"May God bless Tutu's lost soul..."

by tim Tue Feb 08, 2005 18:44

Mugabwe doesn't tolerate dissent of any colour. But racism and imperialism are always his defence mechanism.

by unretireable Fri Feb 18, 2005 16:14

By Tsegaye Tadesse
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - The African Union (AU), departing from the continent's long deference to Zimbabwe, has issued a previously secret report that says the southern African nation is deeply divided and beset by police abuses.

The document, the record of a 2002 visit by experts from the AU Commission on Human and People's Rights, also says the judiciary is politically compromised and the media shackled.

Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge denounced the report when it was tabled at a meeting of AU foreign ministers in Addis Ababa in July 2004 ahead of a heads of state summit.

The Addis summit deferred consideration of the report in order to await comment from Zimbabwe, which was finally received at a subsequent AU summit held in Abuja, Nigeria last month.

The Abuja summit adopted the report and authorised its publication, but also took note of what it called member states' responses to the report, officials said.

"The meeting in Abuja adopted the document and it is now public property," an AU official said.

In July 2004 Mudenge called the reports' authors "Blair's messengers". Prime Minister Tony Blair is a strong critic of President Robert Mugabe.

The paper, reporting on a June 2002 visit, said: "There was enough evidence placed before the mission to suggest that, at the very least, human rights violations occurred in Zimbabwe.

"The Mission was presented with testimony from witnesses who were victims of police violence and other victims of torture while in police custody. There was evidence that the system of arbitrary arrests took place. The Mission is prepared and able to rule that the government cannot wash its hands of responsibility for these happenings."

GOVERNMENT ACKNOWLEDGED 'EXCESSES'

The report said while it could not find definitively that rights violations by ruling ZANU-PF activists were part of an orchestrated government policy, "there was an acknowledgement (by government officials) that excesses did occur".

The report is a marked departure from previous AU statements about Zimbabwe's political situation, which have tended to accept the version of events preferred by Mugabe's government, to the extent of endorsing a series of elections widely criticised by Western rights groups as fraudulent.

Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, began his current term in 2002 despite protests from the opposition and Western powers that he stole the election.

His government faces a collapsing economy, a financial aid freeze, travel sanctions and regular street protests by his opponents. Hailed at independence as a model African democrat, he has been accused by the West of being a
tyrant who has destroyed his once rich southern African state.

Mugabe denies charges that he has mismanaged the economy and accuses opponents of sabotage to punish
him for seizing white-owned farms for redistribution among landless blacks.

by cricketeer Fri Feb 25, 2005 19:47

"Kepler Wessels, the former South African captain, has said that there is little South Africa can gain from the Zimbabwe series which begins today. Key South African players, including Jacques Kallis, have been rested for the three-game one-day series against Zimbabwe. Kallis was an important part of the team that recently inflicted a heavy one-day series defeat on England."

"South African cricket will not benefit at all," said Wessels to News24, a South Africa-based website. "It will not have any influence. The players must do as well as they can, but one cannot really read anything into the performances in this series."

and in the other game "elections"-
Mac Donald Dzirutwe reports from Harare-
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5563677
that violence is down.
give the Zimbabwens a chance to reply-
http://allafrica.com/stories/200502240003.html
are they "an outpost of tyranny"? an "axis of evil"?
as the Angel of the Lord Bush and antichrist Blair say, (but please note they're not threatening an invasion, coz we've tied them down in Babalon and they know it)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4298121.stm
http://iafrica.com/news/worldnews/622507.htm

or is Zimbabwe merely an unwitting "home to the last rhodesian billionaires hiding at the bottom of mine shafts cooking up yet new viral threats for us all" as count duckula says?

you make up your mind
you're intelligent enough now.

norrwaimean?

long way down.

by linesman Sun Feb 27, 2005 18:13

Zimbabwe

- Population : 12,835,000
- Internet users : 500,000 (2002)
- Average charge for 20 hours of connection : 18 euros
- DAI* : 0.29
- Situation**(media) : difficult

BBC-
Yesterday the Mugaba regime closed yet another independent newspaper in the run-up to elections.
"Zimbabwe's Media and Information Commission accused the Weekly Times of "misrepresentations" and withdrew its licence for a year. Tafataona Mahoso, head of the commission, said the newspaper had turned to "partisan political advocacy". Owner Godfrey Ncube said the decision was politically motivated and he planned to appeal against it in court.
"We feel it's a political move, it's got nothing to do with the law," he said. "

RSF (reporters without borders)-
"Zimbabwe is one of the few sub-Saharan countries to have passed legislation specifically regulating online activities. The opposition have become cyber-dissidents and are using the Internet to organise. The Internet is growing fast in Zimbabwe. It is still limited to an elite, because its cost is prohibitive for most of the population, but it is used more and more by opposition movements, which send out news bulletins by e-mail. This allows them both to disseminate their views and to quickly mobilise supporters for demonstrations. Discussion forums that refer to the political situation have developed fast in recent years, as have activist sites such as www.kubatana.net.

