortage, says the Standard Newspaper.
Related Links: Food aid deal collapses
http://www.africapulse.org/index.php?action=viewarticle&articleid=660
Famine is very close, warns WFP
http://www.africapulse.org/index.php?action=viewarticle&articleid=662

There is no immediate solution in sight for on-going fuel problems as the government reduces imports in line with a new policy to only supply indigenous operators. The new policy comes as fuel queues of up to half-a-kilometre long resurface in Harare.

President Mugabe and Sydney Sekeramayi, the Minister of Defence, have remained mum about the casualties and financial costs of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), despite Sekeramayi's promise in September that the figures would be revealed at Saturday's DRC withdrawal military parade in Harare.
Related Link: The new veterans march home
http://africa-confidential.com

Zimbabwe on Monday said a decision to recall its high commissioner to Botswana was part of a broader government reshuffle and had nothing to do with President Festus Mogae's recent criticism of the country's political and economic policies.

Two people have died of cholera in an outbreak in Tongwe, near Zimbabwe's Beit Bridge, forcing authorities to close the local school to contain the spread of the disease.

Steps have been taken at Zimbabwe's Tongogara refugee camp to stamp out allegations of sexual abuse following two incidents at the camp earlier this year, David Mlambo, UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) administrator at the camp told IRIN on Monday.

The Civic Alliance for Social and Economic Progress (CASEP) has called for a constructive resolution of the "real and urgent problems" confronting the education sector. Attacking the victims of the crisis - the teachers, lecturers, students and communities around schools - did not resolve the problem, said the organisation.

The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ) has noted with concern the continued harassment of The Daily News by ZANU PF supporters and state agents. The MMPZ described the “blatant acts of intolerance” as a violation of the public's right to access information through media of their choice.

Robert Mugabe's successor will not be named until 2006, the state-run Sunday Mail said in an apparent bid to quash speculation the 78-year-old longtime leader could be replaced.

In Zimbabwe, choosing your political affiliation is a matter of life or death, confirms a new report. Political abuse of food is the most serious and widespread human rights violation in Zimbabwe at present, according to a November report from Physicians for Human Rights, Denmark (PHR-DK).

The organisation said its most significant findings related to the abuse of food and warned that if it was not possible to increase non-partisan food supplies into the country, then starvation and eventually death would occur along party political lines in Zimbabwe. “We conclude that in the last four months, manipulation of food was directly related to elections. The threat of being deliberately starved by the government if the opposition won votes, was used to profoundly influence vulnerable rural voters in recent elections in Zimbabwe.”

PHR-DK said in all cases of problematic food distribution, those implicated in politically manipulating access to food were Zanu-PF officials or supporters. The lack of food – a situation maintained by Zanu-PF - served a dual purpose for the party: it allowed political control through controlling who accessed food, and it created a Zanu-PF dominated black market which enriched the party hierarchy.

Covering the period from August to October 2002, the report documents the story of a mother named only as DD, who has nine children under the age of 12. She was an active Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporter before the Presidential elections and had experienced trouble accessing food as a result. Shortly before the rural district elections, she realised that her food situation was desperate and that her children were in serious danger of starving to death. She realised that the MDC was not in a position to help, and that as long as she remained a MDC supporter, she would not get food, because that is what everyone in her ward had repeatedly been told by Zanu-PF officials. She had tried repeatedly during 2002 to get on to World Food Programme feeding lists and was told by the local community leaders responsible for drawing up lists that she was not eligible as she was from the MDC. The kraal head, named as T in the report, came to her home and told her she had to surrender her MDC cards if she wanted to benefit from WFP donor food. This was shortly before the Rural District Council elections. DD said she was made to publicly surrender her card and buy a Zanu-PF card. Immediately on doing this, she was declared as being eligible for WFP food, and was placed on their feeding lists. At the time her child was diagnosed as having kwashiorkor, a condition caused by protein and calorie deficiency.

The report is the third report in 2002 on torture in Zimbabwe written by PHR-DK. In January and May 2002, reports concluded that “mutilating torture” was being practised by government supporters against the political opposition, and that perpetrators operated on the assumption of total impunity.

