ZIMBABWE TOUR BEYOND BELIEF
September 3, 2011The following is a great letter in the New Zealand Herald
from . It’s the type of letter, I’ve wanted to write for years.
Well-written, Graham
ZIMBABWE TOUR BEYOND BELIEF
From http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx
Tags (key words): Zimbabwe, letters, New Zealand Herald,
Graham Whiteman
It is a disgrace that New Zealand has agreed to send the Black Caps to Zimbabwe next month. This shows the world that we condone the outrageous thuggery exercised over many years by the Mugabe regime.
It is beyond belief that the International Cricket Council continues to
insist that countries must tour Zimbabwe
in order to retain ongoing and future match schedules.
The recent murder of Robert Mugabe’s opponent, Solomon Mujuru, confirms that
he and his henchmen are still eliminating anybody who opposes their regime.
Morgan Tsvangirai was beaten and his wife was killed in a very suspicious
car crash, yet he valiantly remains Prime Minister in the hope that one day his
country will be rid of Mugabe. Cancel the tour.
Graham Whiteman, Orakei.
http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx
Army ‘selling illegal diamonds for war chest’
March 8, 2011diamonds for war chest’
Sourced from http://www.smh.com.au/world/army-selling-illegal-diamonds-for-war-chest-20100920-15jop.html
Tags: Zimbabwe, diamonds, “blood diamonds”, Robert Mugabe, Sydney Morning Herald, Aislinn Laing and Peta Thornycroft An illegal diamond dealer from Zimbabwe displays diamonds for sale in Manica, near the border with Zimbabwe.
Diplomats fear the vast mines put the army in a powerful position to dictate the terms of succession after the death of the President, Robert Mugabe.
The warning comes days after Zimbabwe’s pro-democracy Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, appealed to lower ranked army and police not to participate in any coup against the constitutional order when Mr Mugabe, 86, dies.
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Last week, Mr Tsvangirai said Mr Mugabe, who has been forced to deny rumours he has cancer and is near death, wanted to secure his legacy by shedding his “villainous reputation”.
The military’s control over the vast Marange fields – the source of a quarter of the world’s diamonds – has become an important factor in the future of Zimbabwe. The eight-member Joint Operational Command (JOC) of military and police leaders earns revenues from the mines through the control of companies.
The campaign group Global Witness says smugglers also sell stones dug up by labour gangs overseen by the military.
The diamonds are smuggled over the Mozambican border, where they are traded on the black market. The revenues then return to the military.
”The general pattern is that units are rotated to make sure they maintain the loyalty of the army by allowing everyone to benefit,” said Annie Dunnebacke, of Global Witness.
”It’s safe to assume that the cut of JOC generals, who some believe are those who really run the country, is fairly consistent.”
A Western diplomat said last week that Zimbabwe’s diamond wealth was being diverted by the military elite with catastrophic consequences.
”There are lots of other [mining] sites and I have no doubts the generals have quite a lot of it,” the diplomat said. ”The money is running into a handful of pockets.”
Zimbabwe’s power sharing government, which included Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, has halted the country’s economic decline.
However, the impoverished country relies on Western aid to provide basic services such as books in schools. Its treasury received $32 million from the first official sales of diamonds last month.
Among those alleged to have earned many millions from diamond sales are factions headed by the Defence Minster, Emmerson Mnangagwa, and Solomon Mujuru, the former head of the armed forces and husband of the Vice-President, Joyce Mujuru.
Alan Martin, who compiled a report on the military’s role in Marange for the pressure group Partnership Africa Canada, said Mr Mujuru and Mr Mnangagwa, were preparing for the death of Mr Mugabe.
”Undoubtedly, they are building up their war chests,” he said. ”None of them will make a move until he dies but there will be a succession fight after his death.” The JOC ”would not accept an MDC president”.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/army-selling-illegal-diamonds-for-war-chest-20100920-15jop.html Zimbabwe’s generals are accumulating a secret slush fund from diamond sales, a campaign group claims.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/army-selling-illegal-diamonds-for-war-chest-20100920-15jop.html
Article Title: Look at South Africa – ‘Celebrate the Beloved Country’ …but now time to show some firm leadership on Zimbabwe, PRESIDENT ZUMA (and the WORLD)
March 8, 2011Author Name: Craig Lock
Category (key words): “Inspiration, Spiritual”, South Africa, Leadership, “Inspirational Writings”, news, politics, current affairsWeb Sites: https://www.xinxii.com/asresults.php?s4=craig+lock&sid=1 http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/craiglock (ebooks) and www.creativekiwis.com/index.php/books/74-craigs-booksThe submitter’s blog (with extracts from his various writings: articles, books and new manuscripts) is at http://en.search.wordpress.com/?q=%22craig+lock%22 and http://craiglock.wordpress.com Other Articles are available at:
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/user/15565 and http://www.ideamarketers.com/library/profile.cfm?writerid=981
(Personal growth, self help, writing, internet marketing, spiritual, ‘spiritual writings’ (how ‘airey-fairey’), words of inspiration and money management, how boring now, craig) Publishing Guidelines: This piece (based upon an inspiring address by former Archbishop, Desmond Tutu) may be freely reproduced electronically or in print. All my articles (and quotations) may be freely published. If they help or encourage at all, or make any difference in people’s lives by bringing some joy, then I’m very happy. *
Look at South Africa – ‘Celebrate the Beloved Country’ …but now time to show some firm leadership on Zimbabwe, PRESIDENT ZUMA (and the international community), PLEASE, PLEASE
In the light of current world events and global uncertainty, I say: “Look at South Africa”…
Thousands of people died over the years of South Africa’s turbulent, history (and under the “nightmare” called apartheid – forgotten already ???)…which has ended relatively peacefully. In a land of such contrasts, a “happy, sad” land of great wealth and the disparity of abysmal poverty; yet the beauty and richness of the land …and most importantly its most valuable resource, the spirit of its 45 million diverse and vibrant peoples always seems to shine through in conquering adversity.
Out of a violent and bloody past, South Africa’s extraordinary relatively peaceful transition to democracy was a minor “miracle”…
and I believe, South Africans have accomplished something unprecedented, unparalleled in the last decade.
“How apartheid was finally buried, without requiem; but in joyous celebration, will remain forever in the hearts and minds of a nation reborn. When tears came, and there was dampness in the eyes of even the most stern, it was for putting the past in the past and hoping for hope in the future.”
*
Perhaps there is a message in South Africa’s violent and tortuous path towards “democracy” somewhere for the current “trouble spots of the world”… perhaps there was a reason for the misery and tragedy of apartheid (as well as learning something from the lessons of history over many centuries of colonialism around the globe), after all…
South Africa – a possible role-model for the world??
In spite of the corruption, endemic crime and “cheapness of life there, South Africa may yet be a “trail-blazer”, the beacon of magnanimity, hope and reconciliation to the world. With strong leadership, a spirit of goodwill, tolerance, acceptance …and most importantly, attempts to understand other peoples and cultures, who are different to us (yet we humans have far more in common than our differences)…and especially with the SPIRIT of peace, your nightmare too will end. An end to the evil of terrorism, man’s inhumanity to man and the “impossibility” of world peace CAN one day be achieved.
So
Let the world celebrate the quite magnificent achievement South Africans of ALL races and creeds, “The Rainbow People of God” have accomplished in the past decade of “democracy”, where the will of the people have spoken. With your “torch of light” you may yet illuminate the path to a world one day at peace with itself.
“South Africa’s ability to overcome deep divisions, to negotiate a common future and to commit itself to reconciliation and reconstruction offers new hope – not only to South Africa, but across the globe.”
“South Africa is blessed in resources beyond many. It dare not live just for itself. It must work and labour to bless Africa and the world…but especially Africa. If only for Africa’s sake we dare not fail; because as South Africa goes, so will the rest of Africa.”
CELEBRATE THE “BELOVED COUNTRY”
and the great spirit of its inhabitants,
and especially, PLEASE do something about Zimbabwe
and so leave your important legacy, President Zuma!
