Zimbabwe: Lawyers condemn rights abuses

MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE OF ZIMBABWE FROM MDC PRESIDENT MORGAN TSVANGIRAI.

HARARE, ZIMBABWE.

5TH December 2003.

As each year passes, we wonder if things can get worse.

We have struggled together for our rights and freedoms for the past five years. We have made tremendous gains in the process, taking charge of half the elected seats in Parliament. We run the major towns and cities, home to about six million people.

Despite the impressive gains, the national question still remains unanswered; the national agenda remains unfulfilled. The Zimbabwe crisis is deepening.
Prospects for democracy, freedom, justice and a better life for all seem to be fading as each day passes.

We cannot allow this regime to impose its false supremacy over the people. In March and in June, we demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that Zimbabweans are capable of reclaiming their sovereignty, assert their place and regain the voice.

Our efforts were directed at getting Zanu PF to the negotiating table. Together with other measures, we spent much of 2003 working to find an amicable solution to the national crisis.

At the same time, we reviewed and refined our policies and programmes. Shortly, we will engage in discussions and debates with our own structures and our allies in civil society to ensure that our policies enjoy widespread support and are understood by the people.

The process will culminate in the publication of these guidelines after our national conference at the end of December.

There has been much speculation about "talks" this year. For the record, no formal talks ever took place.
There are no talks. No agreement, ready for signature, is in sight.

We did all we could to break the impasse. The effort was unfortunately spurned by Zanu PF and nothing came out of it.

The churches tried but failed.

Our neighbours, Presidents Bakili Muluzi of Malawi and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, also tried and failed.

Informal or proximity contacts between Secretary General Welshman Ncube and Patrick Chinamasa of Zanu PF failed to yield any basis upon which to resume serious and formal dialogue.

The claim in some quarters that there is a document of the proceedings of those informal contacts that represents formally agreed positions and therefore ready for signature is, therefore, regrettably false.

We remain committed to using every peaceful means available to restore sanity to our nation through unconditional dialogue.

The political stalemate must be broken. We look forward to the Commonwealth and other international organizations to assist us in breaking the impasse.

However, over the past year, it became clear that Zanu PF would not voluntarily opt for this constructive course of action without the involvement of a brokering neutral third party that commands both local and international confidence. It is precisely in this area that the Commonwealth can apply its mind and come out with a workable formula.

We believe the Commonwealth could put in place a Task Force or Group of Eminent Commonwealth persons with the full backing of the international community to immediately depart for Zimbabwe to facilitate a process that would form the basis of the resumption of formal talks.

We are convinced such a programme would cool down political tempers, reduce the level of political polarization and establish proximity bridges between the two political parties.

Although the country has been in the throes of political instability for the past three years, we fear that the new levels of poverty and hunger, which mutate everyday, are reducing the population to desperate and dangerous levels of hopelessness.

We have chosen the path back to legitimacy that uses the mechanisms of the rule of law and the application of open, transparent democratic principles.

We will take over power by democratic means. Not through violence. This is a choice we have made. That road may be tough, less spectacular and more arduous, but we remain convinced it is the best way forward for us all.

The end result will strengthen democracy and the rule of law in Africa and lay the foundations for rapid recovery and reconstruction in Zimbabwe.

As the political stalemate persists, we are assessing our options with a view to unveil a detailed programme of rolling mass action in 2004. The suffering majority is ready for such action.

Next year must see us cross the bridge.

On behalf of the MDC and myself, I want to thank all of you for your help and support during the past year, this was not an easy year for any of us and next year will be just as tough.

Morgan Tsvangirai President, MDC.

MOVEMENT FOR DEMOCRATIC CHANGE
ECONOMICS COMMITTEE
Economic Review of 2003 and Prospects for 2004

The economy in 2003 – an even more disastrous year Under Zanu-PF government, Zimbabwe’s economy has been declining every year since 1998, with the rate of decline increasing each year. On official figures, in 2002 GDP decline was 8.8%, while in 2003 GDP decline was 13.2%. The Budget Statement for next year, despite claims about the importance of its ‘supply-side measures’, projects a further 8.5% decline in GDP in 2004. In MDC, we think the economy has shrunk even more than this, but the official figures are startling enough, giving cumulative declines of 38% to the end of 2003 and 44% to end of
2004.

The cumulative reductions in GDP per capita are even more devastating. The legacy of the Mugabe epoch is such that it will take more than a decade of East Asian Tiger rates of growth in per capita GDP just to get back to Zimbabwe’s level of GDP per capita in
1998.

One of the major contributors to the sharp decline in GDP in 2003 was the demise of commercial agriculture and its replacement with a subsidy-dependent, low technology, subsistence-oriented small-scale farming sector. Tobacco was the most visible casualty, with production falling to 83 million kg in 2003 as compared with over 200 million kg in the past. The agriculture sector’s overall contribution to GDP has fallen to about half what it was at its peak in 1999.