The January and May reports both reflected concern at the clamp down on the Zimbabwean judiciary, media and civil society and its impact on the flow of information on human rights abuses to the international community. “In May we warned that in the Zimbabwean context, fewer formal reports about abuses did not indicate that fewer abuses were taking place. Rather it indicated that repressive legislation and a growing government campaign against independent voices had succeeded in decreasing the information flow.”

The organisation concluded in its November report that little had changed. “Torture and ill treatment beyond any doubt is still being practised by government supporters against their political opponents in Zimbabwe. The fact that perpetrators continue not to care whether they torture people who can identify them, or whether their acts of torture or ill treatment leave marks that can easily be recognised as caused by torture, underlines a clear assumption on their part, of impunity.”

PHR-DK said current findings reinforced the conclusion of earlier reports – that there was a deliberate policy of torture and impunity by the authorities. The November report documents that attacks on independent voices in the media, the judiciary and civil society have indeed continued, and are predicted to escalate yet further in the next few months, in the form of further repressive legislation, as well as attacks on individuals.

PHR-DK is an independent group of Danish medical doctors founded in 1990 whose goal is to bring the skills of the medical profession to the protection of human rights. Previous reports from the organisation are available at

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* MAIZE-MEAL ONLY SOLD TO ZANU PF CARD HOLDERS

* LEAVE WITH YOUR FOOD, CHIEF TELLS DONORS

Zimbabwe has become a land of long queues. At the TM Supermarket in Harare's Chadcombe shopping centre, a long line of people stream out of the door. Three other equally long queues stretch across the adjacent road, almost blocking the traffic.

The Bureau Chief for Agence France Presse, Stephane Barbier, has been given until the end of the week to leave the country after the government refused to renew his work permit.

It has been reported that British journalists have been refused visas to accompany international cricket inspectors on their fact-finding tour of Zimbabwe.

The Zimbabwe Standard newspaper has established that the Government's determination to infiltrate all sectors of society has intensified. This is evident through reports that graduates from the notorious Border Gezi Training Institute will be given first priority for training by the country's main journalism school, at the Harare Polytechnic.

HelpAge Zimbabwe (HAZ), the country's leading organisation championing the rights and welfare of the elderly in Zimbabwe is perturbed by what has been happening to senior citizens. What transpired in Harare suburbs and Chitungwiza, where some residents, acting on allegations of witchcraft, attacked four elderly women was uncalled for. We call for the policy makers to come up with legislation that allows older people to live in dignity and security, free from exploitation and abuse and fair treatment without discrimination.

Zimbabwe has been traumatised by the combined impact of political and economic authoritarianism, yet the MDC's economic policies and political practice reflect the very same neo-liberal flavour that has brought the Zimbabwean economy to its knees and devastated the lives of the Zimbabwean people. The MDC's failure, as a labour based party, to draw the working people of Zimbabwe into political activity in their own interest, as initiators of social and political change, means that in its present form and content the MDC can do little to end the misery of the Zimbabwean workers and peasants, argues this commentary on the Zimbabwe Indymedia web site.

With people facing hunger in most parts of the country, Zanu PF supporters have reportedly taken advantage of this to sway the electorate to its side as well as punish the would be supporters of the MDC. In Chimanimani, Zanu PF supporters were allegedly caught red-handed rewarding voters with allocations of maize, moments after they cast their votes.

The organisations listed in this posting have booked a corporate tent during the One Day cricket matches between Zimbabwe and Pakistan. Sanctions and sports/cultural boycotts are non-violent interventions that have helped to oust unjust regimes - South Africa and Rhodesia are good examples. In the face of massive hunger, violence and fear in Zimbabwe we need to actively support an integrated campaign that creates sustained and varied pressure on the Mugabe regime.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), within the framework of their joint programme, The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, wish to express their deepest concern regarding recent official declarations threatening the existence of independent non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and more generally freedom of association in Zimbabwe. Our organisations have been informed that during a Parliamentary Assembly session, on 13 November, the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Cde Patrick Chinamasa, released a list of NGOs which he presented as a threat to national security.

Zimbabwe's Supreme Court has reserved judgment in a case in which the Independent Journalists Association of Zimbabwe is challenging certain clauses of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.