YOU still have an opportunity to leave a legacy, that may yet turn out to be ”a beacon of light in a sea of despair”… to South Africa, Africa… and to the world
Finally and most importantly,
the message of forgiveness and hope in the future is ‘the miracle’ of South Africa today. Now if only other countries could offer the kind of leadership South Africa produced at that precarious time in its blood-soaked history…and learn the lessons from the past, then the whole of Africa and even the entire world would be a far better and more peaceful place for all of us.
You don’t have to forget the past in order to move forward.
Craig Lock
“The greatness of a nation consists not so much in the number of it’s people,
or the extent of it’s territory, as in the extent and justice of it’s compassion.”
“The noblest revenge is to forgive.”
- Thomas Fuller, English author (1608-1661)
If I don’t forgive my enemies, I deny my right to have power over them.”
- Martin Luther King or Robert Kennedy??
- Inscription at the Horse Memorial in Port Elizabeth, for horses killed in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902).
“Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it’s an ongoing state of mind. A long and ardous journey that starts with a single large step – in spite of immense pain, the decision to forgive, a commitment to the ideal… and one that gives freedom… to the forgiven, yet also to the forgiver.”
“When you forgive (another person or country), you empty your mind of negative thoughts (perhaps even thoughts as strong as hate). Then the infinite Spirit of God makes a fresh space in our hearts to allow new positive feelings to take their place.. to pour into our hearts. The ‘freed’ person then moves forward with a new spirit…which takes root in people’s minds, hearts, spirits and even in the deepest recesses of their souls.”
- craig
“Lord,
Give us forgiveness for the past, strength for today… and hope for the future.”
P.S: I am reminded of something Mahatma Gandhi’s said not long before he was assassinated:
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible; but in the end, they always fall.
Think of it, ALWAYS.”
“Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. And now abide faith, hope, love; but the greatest of these is love.”
1 Corinthians 13
“When the world is filled with love, people’s hearts are overflowing with hope.”
- craig
Craig’s novels on South Africa that he “felt inspired to write” are available at: https://www.xinxii.com/asresults.php?s4=craig+lock&sid=1 and http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/craiglock (ebooks) www.creativekiwis.com/index.php/books/74-craigs-books + www.lulu.com/craiglock
“The world’s smallest and most exclusive bookstore”
A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.”
- Chinese proverb“A book is small enough to hold in your hand; but when you read it, the walls fall away and you’re in a room as big as the world.”
“A book, like a dog, is man’s best friend, but inside it’s too dark to read.”
- Woody Allen (I “tink”)
The submitter’s blog (with extracts from his various writings: articles, books and new manuscripts) is at http://en.search.wordpress.com/?q=%22craig+lock%22 and http://craiglock.wordpress.comTHESE WRITINGS MAY BE FREELY PUBLISHED
Zimbabwe – an open letter to President Jacob Zuma
March 6, 2011Zimbabwe – an open letter to President Jacob Zuma
This is a copy of a letter written and published some years ago…
but what has really changed in the perilous lives of so many desperately poor citizens, the ”ordinary” Zimbabweans in the intervening years??.
So we must simply keep on keeping on the pressure and circumstances WILL change…soon!
craig
Publishing Guidelines:
This “open letter” may be freely published.
*
Dear President Zuma
As a “rather passionate” South African (always), I am writing to you to implore you to please do something constructive and EFFECTIVE about the dire situation in neighbouring Zimbabwe, the birth-country of my father. “Constructive engagement” under former president Thabo Mbeki did NOT work with “President” Mugabe.
Just as South Africa cut off resources and economic support to Ian Smith’s Rhodesia under UDI, you, the ANC and SADC could do the same… at the stroke of a pen!
President Zuma, you are a, the key player in a solution to Zimbabwe’s dire situation. So PLEASE PLEASE stamp your leadership with some real moral fortitude and courage, but especially have the moral WILL to do what needs to be done for the true freedom of the blighted citizens of your neighbour, Zimbabwe… what is indeed right and so leave an effective and vitally important and lasting legacy of your firm leadership – one of integrity (absolute) and justice!
The years have rapidly passed and the time for firm action is NOW… TODAY!
As much as I rejoiced in 1994 for the birth of the new “Rainbow Nation”, my heart bleeds for Zimbabwe today.
YOUR legacy can yet be ”a beacon of light in a sea of despair” to Africa… and the world
Respectfully Yours
Craig Lock
New Zealand
PS: Remember the famous words: “Those who stand up for justice will always be on the right side of history.”
* *
This Prayer was originally written in 1994 (before South Africa’s first “Democratic” election. I have updated it slightly (today – 4am!) and am sharing it with a view to helping (in some small way) create global awareness of the current desperate plight of South Africa’s northern neighbour, Zimbabwe. This piece (as with all my articles) may be freely published (and prayed)… and If these writings make a difference in people’s lives by encouraging or bringing some joy in an often very dark world, then I’m very happy.
PRAYER FOR SOUTH AFRICA
(and especially Southern Africa and most importantly, Zimbabwe…Somalia, and Darfur in Sudan)
We join in prayer to celebrate this new nation and surrender its destiny to you. We give thanks in our hearts to the founding of this vibrant nation of diverse peoples, a beautiful yet tragic land built upon the rivers of blood, that flowed from our forefathers; yet still flow today…a ‘happy sad’ land of such contrasts. We give thanks for and bless the souls of those, who came before us and prepared this nation, to nurture and to save it; because so many gave their lives for it, some selflessly and many needlessly.
We ask that God’s Holy Spirit now fill the hearts of all this great nation’s citizens with thoughts of goodwill, righteousness, justice, acceptance and respect for others. In this may we be cleansed of all destructive thoughts. May judgement of others, bigotry, racism and intolerance be washed clean from our hearts, like the blood of our forefathers.
God, instill in us especially a generous spirit of forgiveness and hope for the future.
May we play our parts, all of us, in the healing and the furtherance of our diverse country; so that South Africa will one day fulfill its immense potential, a promise yet to be fulfilled. To do the very best within our abilities in developing “the Beloved Country” socially, politically, economically and spiritually…in a spirit of acceptane, co-operation, reconciliation and peace – each and every one of us.
Let each one of us build bridges rather than barriers, openness rather than walls. Let us look at distant horizons together in this immeasurable spirit of acceptance, helpfulness, co-operation and most importantly, hope and peace. Let our leaders look at the future with a vision – to see things not as they are, but what they could one day become.
*
Dear Almighty God, you are all-powerful and omnipresent. You hold each one of us in the palms of Your mighty hands. May our minds be filled with the thoughts of You: Your unconditional love and Your acceptance of all Your people, Your children. May this nation be forgiven its transgressions against its fellow citizens of all races and creeds and any and all others… so that we as a nation can move forward in harmony and prosperity.
May our lives be turned to instruments of resurrection and reconciliation, to reach out and bring all our peoples together, that the sins of our fathers might be reversed through us, His children. Let us forgive, even if we can never forget. May the rich promises of this beautiful country of such contrasts be fulfilled…at long last.
The greatest resource in any nation is its citizens; so may the beauty and greatness of this rich, diverse and vibrant land burst forth in the hearts of all it’s people. Out of the mistakes and tragedy of the past, may the dreams of our forefathers be realised in us; so that we might live with thoughts of goodwill, honesty, integrity, excellence, and peace with our neighbours in a bright new dawn.
Because the human condition has far more in common, than our cultural, ethnic and racial differences, may this country become a light at the top of the hill unto all the nations of this world (but especially in the “dark” neglected continent of Africa). So that our country will be a beacon of goodness, tolerance of differences, freedom, justice, righteousness, peace and especially hope. May violence and darkness be cast out of our midst. May hatred no longer find fertile ground in which to grow here. May all of us feel God’s, the Ultimate Source of Life’s immeasurable Mercy, Infinite Grace and Love upon each one of us.
Dear God, please, please ignite in our hearts, in the depths of our souls the spark of Your Light, the Spirit of Truth and Love. May our newborn nation be given a new light: one of justice and righteousness that will be seared into our hearts, the sacred fire of freedom, democracy, the spirit of reconciliation and Your immeasurable forgiveness for past transgressions: So that the flame of ‘ubuntu’, this generosity of spirit burns brightly in the heart of all New South Africans. A new light of Love that will shine so brightly right across this vast land as a beacon of hope for the future – from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, from the Limpopo in the north to the Cape of Storms at the southern tip of Africa. May we be forgiven – each one of us. May our children be blessed. May we be renewed. May each one of us be filled with the spirit of the Almighty, the Divine. In our lives may the “Rainbow Children of the Beloved Country” manifest the Infinite Glory of God, that lies within each and every one of us.
