The Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) has said the on-going teachers' strike would only stop when teachers are granted better pay and working conditions. The union said the strike would go "a gear up" this week. Takavafira Zhou, the PTUZ president, said neither the arrests, torture and incarceration of the union's leaders nor the dismissal of some teachers in Harare and Bulawayo would intimidate striking teachers from pressing their "legitimate demands."

To mark African Day on Human and Peoples' Rights on 21 October, Amnesty International's Secretary General, Irene Khan, has written to South African President Thabo Mbeki expressing the organisation's concern regarding the deteriorating human rights situation in Zimbabwe. Over 13,500 people from 126 countries signed an Amnesty International petition in support of the call for action from President Mbeki.

The Zimbabwe government has banned Oxfam and Save the Children from distributing urgently needed food aid, United Nations officials confirmed this week. Despite reports that people are dying of starvation, President Robert Mugabe's government has refused to allow the two charities to deliver food supplied by the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act was an unacceptable piece of legislation, a meeting of the National Journalists and Media Workers Meeting jointly organised by the Media Institute of Southern Africa, Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, Foreign Correspondents Association, Federation of African Media Women in Zimbabwe, The Media Monitoring Project and the Independent Journalists Association of Zimbabwe has resolved.

Deep divisions in the international community about the response to Zimbabwe's crisis are playing into President Robert Mugabe's hands, says the International Crisis Group (ICG) in a new report. “Foreign media emphasis on the plight of white farmers reinforces the erroneous but widespread belief in Africa that the West is concerned about Zimbabwe only because white property interests have been harmed,” says the report.

South African President Thabo Mbeki, his top government ministers and a grouping of international corporate heads dubbed the International Investment Council gathered last weekend at a luxury game lodge to discuss the country’s economic growth path. The situation in Zimbabwe and its impact on regional investor confidence featured prominently in their discussions. In a briefing, Mbeki, previously criticised for his softly-softly approach, defended his stance towards South Africa’s troubled neighbour in the north. Mbeki said he was committed to working with the Zimbabwean government on an “urgent” basis to resolve problems of land reform, famine and a collapsing economy. Echoing Mbeki’s quiet diplomacy, Niall Fitzgerald, chairperson of multi-national Unilever, said he believed the situation in Zimbabwe had to be dealt with “privately and urgently” and that there was no point in “shouting”. “The more things are done quietly and urgently, the more encouraged I will become that we will achieve some progress,” he said.

Far to the north of Johannesburg in Harare, it’s unlikely that Raymond Majongwe, leader of a striking Zimbabwean teachers’ union, would have had much faith in Mbeki and Fitzgerald’s foreign policy on Zimbabwe. About the same time that South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma arrived in Zimbabwe last Thursday for a meeting with Robert Mugabe, Majongwe’s lawyer was alleging how his client had been “seriously injured” in policy custody. “He has been beaten up and when I saw him yesterday (Wednesday) night he couldn’t sit on his own. I think he has broken ribs and internal bleeding,” said lawyer Tererayi Gunje. Zuma landed back in South Africa on Saturday to hand out a pasting to the South African media for presenting Zimbabwe in a bad light. Dlamini-Zuma said the South African media was “very negative” and had “failed to paint a balanced picture of events both in Zimbabwe and South Africa”.

Also at the time of Dlamini-Zuma’s visit to Zimbabwe was the emergence of two reports compiled by the Zimbabwean Human Rights NGO Forum, one documenting political violence for September and the other reporting on intimidation of Zimbabwean teachers. Combined the reports run to nearly 50 pages and most of these pages are filled with the harrowing stories of people whose lives have been destroyed by a vicious cycle of beatings, burnings, torture, stonings, harassment and threats. Both reports convey the impression of a society at ransom to mob rule in an atmosphere of violence and intimidation where the police are unlikely to rush to the rescue. These are two random examples drawn from the report:

· OM, a youth secretary for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was taken to Chitungwiza police station and interrogated on the wherabouts of an MDC activist being sought in connection with a murder. He was then taken to Harare Central Police Station. On professing ignorance, he was assaulted under the feet whilst in leg irons. He was ordered to undress and taken underground where more assaults were perpetrated. He was blindfolded, had a gun poked into his mouth and was taken to Goromonzi Police Station where he was forced to confess to the whereabouts of Kitsiyatota under the application of electric shocks.

· AK, a pregnant teacher, was assaulted by Zanu-PF youths because her husband was the District Secretary for the MDC. The baby was born on June 29 but passed away on July 5. Medical reports attributed the death of the baby to the assault.