Given the engine-room importance of agriculture in the Zimbabwe economy, the contraction of manufacturing and services linked to agriculture is hardly unexpected.
The process has been hastened by adverse factors affecting every productive activity, such as the on-going interruptions in supply of fuel, coal, power, telecommunications, transport, water and shortages of other inputs to production processes.

The short-term solution to most of these problems has come to revolve around the shortage of foreign exchange. The availability of forex was sharply reduced by the parallel market restrictions introduced after the November 2002 Budget speech. Predictably, the effect of these measures was to drive the parallel market further underground, increase the extent of capital flight, reduce the forex available on the domestic market and drive down the value of the Zimbabwe dollar.

Merchandise exports are estimated to have declined by more than half since their peak in 1996, while import requirements have been increased in certain categories, notably staple foodstuffs. Zimbabwe went into arrears on foreign payments in the year 2000. Accumulated arrears are expected to reach US$3 billion by the end of 2003, twice the level of total exports.
Total foreign debt (including arrears) is estimated to exceed US$6 billion, which is well over 100% of GDP.
Domestic budget-related and parastatal debt has also grown sharply over the year, but the full extent of the implied future burden has not been revealed.

The Herald’s ludicrous claim that ‘despite the chronic shortage of foreign currency, the Z$ held steady at Z$824 to the US$’, is belied by the fact that on the parallel market the Zimbabwe dollar has lost approximately 80% of its value during 2003. The well connected continue to be given access to foreign currency at Z$824/US$ and resell it at rates in excess of Z$6,000. The seemingly irrational exchange rate mechanism remains in place because it is the principal means both for the looting of state assets and the externalisation of funds by the ruling elite.

Due to unprecedented inflation, the loss of purchasing power of the Zimbabwe dollar in the domestic market during 2003 is likely to be even greater than the 80% loss of foreign purchasing power. The acceleration of inflation during 2003 has been the most persistent and harrowing problem for the ordinary Zimbabwean citizen.
In December 2002, year-on-year inflation was just short of 200%. One year later it will be at least
600% on official figures, while the actual experience of rising prices indicates that a much higher level of inflation is being faced by the average family in its daily struggle for survival.

Like the previous few years, 2003 will be a year most Zimbabweans will want to forget. For the majority eking out an existence in the communal and resettlement areas or the burgeoning informal sector, the ravages of inflation, and the shortages of food and other basics have turned life into a struggle for survival. NGOs working with rural and urban communities no longer talk of ‘economic development’, but rather of ‘coping strategies’.

People on fixed incomes, including pensioners, have been reduced to penury. The shrinking number of people in formal employment (around 900,000, down from 1,350,000 in 1998) have managed to have their wages adjusted but few have achieved increases which have kept pace with inflation. So even for the employed, 2003 brought more shortages, frustration, uncertainty and declining living standards. By the fourth quarter, many workers were finding themselves having to pay well over half of their wages just to get to and from work.

The disproportionate rise in the cost of transport is in part due to the cynical opening up of fuel procurement to private sector operators. The way this has been done, without any regulatory mechanisms to protect consumers and the general public, has provided new opportunities for the well-connected to grossly enrich themselves at the expense of ordinary people.

All of the problems households have been forced to face in 2003 have been worsened by the deterioration in government services. Despite the huge budget deficit, which is a major underlying cause of the economic crisis, expenditure in key sectors such as health remain grossly insufficient and inefficient. Despite the urgent necessity of addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the government seems willing to see the health sector collapse entirely, reacting to the recent hospital strike by arresting and harassing the few doctors still willing to work in the demoralising environment of collapsing public health services.

Economic policies of the incumbent regime The incumbent government’s economic policies are a mix of denial and hypocrisy. The denial is symbolised by the unwillingness to confront reality and hence, for example, calling the devaluation from Z$55/US$ to Z$824/US$ in March an ‘export incentive’. Another example is the refusal to print banknotes with denominations commensurate with 500% inflation (and rising) resorting instead to expensive, temporary ‘bearers cheques’. No wonder that in common parlance these are called ‘burial cheques’.

The hypocrisy is more serious. The government tries to pretend that its economic policies are relevant to improving economic conditions for the poor, while in fact they’re designed to enrich people at the top and reproduce Zanu-PF legally and extra-legally.

The truth about Zanu-PF’s economic policies is the exact opposite of the party’s rhetoric – it is precisely the heady concoction of Zanu-PF’s mischievous economic policies which is responsible for accelerating inflation, declining output, shortages of basic necessities and widespread poverty.

Prospects for 2004 Arising from Zanu-PF misrule, all the existing adverse trends are set to continue in 2004 – fewer jobs, declining living standards, poorer health and education services, greater poverty, more oppression.
The government intends to spend 20% more than the entire health budget just on the wages of what under Zanu-PF are the repressive organs of state – the army, air force, police and prison service. Within this gloomy scenario, the two most daunting prospects for the people of Zimbabwe in 2004 are more severe food shortages than hitherto experienced and the rate of inflation rising to 1,000% pa and beyond.