Dear God, please mightily bless South Africa, Southern Africa, Africa …and ALL the citizens of the world.
Amen
Craig Lock (1994)
P.S: These days please pray especially for all the citizens of South Africa’s neigbour, the “blighted” Southern African nation of Zimbabwe, as well as the poor persecuted citizens of Darfur in Sudan and in Somalia.
“Lest we forget!”
craig (updated July 2009)
Author’s Note:
This prayer was originally based on the most inspirational ‘Prayer for America’ by Marianne Williamson (www.marianne.com). Incidentally, I received a most appreciative and gracious message from former South African President, Nelson Mandela for sharing these thoughts with him “many many moons back” in 1994 (“names-dropping” again there, craig!). This icon of reconcilation and magnanimity has and will remain a great inspiration to me in my writing… for his integrity, immense ‘nobility and generosity of spirit’. Thank you sincerely, “Madiba”.
*
“Our Greatest Good is perhaps not to achieve wealth and share our material possessions, our money and ‘riches’ with others, but through encouragement and faith in other people, to lay the firm foundation of revealing the rich treasure that lies within themselves.”
“God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into the world with a different collection of life circumstances that often severely challenge us, things that give us joy and in expressing our talents allow us to bless the people, the world around us.”
“There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion, mystery and even the occasional miracle in the magical journey of life.”
- craig
“Change your thoughts and you help change THE world.
Together, one mind, one soul at a time, let’s encourage, impact, uplift and perhaps even inspire the world.”
THESE THOUGHTS MAY BE FREELY PUBLISHED
(and especially PRAYED, as never underestimate the incredible power of prayer to change anything in life).
“Blessed are the Peace-Makers… because they’ll accumulate plenty of Frequent Flyer points.”
Zimbabwe’s last white farmers face final push
September 7, 2010Zimbabwe’s last white
farmers face final push
By Peta Thornycroft in Harare
Published: 12:01AM BST 01 Oct 2007
Sourced from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1564804/Zimbabwes-last-white-farmers-face-final-push.html
Tags: Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, land invasions, white farmers, Charles Lock, land grab, Telegraph Group
Zimbabwe’s last white farmers face “final push” – prised from land to meet Mugabe’s ‘deadline’
Farmer Charles Lock is determined to fight for his land in the courts
Ringed by a clutch of Zimbabwean soldiers clicking automatic weapons, Charles Lock handed over the keys to his farm and drove off his land for the last time.
Scores of white farmers, the last survivors of President Robert Mugabe’s land grab, and thousands of their black workers are going through similar agonies.
They now face the final deadline. As from today, any white farmer still on his land will be deemed to be trespassing on state property.
Related Articles
Roy Bennett ‘to take Zimbabwe cabinet job despite continued farm seizures’Zimbabwe land invasion threaten last of white farmers with extinctionFruit farmer challenges legality of land grab laws Mugabe brings Zimbabwe industry to standstill ‘Half of Zimbabwe will soon need food aid’ Zimbabwe assets face seizure after tribunal rules for farmersAll agricultural land was officially nationalised last year — with the seizure to take effect from Oct 1 this year.
In advance of this deadline, Zimbabwe’s army and the Central Intelligence Organisation have been tormenting the last handful of white farmers and their workers.
About 50 have been summoned to appear at magistrates’ courts. Some have surrendered their farms and homes in despair in the last few weeks.
Mr Lock, however, is determined to fight on. “I may have been forced to go but I will continue to fight in the courts,” he said. “I have five court orders allowing me to stay.”
Four years ago Mr Lock was given permission to stay on Karori Farm in Headlands district, about 90 miles south-east of Harare, after two thirds of its land was made available for resettlement.
Earlier, Mr Lock had surrendered another 5,000-acre farm to the government.
But the last portion of Karori’s land still in Mr Lock’s hands caught the attention of a senior army officer, Gen Justin Mujaji and his wife, Pauline.
He sent his soldiers to evict Mr Lock, along with all of the farmer’s black labourers, and take over the property.
“They came with their guns and fired a few rounds,” said Mr Lock, 45. “I was forced to pay off 158 workers. The soldiers drove them and their families off in the space of 24 hours. They vanished.”
“The farm school is deserted. I had to move my four farm managers and their possessions off as they were in danger, and while I was away my house and equipment was looted. I was alone on the farm then, and so I just had to go.”
Last week, Mr Lock brought a contempt of court application against Gen Mujaji and his wife.
Mr Justice Charles Hungwe heard the case and made a remark to the effect that the courts were being abused. He promised a ruling this week.
But Gen Mujaji insists that he will stay on the farm regardless of the law. “I will only leave Karori if the minister of lands orders me. He is senior to the courts,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
Before the onset of the land grab, Zimbabwe had about 4,000 white farmers. Perhaps a few hundred are left — and the great majority are only able to cling to portions of their land.
Hardly any still possess all the acres they owned before the seizures. The latest deadline could dislodge the remaining handful.
“The military are heavily involved now,” said John Worsley-Worswick, spokesman for the pressure group Justice for Agriculture. “We always knew that eventually the government would go for the final push, and here it is.”
The United Nations says that about four million Zimbabweans will need food aid next year. Until the land grab, Zimbabwe exported food.
Telegraph Group
Sourced from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1564804/Zimbabwes-last-white-farmers-face-final-push.html
Mugabe defiantMugabe defiant over plans to sell off diamond reserves over plans to sell off diamond reserves
August 13, 2010Mugabe defiant over plans
to sell off diamond reserves
4:00 AM Saturday Jul 17, 2010
Sourced from
Tags (key words): Zimbabwe, diamonds, ‘’blood diamonds‘’, human rights, Robert Mugabe
President Robert Mugabe wants to use Zimbabwe’s diamond reserves to help rebuild the country’s collapsed economy. Photo / AP
HARARE: Zimbabwe’s President has said his nation will sell its massive reserves of diamonds despite not receiving authorisation from the world’s diamond control body.
A defiant President Robert Mugabe this week told lawmakers diamond sales have “huge potential” to revive the shattered economy. He said Zimbabwe can account for one-fourth of the world’s diamond supply.
The Kimberley Process diamond certification scheme has not authorised international sales amid allegations of killings, human rights violations and corruption in the massive diamond fields discovered in eastern Zimbabwe in 2006.
“No one should doubt our resolve to sell our diamonds,” Mugabe told lawmakers at the ceremonial opening of the Parliament in Harare.
Criticism by Western nations and human rights groups deadlocked a Kimberley Process meeting in Israel last month that sought approval for the sales after a regional monitor of the control body reported Zimbabwe had met minimum international diamond mining standards.
Mugabe said Zimbabwe’s Western adversaries wanted “absurd” conditions put in place to block the diamond sales.
Critics of Mugabe say his economic policies have contributed to precipitous economic decline.
Mugabe acknowledged that key infrastructure – including power and water utilities, roads and transport services – had fallen into disrepair and housing programmes had come to a standstill over the past decade.
Mining experts estimate that Zimbabwe’s diamond fields, sealed off by police and troops in the districts of Marange and Chiadzwa near the eastern city of Mutare, are likely the biggest deposits found in Africa since the Kimberley fields were discovered in South Africa a century ago.
The Mines Ministry says it already has about US$1.7 billion ($2.35 billion) of diamonds in storage ready to be sold. Zimbabwe’s total international debt is estimated at about US$5.5 billion.
Consignments of diamonds have been sold illegally. Earlier this year, police in neighbouring Mozambique reported arresting alleged diamond dealers carrying more than US$1 million in cash hidden in their car near Zimbabwe’s porous eastern border.
Finance Minister Tendai Biti, a top official of the former opposition Movement for Democratic Change which governs in a fragile coalition with Mugabe’s Zanu PF party, said many Zimbabweans were still suffering from malnutrition despite the potential for the country’s diamond wealth to restore social, health and education services and repair the country’s agricultural infrastructure.