(from the last internet freedom report Africa)
and a latest account of an Raath, a correspondent for the German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) and the British daily The Times, Angus Shaw, a correspondent with the US news agency The Associated Press (AP), and Brian Latham, a reporter for the US press group Bloomberg News, decided to flee Zimbabwe after being harassed for several days by the police "Stassi style".

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=12630



The Internet is also used by independent newspapers to evade the regime's censorship. But while it may be easy to set up a website displaying the content of a banned newspaper, it is still very hard to get an online publication to pay its way. Furthermore, in a country in which barely 4 per cent of the population goes online, a website clearly does not have the same impact as a printed newspaper. "

zimbabwean voting poster campaign.

by - Wed Mar 09, 2005 21:19

Deep down a mine in South Africa today an unusual earthquake measuring above 5.2 (I only comment on 5+) in the gold mines at Stilfontein. "deep down" seismic monitoring systems of the gold people who own the mine picked up four large seismic events between 1015 and 1022 GMT and a number of smaller ones.
Surface tremors were felt in Joburg.
42 miners are known to be trapped (with life support systems) at 2.4km depth.

Think about that. that's about 1.5 miles.

do your homework.

How long would it take a healthy boy or girl to walk down that mineshaft?

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5590140

Zimbabwean news have not comment on the quake, which might have registered up north who knows?

their news "on the surface" is the continuing unhappiness of us in media freedom land at their attacks on media activists of both print and internet variety.
a RSF (reporters sans frontiers urgent press release)

http://allafrica.com/stories/200503080866.html
the news that siamese twins who were born joined at the waist and had been flown to Canada are well. (this is the second head join case in africa in the last month)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4328645.stm

and the news that SA tradeunions would like the elections to be delayed.
http://iafrica.com/news/sa/423011.htm

and that Zim is worried about mercenaries.
(aren't we all?)
http://www.sabcnews.com/africa/southern_africa/0,2172,99615,00.html

(we don't have a below the earth crust indymedia centre yet- so accordingly like the far out at sea news it gets put by me (and others) wherever seems appropriate at the "reader-commentator-crossword puzzle-jigsaw- you put it all together level".

which of course is very different to the super computer level, like you get in Maryland or Switzerland or Barcelona which this week brought Europe's newest supercomputer online, to be called "the €U superputa" so now we have somewhere to put all those zeros and ones "aint that nice". when deep though is in order.)

by - Fri Mar 18, 2005 14:02

President Robert Mugabe has taken his election campaign deep into Zimbabwe's [surface] rural heartland, publicly acknowledging for the first time food shortages that analysts say could weaken his grip on power.

Addressing about 7,000 supporters in Gutu, southeastern Zimbabwe, at a rally of his ZANU-PF
party ahead of March 31 parliamentary polls on Thursday, Mugabe said the country faced serious
shortages of food but promised not to let his people starve.

International aid agencies say around 4 million people -- a third of the population -- will need food
aid this year after a poor harvest due to drought and inadequate government help providing seed
and fertiliser to small rural farmers.

read more -
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5609848

other interesting links on this thread-
Zimbabwe has adopted an Irish attitude "learn democracy by example" to non residents, and the supreme court has decided to stop postal votes. In the words on one local commentator "why should a bunch of Zimbabweans who live in democracies have a say on my government?"
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5611517

One in eight kids in Zimb. will die before 5 years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,2763,1440621,00.html

Criticism of opponents by South Africans for
prejudging Zimbabwe election.
http://www.sabcnews.com/africa/southern_africa/0,2172,100314,00.html

Observers from southern African states are being arranged-
http://www.sabcnews.com/africa/southern_africa/0,2172,100270,00.html