On food, the fact that only limited quantities of seed and other inputs were available at the start of the
2003/2004 means that even if the rains are more favourable during the rest of the season than they’ve been in November, there is no possibility of maize production being more than 1,2 million tonnes. In relation to a 2 million tonne annual requirement, this is level of production would imply a shortage of 800
000 tonnes. With lower production being likely, the shortage may well be even larger.

The government’s denial about the adverse impact of the fast track land reform programme on agricultural production and its unwarranted antagonism towards the international community, has resulted in a situation where donor supplied food will be far short of the requirements to fill the gap. As long as the incumbent government clings onto power, it will continue to manipulate the distribution of food for political ends, making worse the underlying shortages.

In respect of inflation, the fecklessness of the government is evident from the Budget Statement irresponsibly avoiding making any statement on the government’s macro-economic policy stance. The monetary policy statement which is supposedly to be made by the Reserve Bank Governor by mid-December, was left to deal with the crucial issues of the exchange rate, interest rate policy and inflation.

There is every indication, however, that there will be little if any change in the main elements of the government’s present macro-economic policy stance (negative real interest rates, fragmented credit markets and distorted controls over the foreign currency market, both encouraging speculation and arbitrage, plus a large fiscal deficit). Under these policies, inflation, which accelerated from around
200% to a projected 600% of more by the end of 2003, will rise to 1,000% early in the new year and will continue accelerating thereafter throughout 2004.

The flouting of the requirements of responsible government evident in its economic policies are reason enough for the incumbent government to be considered a rogue regime. Although there are a few dissenting noises on the government side, there will be no shift from the Zanu-PF side that is fundamental enough to begin to address the severity of the crisis into which they have plunged the country.

It is only the MDC which has the will and the vision to begin the difficult task of reversing this catastrophe. The MDC’s economic blueprint, RESTART, stands for reconstruction, stabilisation, recovery and transformation. RESTART has been designed to tackle the deep economic crisis through a comprehensive five year programme of fully co-ordinated fiscal, monetary, exchange rate, sectoral and trade policies. RESTART will launch the MDC’s industrialisation strategy, through which the economy will provide rapid growth in high income urban employment and, with complementary policies, ensure a sustainable, equitable pattern of national development.

Every day that the present government continues to destroy the economy moves the starting point for RESTART further back. The sooner MDC assumes power, the sooner we can start addressing the crisis, moving the country forward again and bringing hope to the people of Zimbabwe.

Looming Food Shortages
Movement for Democratic Change press statement

Early this year, we gave a statement which was to the effect that there would be maize shortfalls of 1 million metric tonnes. The total maize consumed presently is 1 800 000 tonnes per year. Replying to a question in Parliament on the 19th November 2003, the Minister of Lands Agriculture Rural Resettlement said that "a total of 929 619 metric tones of maize and 160 000 metric tonnes of wheat were produced this agricultural season. Maize purchases from March to November 2003 were 227 377 metric tonnes and that of wheat is 25 298 metric tones".

As far as maize is concerned, all the sales to GMB were virtually in by that date. The above figures confirm the accuracy of my forecast early during the year.

The regime delayed to approach WFP for assistance until I called a Press Conference in July 2003. That appeal was for just over 700 000 metric tones of maize. Unfortunately, the response from donors has yielded only 346 000 metric tonnes, or 43%. This food aid will be finished by the end of January 2004. It must be noted that this is the most critical period. The government I believe has been fully informed of the impending disaster. The regime has responded with typical characteristic - no action. I know that there is no maize being imported by the regime presently nor are there any plans to import. Total reliance was placed on the benevolence of the donors, whose governments are vilified daily by this uncaring government. If disaster is to be averted, I further appeal to the donors to come to the rescue of the suffering people of Zimbabwe. There could have been thousands of deaths in this country, were it not for the donors, who are currently feeding about 4 million per month. We should not forget that the current programme of feeding people started in February 2002 and has continued without break.

We have already appealed to WFP for continued food assistance up to at least 2005 because only 40% of the land will be cropped this year due to shortage of seed, fertilizers and fuel. The wheat supply situation is equally bad. I hope that the little wheat produced this year was not damaged by rain. Its baking quality is highly suspect. There are presently no plans to import wheat. There will naturally be continued shortage of bread which, because of the shortage of mealie-meal, has become the main staple food especially for urban populace.

Those people who are not on the WFP food assistance because they could not qualify as beneficiaries due to their having some means at the disposal, are unable to buy maize from GMB in two rural areas. This maize continues to be sold through ZANU PF structures. Examples of these include Zvishavane, Gweru, and Marondera. Finally, on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe, I would like to thank the Donor Community for food that has averted famine.

Renson Gasela Shadow Minister
4 December 2003