Zimbabwe’s diamond producer status is scheduled to again come under review on Wednesday at a meeting of the World Diamond Council in St Petersburg, Russia.
- AP
Sourced (with thanks) from http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10659261
‘ZIM’s BLOOD DIAMONDS’’
August 13, 2010‘ZIM’s BLOOD DIAMONDS’’
Zimbabwe diamonds sale under way
Sourced from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10945366
The Kimberley Process has so far allowed Zimbabwe to sell part of its diamonds stockpile .
Zimbabwe has held the first sale of diamonds from its Marange fields since the body overseeing the trade in “blood diamonds” lifted a ban.
The Kimberley Process had suspended the diamond exports in November in response to allegations of atrocities committed by the military at Marange.
But last month, it ruled that abuses had ceased and said Zimbabwe could resume limited exports.
The diamonds from the Marange field could generate $1.7bn (£1.1bn) a year.
About 900,000 carats valued at about $72m were on sale on Wednesday, according to Abbey Chikane from the Kimberley Process.
A review of conditions at Marange will be carried out in September, after which Zimbabwe may be able to resume full exports.
‘Historic’
The Kimberley Process was set up in 2002 after the diamond trade was accused of fuelling several conflicts in Africa.
The BBC’s southern Africa correspondent Karen Allen said the credibility of the Kimberley Process had been at stake over the Marange diamond fields, with pressure to expel Zimbabwe from its certification scheme.
Questions had been raised about the competence of its own independent monitor, she said.
In opening the sale, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said: “Indeed it is historic in that we have managed to satisfy the minimum requirements of the Kimberley Process.
“We have put in place measures to ensure that we abide by the Kimberley Process principles and sell our diamonds in a transparent manner.”
Irene Petras, a human rights lawyer, told BBC World Service’s Focus on Africa programme she was disappointed that the sale had been allowed.
“What’s disappointing is that, although the sale’s going ahead, we still haven’t received any information about how human rights violations will be investigated and also how accountability will occur in terms of the sales of these diamonds,” she said.
And human rights groups expressed fears after President Mugabe urged the army to “jealously guard” the country’s natural resources in a speech on Tuesday.
Sourced from
*
Sourced from http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2010/0812/Zimbabwe-restarts-diamond-sales-amid-blood-diamond-accusations
Zimbabwe restarts diamond sales amid ‘blood diamond’ accusations
‘Blood diamond’ watchdog, the Kimberly Process, supervised the $72 million diamond sale Tuesday, but a human rights group claims miners work at gunpoint.
Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP Photo
The World Diamond Council in mid-July authorized Zimbabwe to carry out two supervised exports of rough diamonds by September with oversight from the Kimberley Process, a watchdog group.
“If this is a victory for anyone, it is a victory for the Kimberley Process,” Kimberley Chair Boaz Hirsch said in a statement at the time. “The past several months have been difficult, but they have clearly demonstrated that not only does the Kimberley Process have teeth, it also is able to achieve results.”
This week, the so-called “blood diamonds” have been a prominent topic in the United Nations war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, as both British model Naomi Campbell and American actress Mia Farrow have appeared as witnesses concerning Mr. Taylor’s alleged gift of blood diamonds to Ms. Campbell in 1997.
But while the Kimberley Process aims to stop abuses by rebel groups, Human Rights Watch argues that the watchdog has consciously disregarded similar abuses by governments themselves. In a June 22 report, HRW says that more than 200 people were killed when the Zimbabwean military seized the Marange diamond fields in 2008. Local villagers, including children, are now forced to mine the diamonds at gunpoint, HRW says.
Despite HRW’s publicity of these alleged human rights violations, the World Diamond Council and the Kimberley Process still approved Zimbabwe’s reentry to the diamond market:
The governments who initially formed the Kimberley Process agreed only to exclude diamonds that were financing rebel groups. They didn’t include diamonds that were financing abusive governments – although obviously, as a practical matter, it hardly matters who the soldier who is beating you is working for. But many members of the Kimberley Process have questionable human rights records of their own, and they don’t want to suspend Zimbabwe from the group.
Members of the Kimberley Process know what’s going on. They’ve read the reports from Human Rights Watch and other groups, and their own fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe last summer confirmed the basic story. But now, its own monitor on the ground in Zimbabwe has stepped forward to muddy the waters. Deputized by the Kimberley Process last fall to report back on whether Zimbabwe diamonds could be certified as “clean,” the monitor, an eminent South African diamond expert named Abbey Chikane, last week issued a report giving Zimbabwe the thumbs-up.
According to the independent news website Zimbabwe Online, two “little known” South African companies, Mbada and Canadile, are running the Zimbabwe mines in cooperation with the state-run Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation. Critics accuse the companies of being fronts for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s political and military allies.
Zimbabwe Online also reports that the military is still running mining operations in the region “where soldiers are openly operating and they are using illegal miners to dig for diamonds for a fee and then share the spoils,” according to an illegal miner.
The compromise was reached after a Zimbabwe court released human rights activist Farai Maguwu, who was jailed for more than a month after publicizing abuses at the diamond fields.
Human rights groups say the deal also helped avert a crisis in the international diamond market, since President Robert Mugabe was threatening to sell stones without certification.
Sourced from http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2010/0812/Zimbabwe-restarts-diamond-sales-amid-blood-diamond-accusations
National Public Radio writes that the original investigators for the Kimberley Process recommended that Zimbabwe be expelled from the group for its seizure of the diamond fields, but that the group may have been forced into what a member of the Global Witness watchdog group calls a “weak compromise.”The Kimberley Process group, consisting of representatives from 75 countries involved in the diamond trade, was set up in 2002 to prevent the global market from trading diamonds mined by rebel groups to fund armed resistance against established governments.CNN reports that it was Zimbabwe’s first sale of diamonds since being barred from the market when its military seized control of the country’s Marange diamond fields in 2008. BBC News reports that diamond sales could bring the impoverished country some $1.7 billion per year.Zimbabwe reentered the legal diamond market this week with Tuesday’s $72 million sale of 900,000 carats of the gems. The sale was supervised by an international ‘blood diamond’ watchdog group amid ongoing allegations that the Zimbabwean military is abusing gem miners and forcing them to work at gunpoint.Arthur Bright, Correspondent / August 12, 2010 Enlarge
Abbey Chikane of the Kimberley Process shows the certificate awarded to Zimbabwe following their granting of a Kimberley Process certification in Harare, Aug. 11. Zimbabwe began selling millions of carats of rough diamonds Wednesday that were mined from an area where human rights groups say soldiers killed 200 people, raped women, and forced children into hard labor.