Nor can these accounts be dismissed as isolated incidents. Although political violence peaked around the March general election and September local election, according to the Human Rights Forum, between the beginning of the year and the end of September there have been 1057 cases of torture, or 117 per month. In the same time period, there have been 358 cases of political violence and intimidation, 223 abductions, 170 unlawful arrests, 110 unlawful detentions, 62 death threats, 58 murders, 29 assaults and seven rapes.

The report dealing with the attack on teachers says the violence has been ongoing since June 2 000 in the context of a campaign against civil servants by ruling party supporters, war veterans and the youth militia. “Violence against teachers has been concentrated in the rural communities where teachers are rightfully considered to be a group that has considerable influence on the communities in which they live. The reported attacks on teachers who support or are suspected of supporting the MDC seems to be a way of limiting their political influence on the rural populace,” says the report. “This report documents 238 individual cases of human rights abuses against teachers for the 18 month period between January 2001 and June 2002. The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum believes the documented evidence that it has collected is merely the tip of a much bigger iceberg, and would wish to draw attention to the many previous cases reported in earlier reports.”

The assault on all sectors of society is in line with what is seen as the intent by the government of Zimbabwe to close down all social and political spaces available to the opposition in their attempt to hold on to power. This is implemented not only through a system of centralised control, but also through a situation of organised chaos that allows groups to operate that destroy the opposition and are increasingly likely to target groups such as churches, NGO’s and journalists.

Legislation has previously been used by the Zimbabwean government to control sectors of society that may be opposed to it. Most recently, civil society has expressed concern about an instruction from the government for all NGOs to register under the controversial Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Act. Last month the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare published an advertisement instructing all NGOs not registered to do so in terms of Section 9 of the PVO Act. Section 6 of the Act does not allow such a “body, institution or association to operate without being registered”, the notice said. Section 25 of the same Act makes it a criminal offence to operate without being registered. This is seen as an attempt by government to crack down on the activities of NGOs and civil society in the same way that the government has cracked down on other critical sectors like students, workers, the judiciary, the media and political parties.

At the same time as a deteriorating human rights situation, hunger is stalking the countryside, with reports indicating that up to six million people could be at risk from starvation. Recent SADC Food Early Warning system and World Food Programme reports confirm this picture of hunger. An August/September report of the National NGO Food Security Network (FOSENET), consisting of 24 organisations covering all districts of Zimbabwe, said that almost all area reports indicated that whole communities were now becoming vulnerable. “This is attributed to collapse of the harvests, the breakdown of supply through the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), the absence of meaningful levels of relief, the scarcity of commercial supplies and political interference and corruption in distribution of scarce supplies.” Almost all areas were reported to have had food stocks for only one month, with some provinces like Matabeleland North and South having totally run out, and others like Masvingo, Midlands and Manicaland approaching the same situation.

What does the future hold for Zimbabwe? Just after the disputed March elections, analysts warned that the prospect of serious internal conflict in Zimbabwe was imminent, with grave consequences for the entire southern African region. At the time Zanu-PF had just withdrawn from talks with the MDC, whose leader Morgan Tsvangarai was talking about mass action as a way to pressure the government into new elections. Since then the crisis has deepened and those inside Zimbabwe speculate that there may be a number of small scale and spontaneous “explosions” as a result of frustration at the current crisis. This would manifest itself through food riots, lootings, increased criminality and a resultant clamp down by the army and the police.

Increasingly, there are calls for greater international awareness of the urgency of the situation in Zimbabwe and for the international community to move away from seeing the crisis only through the eyes of white farmers and the land crisis. Geoffrey Nyarota, the editor of the Zimbabwe Daily News, said in a recent interview: “Their (the white farmers) rights are important, but the situation is not limited to the plight of those farmers. This is a much bigger situation: the rural population is totally without food. The plight of the opposition parties, the journalists, the judiciary - these are all groups who have been targeted …”

Meanwhile, Mugabe has shown a determination to cling to power and a corresponding unwillingness to compromise, leaving the MDC unable to engage meaningfully on a political level. The political gamble that the opposition would disappear and that things would ‘normalise’ in Zimbabwe has not paid off. Escalating violence by state agencies signals an escalating need to suppress the unwillingness of Zimbabweans to accept or normalise the current political situation. The violence and state control that has now penetrated areas of industrial relations, food security, civic life, residential areas and workplaces is not a sign of a system that fears only a few white farmers or foreign forces- it is a sign of fear of the people. Violently stopping opposition candidates from registering through violence in 700 local government election wards is not a sign of a leadership that is confident of its popularity with the people. The question for South African political leaders must therefore be whether they remain loyal to and enable President Mbeki’s statement - ‘Let the people of Zimbabwe decide their future’. And the test of their conduct will not be what they did and did not do towards supporting not one party or another. It will be in what they did and did not do to support the opportunities for ordinary Zimbabweans to have the political space and the basic rights to solve their own problems.

