Monday 16 April to Sunday 22 April 2001. The government’s campaign to encourage Zimbabweans to celebrate Independence Day – and the event itself - dominated the state-owned media in the week. Zimpapers and the ZBC both quoted government officials and sympathetic analysts as interpreting the enthusiastic response as an expression of the people’s faith in the President, the ruling party and the government’s fast-track land seizures.

The Zimbabwe International Book Fair, the largest and most important book fair in Sub-Saharan Africa, is held annually during the first week of August in the beautiful Harare sculpture gardens. This year's theme: Transformation.

In objection to what it said was the pursuance of wrong economic policies, Britain announced it was cancelling a US $5 million package that would have financed operations at Zimbabwe's privatisation agency.

Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe's Minister of State in the President's Office responsible for Information and Publicity, has lost a court bid to prevent the 'Zimbabwe Independent' from publishing details of allegations of fraud at the Ford Foundation in Kenya, the 'Daily News' reported on Wednesday. Moyo was seeking a court order to prevent the weekly newspaper from reporting details of the proceedings against him in the Kenyan High Court.

The Civic Alliance for Social and Economic Progress (CASEP), a network of civic organisations working in a wide range of social sectors and representing hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans, condemns in the strongest terms the Broadcasting Services Act rushed through Parliament by Government on April 4th.

Media Update # 2001/15 Monday 9 April to Sunday 15 April 2001.

Last June, parliamentary elections were held in Zimbabwe in an atmosphere of fear and violence. The elections marked the first time a strong opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), challenged the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU (PF)) in the political arena. The MDC won 57 out of 120 contested seats but the price was high as pre-election violence erupted in the form of extra-judicial killings, beatings, property damage and intimidation around the country.

International observers and commentators including Amnesty International, the Commonwealth, the US-based National Democratic Institute and the European Union all released reports citing evidence that the elections were not free and fair. In fact, Zimbabwe's own Electoral Commission proclaimed the elections the bloodiest since the end of white minority rule in 1980.

Both political parties blame the other for incitement of violence. However, the MDC has brought legal challenges to the High Court of Zimbabwe in 39 constituencies in an effort to overturn election results in those areas. They are alleging that the violence perpetrated by ZANU (PF) agents, with the knowledge or active participation of the ZANU (PF) candidate at the time, unfairly affected the outcome of the vote thereby violating the Electoral Act of Zimbabwe. The cases have thus far involved numerous allegations of violence being perpetuated by veterans of Zimbabwe's war of liberation. Factions of these veterans are widely regarded to be militant and very close to ZANU (PF). War veterans are seen to be responsible for numerous acts of violence perpetrated against white commercial farmers in the past year in protest of what is perceived to be white domination of the industry. The vast majority of the electoral violence was perpetrated against members or perceived members of the MDC. They are asking that all elections in these 39 constituencies be re-run to achieve accurate results. If any member of parliament is found guilty of election misconduct in these proceedings, that member will be ineligible to run for public office for five years and a bi-election will be called in that constituency to determine a new sitting member.

In addition to allegations of violence, many protest the government's changes to the Electoral Act immediately preceding the election. The Electoral Act allows for the president to make changes to the electoral system. He did so in the following ways: 1) Changes in the postal ballot system were made on June 7, ahead of the voting dates of the 24th & 25th June, to make it more difficult for Zimbabweans abroad to cast their ballots, 2) The Electoral Supervisory Commission had its power to accredit observers and monitors revoked and placed in the hands of the Registrar General, 3) Sitting dates for the Nomination Courts were deferred from May 29 to June 3, 4) The Electoral Act's 21-day provision between nomination and polling was shortened to 20 days, and 5) Voter registration was extended from 16 April to 12 June. (All information regarding changes to the Electoral Act is courtesy of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum's report, 'Human Rights and Zimbabwe's June 2000 Election')

The Amani Trust, a Zimbabwean NGO advocating for victims of organized violence and torture, will produce a weekly report for the international community on the progress of these trials. This report will focus on cases of gross human rights violations and electoral abuses within constituencies that have cases before the High Court.

From The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum - April 9, 2001, v.7
Zimbabwe Parliamentary Election Challenges Newsletter

In Zimbabwe journalism is in crisis, and journalists are in danger: an in-depth report from the Media Channel.

According to Allafrica.com, the Mugabe government has begun to control Zimbabwe's media by tightening the flow of information ahead of presidential elections next year. It wants to speed through legislation in parliament aimed at controlling the dissemination of information and the conduct of journalists in executing their duties.

Civic groups in Zimbabwe are willing and able to take on the government over a new constitution, Thoko Matshe head of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) told IRIN on Tuesday. "We're talking mass action and civil disobedience on a wide scale if government ignores the people," Matshe said.

Zimbabwe plans to pull out 5,000 troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the "immediate future" - halving its military presence in the mineral-rich country - in a move a defence spokesman on Thursday described as a vote of confidence in the peace process.

Zimbabwe Minister of State for Information and Publicity Jonathan Moyo has filed a Z$450,000 (US$8,000) lawsuit against "The Daily News" for publishing alleged defamatory articles about him, "The Herald" reported on 30 March 2001.

All judges presiding over the parliamentary election challenges have adjourned for the April recess. No trials were held last week. Of the trials held two weeks ago, Shurugwi and Chiredzi North have been completed while Makoni West is scheduled to reconvene on 14 May.

ASFC Africa Iniative is holding a brainstorming meeting on April 20-21, Harare Zimbabwe. AI aims to complement and deepen the work of local, national and regional communities as well as those who work with them in re-thinking the links between the various issues that challenge African lives on a daily basis and to explore newer avenues for collaboration and cooperation in meeting these challenges.

The Horizons Project and PSI have conducted a descriptive, cross-sectional study of female condom users, male condom users, and non-users of either barrier method. The goal of this research is to increase understanding of the patterns and dynamics of female condom use in order to inform policymakers and program planners involved in decisions about promotion and distribution of the female condom.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo President Joseph Kabila urged Zimbabwean
companies to invest in his mineral-rich country on Tuesday, saying that they should take advantage of the strong political ties between the two states.

The Zimbabwe government will not accept the report of the International Bar
Association (IBA) following its recent inquiry into the independence of the
judiciary, the Zimbabwe Independent has learnt. A spokesman said whatever
the findings of the IBA, the team had already demonstrated that it was
partial by refusing to consult all stakeholders on the issue of the
judiciary. One of the team's members compared Zimbabwe's fasttrack land grab
to apartheid policies.

We needed a short survey of Zimbabwean political development which is accessible to a wide range of people and this book answers that need. Starting with the premise that genuine democracy depends on the growth of civil society structures, it shows how these were systematicly stifled by ZANU PF in the 1980's. Then, in the 1990's, in response to the effects of structural adjustment, they gradually emerged, with the trade unions leading the way. Demands for a new constitution by the umbrella National Constitutional Assembly awakened the people to the possibilities of protest. The result was ZANU PF's first defeat in the constitutional referendum in February 2000 and the stiff challenge put up by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the June parliamentary elections.

Unions representing Zimbabwean journalists this week condemned a death threat allegedly made by a war veteran leader against a reporter on a financial newspaper.

The chair of a Zimbabwean parliamentary committee on broadcasting rules has accused ruling Zanu-PF members of flouting free speech rights in a raft of new laws to govern public broadcasting in the country.