The Woman Who Took On Mugabe
December 19, 2009
I don't want to be bored, but feel so alive in Africa
I try to show the extra-ordinary in ordinary lives, as revealed by the generous spirits and the extra-ordinary courage of ordinary people in their daily struggles along the journey of what is called life. Web Site: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-05-10-the-woman-who-took-on-mugabe The woman who took on Mugabe Mail and Guardian May 10 2009 08:15 Of all the terrible things that have happened to Jenni Williams over the past six years — and there have been many — there is one incident that stands out from the rest. It was October 2008. She had been arrested by Zimbabwean police after taking part in a peaceful protest outside a government complex. The marchers were asking for food aid, in a population where three-quarters of the population is starving under Robert Mugabe’s oppressive regime. Bundled into a police van, Williams and a colleague were taken to prison and denied bail. She was in jail for three weeks. On one “particularly bad day” Williams recalls being forced by the guards to sit for hours in the burning sunshine. “I am of light skin, they knew I was going to get very badly sunburnt, and we were just made to sit there for some form of punishment,” she says. “And when we tried to object, they started accusing myself and my colleague of being lesbians because she had been beaten and I was rubbing her back. “So it was a very bad day, and our lawyer had not been able to come to give us any update on our appeal process and I just thought: I don’t know how we’re going to get through this.” At 47, Jenni Williams has experienced more brutality than most of us will face in a lifetime. She is the founder of the underground activist movement Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza), an organisation that, since 2003, has been mobilising Zimbabwean women to demonstrate in defence of their political, economic and social rights. In a fragmented country where women are marginalised by patriarchy, downtrodden by severe financial hardship (official inflation runs at 7 000%) and weakened by the acute lack of food or clothing for themselves and their children, Williams faces an almost insurmountable daily struggle simply to keep going. Under Mugabe’s dictatorship, the threat of state-sanctioned violence is ever-present. Despite being a movement dedicated to peaceful protest, Woza’s 70 000 members are routinely arrested, beaten and intimidated. As an outspoken critic of the current Zimbabwean regime, Williams is one of the most troublesome thorns in Mugabe’s side. In a region where anti-government protesters have an uncomfortable habit of disappearing or turning up dead, her day-to-day existence is hazardous: although her main residence is in Bulawayo, south-west Zimbabwe, she moves in and out of safe houses and never stays more than six months in one place. She has been arrested 33 times. Once she was abducted by police for 24 hours and driven 45km outside the city to an unknown destination. “They were telling me they were going to murder me and bury me and no one would ever know,” says Williams. “Luckily for me, we ended up in a police station and some of the police officers were very sympathetic. There was no food there but one of those police officers came and whispered into the window of our cell: ‘I’m bringing you food from your house. I know you are hungry. ‘ So sometimes in life when you suspect the absolute worst thing, God sends you an angel.” She says, when I ask her if she ever loses hope in humanity, that this is her answer: finding goodness where you least expect it. Even at her lowest point in that prison yard, forced to sit for hours in the sunshine, her skin burning and her spirits shattered, something happened to salvage her hopes and keep her going. “My colleagues came and told me that Barack Obama had won and was going to be the next president of America and it was — ” She breaks off, then emits a loud squeal of delight: “YES! And that made the pain not so bad.” In person, Jenni Williams looks as strong as she sounds. She has a broad face, substantial shoulders and thick, powerful arms. Her hair is braided in tight plaits that snake across her skull. She is mixed race — her mechanic father, who was absent for most of her upbringing, was black. Her mother Margaret is the daughter of an IRA man who emigrated to what was then Rhodesia from County Armagh. He became a gold prospector and married a local woman from the Matabele tribe. Williams readily admits that dissidence runs in the family: “It’s an incredible mix of this Irish and this Matabelean nation, which is a fighting nation. My grandmother was once arrested during the early 80s because the Mugabe regime said she had arms caches. That’s the melting pot that I come from.” At first the combination of her looks and her history can make Williams seem a slightly forbidding presence, but as soon as you talk to her you realise that she has an internal composure that gives her a tender, almost maternal quality. She comes across as a protector rather than an aggressor. When she talks, it is in a bubbling stream of flat Zimbabwean vowels spliced with laughter. She smiles a lot. We meet on one of her infrequent visits to the UK — she is deliberately vague about her movements in case the Zimbabwean authorities attempt to stop her, but she has the backing of Amnesty International and this time has been able to move around relatively freely. “We [Woza] get scared like anyone else,” she says. “But I think what gives us the commitment to continue to do the things we do is that we speak 100% the truth, and we speak it from the moral authority that we are the mothers of the nation, and if your mother cannot speak out on your behalf then you have no one that will speak for you. So that is why we are committed to doing this: because we want a better future for our children.” The horrible irony for Williams is that being the mother of a troubled nation means she finds it increasingly difficult to be the mother of her own family. Her husband Michael, an electrician, and her three adult children — one daughter, Natalie (28) from her first marriage, and two sons, Christopher (24) and Richard (22) — all live in the UK. It would be too dangerous for them to stay in Zimbabwe. When Woza organised its first Valentine’s Day march in 2003 (14 February, with its connotations of love and understanding, is a crucial date for the organisation, which promotes strategic nonviolence), Christopher, then 18, was arrested for handing out roses. Although the Zimbabwean Constitution grants the right to peaceful protest, the authorities argue that it cannot be carried out in the streets without prior notification. “I couldn’t do anything,” says Williams now, twisting her hands on the table in front of her. “It was just deeply frustrating for me to be a mother and see that my child had now gotten arrested for something that I was doing, and I was helpless. And so with Christopher’s arrest, my mother-in-law [who lives in the UK] got a little bit worried and said: ‘Look, please can we have the kids?’ “Also, because of my activism there were threats that they would be taken and put in the youth militia, where they train these kids to be violent, so I had no other option but to allow my two sons, who were still living in the house, to come and be in the UK. My daughter is much older; she had already left home. “It’s not easy for me to live apart from them. But we are very, very busy leading this organisation. I already work 14 to 15-hour days. There’s no way right now I can be a mother to my children because I’m too occupied being a mother to the nation.” Does she feel guilty about the choice she has made, about placing the political over the personal? “No, I don’t because I know and they know and we all understand and discuss these issues and they know why we’re doing it. So it’s not a matter of guilt. I miss them terribly. I miss my husband terribly. But I know it’s for them I’m doing it, and they know that, too.” Much of her life has been spent taking care of other people — at the age of 16 she dropped out of school to help her single mother care for her six siblings. And, like the Woza members, 70% of whom have not completed secondary education, she has experienced at first hand the vicious hardships of a Zimbabwean upbringing: in 1994, her eldest brother died of HIV/Aids, and because of her mixed heritage she has experienced racism from both sides of the ethnic divide. “In some ways, my blood has been too black to be beautiful,” she says sadly. “In other ways, my skin has been too white to be right. And yeah, it’s been a problem … My first marriage failed because, at the wedding ceremony, my ex-husband’s mother and father arrived at the wedding and the reality that I was mixed race hit them when they saw my mother and they saw my brothers, who are much darker than me, and they just couldn’t take it and they left the ceremony. They hounded my husband with all this stuff about the son of Ham and all this racist rhetoric, and: ‘You’re going to have black children’ and our marriage failed as a result of that. “And now under Mugabe, quite often police officers who do not know me, who do not know my background, will make all sorts of racist [anti-white] comments to me and so I’ve also had that … So it hasn’t been easy.” But perhaps it was this sense of never quite belonging, of having to prove herself in the face of adversity, that gave Williams the sheer single-mindedness she has needed to pursue what she believes is right in a land where the idea of justice is, at best, illusory. “Seeing my mother want something better for me and seeing her sacrifices [as] a single mother raising seven children — it motivated me a lot … It was her as a role model and the fact I had seen so much discrimination that made me want to become a human rights defender.” In what she refers to as “my previous life”, Williams ran her own public relations company. From 1994 to 2002 the business was so successful that it won a sizeable contract to do all the communications for the Zimbabwean Farmers’ Union. This brought Williams directly into conflict with the government — Mugabe’s controversial policy of land reform enables white farmers to be forced off their properties in order to “redistribute” wealth. “It was very hot and heavy and I was under threat,” says Williams. “The police kept visiting the offices. It was just impossible. It ended up losing me my company.” Enraged by the injustice of what happened, Williams became politically active. A year later, Woza was formed. Its grassroots members, many of whom come to the organisation from church groups, are the ordinary women of Zimbabwe who would otherwise remain voiceless — the seamstresses, the vegetable sellers and hairdressers. Williams leads regular street demonstrations, during which the protesters sing gospel songs and carry