Zimbabwe has rejected claims by Amnesty International that free participation of eligible voters in the 31 March poll is impossible.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200503170513.html

learn by example & teach by example

by wireless heads Thu Mar 24, 2005 13:28

SW radio africa is a privately owned company
by Richard Allfrey Ltd of 105 Crystal Palace Rd
East Dulwich, SE22 9ES UK.
They used to broadcast on 6145Khz (a shortwave frequency) with exiled Zimbabwean staff.
But the Mugabe regime are now jamming the signal.
Accordingly they're "channel hopping". Oh the world of free radio is like that. Back in the bad old days of the stassi, the CIA paid the Spanish a fortune to build a broadcast centre the size of crokepark in southern Catalonia and send "radio liberty" into the homes of the east of what is now "junior cert students" our Union of European states. Oh yes those were the heydays for political radio broadcasting. Little boats were moored in the seas off of Engurland, Ireland and even Israel and used to broadcast stuff "your granny warned her kids not to listen to".
The Radio Liberty project is mostly gone now, and the antennas are being demolished, (not completely though see http://www.answers.com/topic/radio-free-europe )
but "free radio" as in "pirate radio" still goes strong across the continent that invented it and still chanel hops and there are a lot of tie-ins with indymedia and protest coverage. And increasingly people are getting involved in stream technology with online radio and telly. But in AFRICA its a different story. Take note how few people in either Nigeria or Zimbabwe have internet access, and also take note of how censored /monitored it is.


Thus shortwave radio still goes strong across the planet. There is a regular update on shortwave radio broadcasts on the indymedia pages for NYC and the UK.
here's the last one-
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/06/272738.html

If you've a shortwave radio, you can listen to SWradioafrica, and imagine you're back in those times, in Europe or even _"in these times"_
in Africa.

They are trying various tactics to get round the censorship. Listeners are asked to track them on different places on the dial. If one doesn't work try another. This is very frustrating but it is the only way they can beat the jammers.
Zim time
Frequency In the 90 metre band
Intermittent* 3230kHz SW
Intermittent* 3300kHz SW
In the 60 metre band
Intermittent* 4880kHz SW
In the 49 metre band
1800-2100 6145kHz SW
In the 25 metre band
1800-1900 11845kHz SW
1900-2000 11705kHz SW
2000-2100 11995kHz SW
* Try these frequencies during the broadcast times. We do not have precise times, 1800-2100, Zim time.
If you can pass this schedule on to family and friends back home, that would be great.
Our new medium wave broadcasts in the morning are not being jammed.
Zim time Frequency
0500– 0700 1197kHz MW
In the 90m band Short wave
0500– 0700 3230kHz SW

Radio work and Radio jamming is all a part of democracy struggles accross the world.
Try this for the Aer Lingus young scientist competition:-
advice from free radio Asia on building an Anti-Jamming Antenna (you might win a prize)
http://www.rfa.org/english/support/antijamming/index.html

Anyway, the UN are being asked by RSF (reporters without borders) [the pressure group for journalists and internet activists] to have a go at Zimbabwe to stop them jamming the radio.

In a letter to the Geneva-based International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the press freedom organization asked this UN system body "to seriously examine this situation, which constitutes a grave violation of Harare's undertakings towards the United Nations."

The letter urged ITU secretary-general Yoshio Utsumi "to demand official and credible explanations from Zimbabwe, which is a member state of the ITU since 18 February 1981 and, as such, obliged to conform to the provisions of its constitution, conventions and administrative regulations."

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=12955

more Zimbabwe news-
Q & A from the BBC on why the elections are important
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4372311.stm
dead voters (this is recurrent problem in Africa)
http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=132&fArticleId=2458487
the decaying townships are where the election ought to be decided-
http://www.swisspolitics.org/en/news/index.php?section=int&page=news_inhalt&news_id=5624970

Cricket-
the English team have decided not to play Zimbabwe. And they have to pay a "fine" for being rude to them last year and deciding not to play them again till 2009. the figure is £133,900 which is about 115,000 of your Irish euros per match.
"all in the budget" as they say.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/england/4376343.stm
If you're not into cricket here's the link to Crokepark- http://www.crokepark.ie/

Farming-
drought is going to heap up the suffering, despite Mugabe saying there would be enough for everyone to eat. You'll remember one of the criticisms is that he spends too much on weapons and advice from the Chinese (in radio free asia land) and not enough on seeds to grow food.

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A30681

"remember kids, work your freedoms, don't get humble, don't get paranoid, you're the best we have and your liberty is contagious".

by keymaker Sun Mar 27, 2005 17:53

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, told a jubilant crowd of 25 000 in the capital that he would prevail in Thursday's elections and jail what he called the corrupt elite surrounding President Robert Mugabe.

"I will have the keys," said the 52-year-old opposition leader. "I will throw them away."

Tsvangirai vowed that full investigations would be carried out into acts of violence and human rights abuses and the culprits would be punished.

The crowd of mostly young people wore bandannas with the slogan "MDC new beginning" at the rally held at Zimbabwe Grounds in Highfield township. It was the same location where Mugabe returned triumphant after winning 1980 elections after the seven-year civil war against white minority rule.

"it's a long way down!"