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The Zimbabwe government has announced that it will soon take to parliament a Bill to amend the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA). The amendments are meant to plug what the government call loopholes in the media law. The Bill will however result in more powers being accorded to the Mass Media Commission and many of the so-called loopholes amount to nothing in offering a reprieve to media houses and journalists.

James Mlambo,19, is studying telecommunications and electronics engineering in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. His father is a counsellor working for a local organisation, called Mashambanzou, which assists AIDS orphans in Harare. Last year, his father told him that more and more orphans wanted to have access to email. But that was beyond Mashambanzou's scope of activities. So, James decided to help.

Zimbabwe has launched a second electronic learning company (E-Learning), Learning Resources, set to equip both the corporate world and the public with the necessary skills to tackle new challenges within the science and technlogy arena.

The Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN (WiPC) is launching a campaign on Zimbabwe at the end of October aimed at focusing pressure on the government of Robert Mugabe to free imprisoned journalists and repeal recently enacted laws curbing free expression. Set to run from 28 October to 10 November, the campaign invites IFEX members and other participants to send letters of appeal to Zimbabwean authorities over a two-week period calling for an end to criminal proceedings against journalists and the restoration of free expression.

At least 627 teachers have been fired in Zimbabwe for taking part in an illegal strike, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) TV News has reported. Hundreds of teachers across the country went on strike last week to press for higher wages.

The public media’s coverage of the fuel shortages and the just ended local government elections further illustrated the undesirability of government’s control of the media. The public media confined its coverage of the two issues to defending government’s handling the fuel crisis without explaining what was really happening, while simply ignoring the violent intimidation of the opposition in the recent polls.

In order to transport half a million dollars in unlaundered cash safely from one country to another there are two basic requirements. First, you must possess a business class ticket, because the weight of half a million dollars exceeds the hand luggage limit on Economy. Second, you must disembark at an airport where customs officials may be relied upon not to ask questions. Harare International Airport has provided precisely such facilities in recent years; foreign associates of the Zimbabwean government have provided the business class tickets and the millions in cash.

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has accused some non-governmental organisations (NGO's) of meddling in the country's internal affairs and said his government will regulate them, a newspaper said on Saturday.

The Zimbabwe Women Resource Centre and Network looks at the challenges women face trying to access e-mail and Internet and innovative projects that provide ways for women to engage with and help develop ICT's and how they are used for development.

Zimbabwe's Minister of Information and Publicity, Professor Jonathan Moyo has called on readers and advertisers to boycott the private owned paper, The Daily News, for allegedly writing falsehoods and "undermining" "national" and "regional interests".

Thousands of teachers from two rival unions joined forces Tuesday in observing a strike for more pay and better working conditions. Members of the Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ), which called the strike, and the Zimbabwe Teachers' Association (Zimta), whose leadership had opposed it, both staged sit-ins at schools around the country.

Pressure is mounting on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to isolate Zimbabwe from the regional body or risk sanctions from the European Union (EU) and the US. According to SABC news monitored in Lusaka, EU senior officials have been meeting to come up with a strong position demanding that Zimbabwe should not be included in all regional initiatives or meetings.
Related Link: SADC leaders spurn Mugabe
http://www.suntimes.co.za/2002/10/06/news/news01.asp

Former Grain Marketing Board chief executive Martin Muchero has been sentenced to 150 hours of community service while the former finance manager Dorothy Chasakara will serve a total of 550 hours of community service for their corrupt dealings. Muchero was on Wednesday found guilty on one count of corruption involving a $59 000 deal, while Chasakara was convicted of the same count plus a charge involving the purchase of 21 vehicles for more than $1,6 million.

While the crackdown on press freedom has long been a part of Zimbabwe's political landscape, the parliament's passing of the Access to Information and Privacy Bill this past January dealt one of the largest blows to media freedom in the country. Geoffrey Nyarota, the editor of the Zimbabwe Daily News, has been arrested five times in the last three years for printing articles critical of the Zimbabwe government. During a recent chat with Digital Freedom Network, Mr. Nyarota discussed the stark perils facing his countrymen and what possibilities lie ahead for a democratic Zimbabwe.