brooms, embodying their desire to sweep the government clean. It is a terrifying process: “Sometimes when we are singing, we are extremely discordant because, you know, your mouth is dry, you’re scared and you’re watching out the whole time for the police.” Dispiritingly, Williams says that there has been no noticeable improvement in conditions since the power-sharing agreement brokered in September between Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition. “We had huge expectations that it would have … but we have not noticed any change. In fact, in some ways we can say the pressure on us has increased because post the signing of this deal, I then found myself back in prison. And after having made bail — and it was a huge legal battle — we then found that we were restricted to a 40km radius, and that has never happened before. “Since Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in, there is more food on the shelves, but our members certainly cannot afford to buy that food. There’s 94% unemployment, and the 6% that’s left over probably cannot even afford to pay for their bus transport into work. “Our members, what are they going to do? They can’t afford the school fees. They’re desperate for their children to get educated. The decision is: do I feed this child right now or do I buy chalk so they can go to school? And that’s a horrible choice that parents are being forced to make in Zimbabwe. So daily life is just horrific.” In prison, conditions are even worse. “It’s a living nightmare,” says Williams. “It’s a death sentence.” At mealtimes food is so scarce that the portions are measured out in teaspoons. After Williams’s three-week incarceration last October, a female prisoner begged her to leave behind her underwear. “They said: ‘We have not seen a pair of panties for two or three years while we’ve been in prison.’ And, I mean, someone can be stripped of their dignity, but if you’re a woman you really want to be able to have a pair of panties — it’s something basic.” She has a vivid memory of being taken to a men’s prison and seeing hundreds of skeletal inmates in the courtyard. “These were men who were — what’s the word — you can’t say crouching because that implies a bigger body space — people were so thin that they looked like spiders, when they close themselves up and you can’t see any limbs. They were like ghosts: rows and rows of ghosts.” Although she would never admit to it, it is clear that the prospect of being sent back there fills Williams with dread. The trial relating to her October arrest on charges of disturbing the peace is still ongoing — at the time of going to press, Williams and her co-leader Magodonga Mahlangu were due to appear in front of the Bulawayo magistrate’s court on 30 April. Meanwhile, the daily struggle continues. Williams refuses to dwell on the negative, and perhaps this is a necessary technique of self-preservation: how else would she be able to carry on fighting, with such good-humoured courage and tenacity, in the face of such intimidation and danger? Before she leaves, I tell her that I know no one who possesses the necessary strength to do what she does. “I know lots!” she shrieks happily, shrugging herself into a huge padded black coat. “I know all the Woza members. We are constantly arrested, hundreds of us, and we make each other strong, defend our rights and help each other cope. So I am in extremely good company.” She zips up her coat and gives me a warm hug. Then she walks away, back to fight the battles that no one else dares to face. – guardian.co.uk (c) Guardian News and Media 2009 Sourced from http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-05-10-the-woman-who-took-on-mugabe Shared by craig lock (“Information and Inspiration Distributer”) http://www.craiglockbooks.com http://www.selfgrowth.com/experts/craig_lock.html The various books* that Craig “felt inspired to write” are available at http://www.creativekiwis.com/books.html www.lulu.com/craiglock and http://www.myspace.com/writercraig * * The woman who took on Mugabe May 10 2009 08:15 Of all the terrible things that have happened to Jenni Williams over the past six years — and there have been many — there is one incident that stands out from the rest. It was October 2008. She had been arrested by Zimbabwean police after taking part in a peaceful protest outside a government complex. The marchers were asking for food aid, in a population where three-quarters of the population is starving under Robert Mugabe’s oppressive regime. Bundled into a police van, Williams and a colleague were taken to prison and denied bail. She was in jail for three weeks. On one “particularly bad day” Williams recalls being forced by the guards to sit for hours in the burning sunshine. “I am of light skin, they knew I was going to get very badly sunburnt, and we were just made to sit there for some form of punishment,” she says. “And when we tried to object, they started accusing myself and my colleague of being lesbians because she had been beaten and I was rubbing her back. “So it was a very bad day, and our lawyer had not been able to come to give us any update on our appeal process and I just thought: I don’t know how we’re going to get through this.” At 47, Jenni Williams has experienced more brutality than most of us will face in a lifetime. She is the founder of the underground activist movement Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza), an organisation that, since 2003, has been mobilising Zimbabwean women to demonstrate in defence of their political, economic and social rights. In a fragmented country where women are marginalised by patriarchy, downtrodden by severe financial hardship (official inflation runs at 7 000%) and weakened by the acute lack of food or clothing for themselves and their children, Williams faces an almost insurmountable daily struggle simply to keep going. Under Mugabe’s dictatorship, the threat of state-sanctioned violence is ever-present. Despite being a movement dedicated to peaceful protest, Woza’s 70 000 members are routinely arrested, beaten and intimidated. As an outspoken critic of the current Zimbabwean regime, Williams is one of the most troublesome thorns in Mugabe’s side. In a region where anti-government protesters have an uncomfortable habit of disappearing or turning up dead, her day-to-day existence is hazardous: although her main residence is in Bulawayo, south-west Zimbabwe, she moves in and out of safe houses and never stays more than six months in one place. She has been arrested 33 times. Once she was abducted by police for 24 hours and driven 45km outside the city to an unknown destination. “They were telling me they were going to murder me and bury me and no one would ever know,” says Williams. “Luckily for me, we ended up in a police station and some of the police officers were very sympathetic. There was no food there but one of those police officers came and whispered into the window of our cell: ‘I’m bringing you food from your house. I know you are hungry. ‘ So sometimes in life when you suspect the absolute worst thing, God sends you an angel.” She says, when I ask her if she ever loses hope in humanity, that this is her answer: finding goodness where you least expect it. Even at her lowest point in that prison yard, forced to sit for hours in the sunshine, her skin burning and her spirits shattered, something happened to salvage her hopes and keep her going. “My colleagues came and told me that Barack Obama had won and was going to be the next president of America and it was — ” She breaks off, then emits a loud squeal of delight: “YES! And that made the pain not so bad.” In person, Jenni Williams looks as strong as she sounds. She has a broad face, substantial shoulders and thick, powerful arms. Her hair is braided in tight plaits that snake across her skull. She is mixed race — her mechanic father, who was absent for most of her upbringing, was black. Her mother Margaret is the daughter of an IRA man who emigrated to what was then Rhodesia from County Armagh. He became a gold prospector and married a local woman from the Matabele tribe. Williams readily admits that dissidence runs in the family: “It’s an incredible mix of this Irish and this Matabelean nation, which is a fighting nation. My grandmother was once arrested during the early 80s because the Mugabe regime said she had arms caches. That’s the melting pot that I come from.” At first the combination of her looks and her history can make Williams seem a slightly forbidding presence, but as soon as you talk to her you realise that she has an internal composure that gives her a tender, almost maternal quality. She comes across as a protector rather than an aggressor. When she talks, it is in a bubbling stream of flat Zimbabwean vowels spliced with laughter. She smiles a lot. We meet on one of her infrequent visits to the UK — she is deliberately vague about her movements in case the Zimbabwean authorities attempt to stop her, but she has the backing of Amnesty International and this time has been able to move around relatively freely. “We [Woza] get scared like anyone else,” she says. “But I think what gives us the commitment to continue to do the things we do is that we speak 100% the truth, and we speak it from the moral authority that we are the mothers of the nation, and if your mother cannot speak out on your behalf then you have no one that will speak for you. So that is why we are committed to doing this: because we want a better future for our children.” The horrible irony for Williams is that being the mother of a troubled nation means she finds it increasingly difficult to be the mother of her own family. Her husband Michael, an electrician, and her three adult children — one daughter, Natalie (28) from her first marriage, and two sons, Christopher (24) and Richard (22) — all live in the UK. It would be too dangerous for them to stay in Zimbabwe. When Woza organised its first Valentine’s Day march in 2003 (14 February, with its connotations of love and understanding, is a crucial date for the organisation, which promotes strategic nonviolence), Christopher, then 18, was arrested for handing out roses. Although the Zimbabwean Constitution grants the right to peaceful protest, the authorities argue that it cannot be carried out in the streets without prior notification. “I couldn’t do anything,” says Williams now, twisting her hands on the table in front of her. “It was just deeply frustrating for me to be a mother and see that my child had now gotten arrested for something that I was doing, and I was helpless. And so with Christopher’s arrest, my mother-in-law [who lives in the UK] got a little bit worried and said: ‘Look, please can we have the kids?’ “Also, because of my activism there were threats that they would be taken and put in the youth militia, where they train these kids to be violent, so I had no other option but to allow my two sons, who were still living in the house, to come and be in the UK. My daughter is much older; she had already left home. “It’s not easy for me to live apart from them. But we are very, very busy leading this organisation. I already work 14 to 15-hour days. There’s no way right now I can be a mother to my children because I’m too occupied being a mother to the nation.” Does she feel guilty about the choice she has made, about placing the political over the personal? “No, I don’t because I know and they know and we all understand and discuss these issues and they know why we’re doing it. So it’s not a matter of guilt. I miss them terribly. I miss my husband terribly. But I know it’s for them I’m doing it, and they know that, too.” Much of her life has been spent taking care of other people — at the age of 16 she dropped out of school to help her single mother care for her six siblings. And, like the Woza members, 70% of whom have not completed secondary education, she has experienced at first hand the vicious hardships of a Zimbabwean upbringing: in 1994, her eldest brother died of HIV/Aids, and because of her mixed heritage she has experienced racism from both sides of the ethnic divide. “In some ways, my blood has been too black to be beautiful,” she says sadly. “In other ways, my skin has been too white to be right. And yeah, it’s been a problem … My first marriage failed because, at the wedding ceremony, my ex-husband’s mother and father arrived at the wedding and the reality that I was mixed race hit them when they saw my mother and they saw my brothers, who are much darker than me, and they just couldn’t take it and they left the ceremony. They hounded my husband with all this stuff about the son of Ham and all this racist rhetoric, and: ‘You’re going to have black children’ and our marriage failed as a result of that. “And now under Mugabe, quite often police officers who do not know me, who do not know my background, will make all sorts of racist [anti-white] comments to me and so I’ve also had that … So it hasn’t been easy.” But perhaps it was this sense of never quite belonging, of having to prove herself in the face of adversity, that gave Williams the sheer single-mindedness she has needed to pursue what she believes is right in a land where the idea of justice is, at best, illusory. “Seeing my mother want something better for me and seeing her sacrifices [as] a single mother raising seven children — it motivated me a lot … It was her as a role model and the fact I had seen so much discrimination that made me want to become a human rights defender.” In what she refers to as “my previous life”, Williams ran her own public relations company. From 1994 to 2002 the business was so successful that it won a sizeable contract to do all the communications for the Zimbabwean Farmers’ Union. This brought Williams directly into conflict with the government — Mugabe’s controversial policy of land reform enables white farmers to be forced off their properties in order to “redistribute” wealth. “It was very hot and heavy and I was under threat,” says Williams. “The police kept visiting the offices. It was just impossible. It ended up losing me my company.” Enraged by the injustice of what happened, Williams became politically active. A year later, Woza was formed. Its grassroots members, many of whom come to the organisation from church groups, are the ordinary women of Zimbabwe who would otherwise remain voiceless — the seamstresses, the vegetable sellers and hairdressers. Williams leads regular street demonstrations, during which the protesters sing gospel songs and carry brooms, embodying their desire to sweep the government clean. It is a terrifying process: “Sometimes when we are singing, we are extremely discordant because, you know, your mouth is dry, you’re scared and you’re watching out the whole time for the police.” Dispiritingly, Williams says that there has been no noticeable improvement in conditions since the power-sharing agreement brokered in September between Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition. “We had huge expectations that it would have … but we have not noticed any change. In fact, in some ways we can say the pressure on us has increased because post the signing of this deal, I then found myself back in prison. And after having made bail — and it was a huge legal battle — we then found that we were restricted to a 40km radius, and that has never happened before. “Since Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in, there is more food on the shelves, but our members certainly cannot afford to buy that food. There’s 94% unemployment, and the 6% that’s left over probably cannot even afford to pay for their bus transport into work. “Our members, what are they going to do? They can’t afford the school fees. They’re desperate for their children to get educated. The decision is: do I feed this child right now or do I buy chalk so they can go to school? And that’s a horrible choice that parents are being forced to make in Zimbabwe. So daily life is just horrific.” In prison, conditions are even worse. “It’s a living nightmare,” says Williams. “It’s a death sentence.” At mealtimes food is so scarce that the portions are measured out in teaspoons. After Williams’s three-week incarceration last October, a female prisoner begged her to leave behind her underwear. “They said: ‘We have not seen a pair of panties for two or three years while we’ve been in prison.’ And, I mean, someone can be stripped of their dignity, but if you’re a woman you really want to be able to have a pair of panties — it’s something basic.” She has a vivid memory of being taken to a men’s prison and seeing hundreds of skeletal inmates in the courtyard. “These were men who were — what’s the word — you can’t say crouching because that implies a bigger body space — people were so thin that they looked like spiders, when they close themselves up and you can’t see any limbs. They were like ghosts: rows and rows of ghosts.” Although she would never admit to it, it is clear that the prospect of being sent back there fills Williams with dread. The trial relating to her October arrest on charges of disturbing the peace is still ongoing — at the time of going to press, Williams and her co-leader Magodonga Mahlangu were due to appear in front of the Bulawayo magistrate’s court on 30 April. Meanwhile, the daily struggle continues. Williams refuses to dwell on the negative, and perhaps this is a necessary technique of self-preservation: how else would she be able to carry on fighting, with such good-humoured courage and tenacity, in the face of such intimidation and danger? Before she leaves, I tell her that I know no one who possesses the necessary strength to do what she does. “I know lots!” she shrieks happily, shrugging herself into a huge padded black coat. “I know all the Woza members. We are constantly arrested, hundreds of us, and we make each other strong, defend our rights and help each other cope. So I am in extremely good company.” She zips up her coat and gives me a warm hug. Then she walks away, back to fight the battles that no one else dares to face. – guardian.co.uk (c) Guardian News and Media 2009
The Woman Who Took On Mugabe
October 12, 2009Web Site: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-05-10-the-woman-who-took-on-mugabe The woman who took on Mugabe Weekly Mail and Guardian May 10 2009 08:15 Of all the terrible things that have happened to Jenni Williams over the past six years — and there have been many — there is one incident that stands out from the rest. It was October 2008. She had been arrested by Zimbabwean police after taking part in a peaceful protest outside a government complex. The marchers were asking for food aid, in a population where three-quarters of the population is starving under Robert Mugabe’s oppressive regime. Bundled into a police van, Williams and a colleague were taken to prison and denied bail. She was in jail for three weeks. On one “particularly bad day” Williams recalls being forced by the guards to sit for hours in the burning sunshine. “I am of light skin, they knew I was going to get very badly sunburnt, and we were just made to sit there for some form of punishment,” she says. “And when we tried to object, they started accusing myself and my colleague of being lesbians because she had been beaten and I was rubbing her back. “So it was a very bad day, and our lawyer had not been able to come to give us any update on our appeal process and I just thought: I don’t know how we’re going to get through this.” At 47, Jenni Williams has experienced more brutality than most of us will face in a lifetime. She is the founder of the underground activist movement Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza), an organisation that, since 2003, has been mobilising Zimbabwean women to demonstrate in defence of their political, economic and social rights. In a fragmented country where women are marginalised by patriarchy, downtrodden by severe financial hardship (official inflation runs at 7 000%) and weakened by the acute lack of food or clothing for themselves and their children, Williams faces an almost insurmountable daily struggle simply to keep going. Under Mugabe’s dictatorship, the threat of state-sanctioned violence is ever-present. Despite being a movement dedicated to peaceful protest, Woza’s 70 000 members are routinely arrested, beaten and intimidated. As an outspoken critic of the current Zimbabwean regime, Williams is one of the most troublesome thorns in Mugabe’s side. In a region where anti-government protesters have an uncomfortable habit of disappearing or turning up dead, her day-to-day existence is hazardous: although her main residence is in Bulawayo, south-west Zimbabwe, she moves in and out of safe houses and never stays more than six months in one place. She has been arrested 33 times. Once she was abducted by police for 24 hours and driven 45km outside the city to an unknown destination. “They were telling me they were going to murder me and bury me and no one would ever know,” says Williams. “Luckily for me, we ended up in a police station and some of the police officers were very sympathetic. There was no food there but one of those police officers came and whispered into the window of our cell: ‘I’m bringing you food from your house. I know you are hungry. ‘ So sometimes in life when you suspect the absolute worst thing, God sends you an angel.” She says, when I ask her if she ever loses hope in humanity, that this is her answer: finding goodness where you least expect it. Even at her lowest point in that prison yard, forced to sit for hours in the sunshine, her skin burning and her spirits shattered, something happened to salvage her hopes and keep her going. “My colleagues came and told me that Barack Obama had won and was going to be the next president of America and it was — ” She breaks off, then emits a loud squeal of delight: “YES! And that made the pain not so bad.” In person, Jenni Williams looks as strong as she sounds. She has a broad face, substantial shoulders and thick, powerful arms. Her hair is braided in tight plaits that snake across her skull. She is mixed race — her mechanic father, who was absent for most of her upbringing, was black. Her mother Margaret is the daughter of an IRA man who emigrated to what was then Rhodesia from County Armagh. He became a gold prospector and married a local woman from the Matabele tribe. Williams readily admits that dissidence runs in the family: “It’s an incredible mix of this Irish and this Matabelean nation, which is a fighting nation. My grandmother was once arrested during the early 80s because the Mugabe regime said she had arms caches. That’s the melting pot that I come from.” At first the combination of her looks and her history can make Williams seem a slightly forbidding presence, but as soon as you talk to her you realise that she has an internal composure that gives her a tender, almost maternal quality. She comes across as a protector rather than an aggressor. When she talks, it is in a bubbling stream of flat Zimbabwean vowels spliced with laughter. She smiles a lot. We meet on one of her infrequent visits to the UK — she is deliberately vague about her movements in case the Zimbabwean authorities attempt to stop her, but she has the backing of Amnesty International and this time has been able to move around relatively freely. “We [Woza] get scared like anyone else,” she says. “But I think what gives us the commitment to continue to do the things we do is that we speak 100% the truth, and we speak it from the moral authority that we are the mothers of the nation, and if your mother cannot speak out on your behalf then you have no one that will speak for you. So that is why we are committed to doing this: because we want a better future for our children.” The horrible irony for Williams is that being the mother of a troubled nation means she finds it increasingly difficult to be the mother of her own family. Her husband Michael, an electrician, and her three adult children — one daughter, Natalie (28) from her first marriage, and two sons, Christopher (24) and Richard (22) — all live in the UK. It would be too dangerous for them to stay in Zimbabwe. When Woza organised its first Valentine’s Day march in 2003 (14 February, with its connotations of love and understanding, is a crucial date for the organisation, which promotes strategic nonviolence), Christopher, then 18, was arrested for handing out roses. Although the Zimbabwean Constitution grants the right to peaceful protest, the authorities argue that it cannot be carried out in the streets without prior notification. “I couldn’t do anything,” says Williams now, twisting her hands on the table in front of her. “It was just deeply frustrating for me to be a mother and see that my child had now gotten arrested for something that I was doing, and I was helpless. And so with Christopher’s arrest, my mother-in-law [who lives in the UK] got a little bit worried and said: ‘Look, please can we have the kids?’ “Also, because of my activism there were threats that they would be taken and put in the youth militia, where they train these kids to be violent, so I had no other option but to allow my two sons, who were still living in the house, to come and be in the UK. My daughter is much older; she had already left home. “It’s not easy for me to live apart from them. But we are very, very busy leading this organisation. I already work 14 to 15-hour days. There’s no way right now I can be a mother to my children because I’m too occupied being a mother to the nation.” Does she feel guilty about the choice she has made, about placing the political over the personal? “No, I don’t because I know and they know and we all understand and discuss these issues and they know why we’re doing it. So it’s not a matter of guilt. I miss them terribly. I miss my husband terribly. But I know it’s for them I’m doing it, and they know that, too.” Much of her life has been spent taking care of other people — at the age of 16 she dropped out of school to help her single mother care for her six siblings. And, like the Woza members, 70% of whom have not completed secondary education, she has experienced at first hand the vicious hardships of a Zimbabwean upbringing: in 1994, her eldest brother died of HIV/Aids, and because of her mixed heritage she has experienced racism from both sides of the ethnic divide. “In some ways, my blood has been too black to be beautiful,” she says sadly. “In other ways, my skin has been too white to be right. And yeah, it’s been a problem … My first marriage failed because, at the wedding ceremony, my ex-husband’s mother and father arrived at the wedding and the reality that I was mixed race hit them when they saw my mother and they saw my brothers, who are much darker than me, and they just couldn’t take it and they left the ceremony. They hounded my husband with all this stuff about the son of Ham and all this racist rhetoric, and: ‘You’re going to have black children’ and our marriage failed as a result of that. “And now under Mugabe, quite often police officers who do not know me, who do not know my background, will make all sorts of racist [anti-white] comments to me and so I’ve also had that … So it hasn’t been easy.” But perhaps it was this sense of never quite belonging, of having to prove herself in the face of adversity, that gave Williams the sheer single-mindedness she has needed to pursue what she believes is right in a land where the idea of justice is, at best, illusory. “Seeing my mother want something better for me and seeing her sacrifices [as] a single mother raising seven children — it motivated me a lot … It was her as a role model and the fact I had seen so much discrimination that made me want to become a human rights defender.” In what she refers to as “my previous life”, Williams ran her own public relations company. From 1994 to 2002 the business was so successful that it won a sizeable contract to do all the communications for the Zimbabwean Farmers’ Union. This brought Williams directly into conflict with the government — Mugabe’s controversial policy of land reform enables white farmers to be forced off their properties in order to “redistribute” wealth. “It was very hot and heavy and I was under threat,” says Williams. “The police kept visiting the offices. It was just impossible. It ended up losing me my company.” Enraged by the injustice of what happened, Williams became politically active. A year later, Woza was formed. Its grassroots members, many of whom come to the organisation from church groups, are the ordinary women of Zimbabwe who would otherwise remain voiceless — the seamstresses, the vegetable sellers and hairdressers. Williams leads regular street demonstrations, during which the protesters sing gospel songs and carry brooms, embodying their desire to sweep the government clean. It is a terrifying process: “Sometimes when we are singing, we are extremely discordant because, you know, your mouth is dry, you’re scared and you’re watching out the whole time for the police.” Dispiritingly, Williams says that there has been no noticeable improvement in conditions since the power-sharing agreement brokered in September between Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition. “We had huge expectations that it would have … but we have not noticed any change. In fact, in some ways we can say the pressure on us has increased because post the signing of this deal, I then found myself back in prison. And after having made bail — and it was a huge legal battle — we then found that we were restricted to a 40km radius, and that has never happened before. “Since Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in, there is more food on the shelves, but our members certainly cannot afford to buy that food. There’s 94% unemployment, and the 6% that’s left over probably cannot even afford to pay for their bus transport into work. “Our members, what are they going to do? They can’t afford the school fees. They’re desperate for their children to get educated. The decision is: do I feed this child right now or do I buy chalk so they can go to school? And that’s a horrible choice that parents are being forced to make in Zimbabwe. So daily life is just horrific.” In prison, conditions are even worse. “It’s a living nightmare,” says Williams. “It’s a death sentence.” At mealtimes food is so scarce that the portions are measured out in teaspoons. After Williams’s three-week incarceration last October, a female prisoner begged her to leave behind her underwear. “They said: ‘We have not seen a pair of panties for two or three years while we’ve been in prison.’ And, I mean, someone can be stripped of their dignity, but if you’re a woman you really want to be able to have a pair of panties — it’s something basic.” She has a vivid memory of being taken to a men’s prison and seeing hundreds of skeletal inmates in the courtyard. “These were men who were — what’s the word — you can’t say crouching because that implies a bigger body space — people were so thin that they looked like spiders, when they close themselves up and you can’t see any limbs. They were like ghosts: rows and rows of ghosts.” Although she would never admit to it, it is clear that the prospect of being sent back there fills Williams with dread. The trial relating to her October arrest on charges of disturbing the peace is still ongoing — at the time of going to press, Williams and her co-leader Magodonga Mahlangu were due to appear in front of the Bulawayo magistrate’s court on 30 April. Meanwhile, the daily struggle continues. Williams refuses to dwell on the negative, and perhaps this is a necessary technique of self-preservation: how else would she be able to carry on fighting, with such good-humoured courage and tenacity, in the face of such intimidation and danger? Before she leaves, I tell her that I know no one who possesses the necessary strength to do what she does. “I know lots!” she shrieks happily, shrugging herself into a huge padded black coat. “I know all the Woza members. We are constantly arrested, hundreds of us, and we make each other strong, defend our rights and help each other cope. So I am in extremely good company.” She zips up her coat and gives me a warm hug. Then she walks away, back to fight the battles that no one else dares to face. – guardian.co.uk (c) Guardian News and Media 2009 Sourced from http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-05-10-the-woman-who-took-on-mugabe Shared by craig lock (“Information and Inspiration Distributer”) http://www.craiglockbooks.com http://www.selfgrowth.com/experts/craig_lock.html The various books* that Craig “felt inspired to write” are available at http://www.creativekiwis.com/books.html www.lulu.com/craiglock and http://www.myspace.com/writercraig
