Category: Uncategorized

Shoot To Kill

We Will Not Hesitate To SHOOT TO KILL Protesters This Time – Govt

Deputy Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Energy Mutodi.

The government has warned that it will ruthlessly crush any demonstrations by opposition and civil society organisations without a second thought. In fact, the government will go as far as issuing shoot-to-kill orders to the police and other security services. This chilling and ominous warning was delivered by Deputy Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Energy Mutodi.

iHarare has established that the warning was delivered because civil servants are planning to protest against poor remuneration and the worsening economic conditions in the country. Opposition groups and civil society organisations are also planning to hold massive demonstrations to commemorate the deaths of the people killed by the government last January.

According to human rights groups, at least 17 people were killed while women were also r_aped women in the brutal crackdown that followed the Shutdown Zimbabwe protests against a fuel increase. Hundreds were reported to have been assaulted and arrested when the government responded in a heavy-handed manner to the protests.

Speaking to the Daily News, Energy Mutodi said, They (the opposition) are desperate to maintain political relevance among their supporters, having lied to them that they would overthrow the government before the end of last year.

We will not tolerate anarchy and as such the shoot-to-kill policy that we have authorised against rogue machete-wielding miners will apply to those who will participate in violent and unlawful demonstrations. Police will use maximum force in dealing with whoever intends to cause disorder and disturb the peaceful environment that we created for the good of our country.

The law stipulates that police must be informed of any intention to hold a demonstration. The government is fully aware that the MDC wants to see chaos prevailing in the country so that it becomes ungovernable.

However, MDC National Youth Chairperson Obey Sithole scoffed at Mutodi’s threats and insisted that the party would not be cowed by threats. Said Sithole,

As young people, we are going to do everything within our means to remind the world that on that day a gross crime against humanity was committed under (President Emmerson) Mnangagwa’s instruction.

We will continue to demand answers on the efforts that have been made to bring the culprits to book. We are going to have commemorations across the country.

It is our belief that justice delayed is justice denied. Therefore, in the absence of a clear course of justice, we are committed and determined to enforce the presence of justice.

Thus, we are certainly going to have a programme to commemorate our heroes who did not only die but were killed by the current ruthless and clueless regime.

The government has denied that the brutalities were committed by serving soldiers and policemen and has placed the blame on “bogus” soldiers and policeman.

Political Affiliation

Everyone deserves good and clean water regardless of political affiliation. Everyone deserves good food regardless of political affiliation. Corruption must come to an end, it is our right.

The right to education is not achievable by threatening teachers and school leadership. Basic school right is under threat. Iron fist leadership does not promote the best interests of learners.

Even the health sector is under threat. Doctors, nurses and midwives etc those in the health sector are being threatened. We have seen it and continue to see it.

We have an obligation to align our laws with the constitution of Zimbabwe. We should not wait for a national disaster to happen before we take action.

According to a report by the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), discrimination in the distribution of food and other aid remained problematic in the month of December 2019 with a 22.7% contribution to the total recorded violations. The violations also affected citizens’ other rights and freedoms such as freedom of association.

The ongoing drought has rendered a number of citizens dependent on the aid from both the government and humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGO’s). Communities have been receiving food aid and agricultural inputs as the rainy season has started. Unfortunately, the aid has been manipulated in many cases for political mileage and as a retribution tool. Supporters and perceived supporters of the MDC continued to be targeted with this form of discrimination as they were punished for their political affiliation.

How the Loss of Property Rights Caused Zimbabwe’s Collapse

For many years, Zimbabwe was known as the “jewel” of Africa. Rich in raw materials and productive farmland, it grew enough food to feed its people and export the rest. The farm sector supplied about 60 percent of the inputs to the manufacturing base—so agriculture was truly the backbone of the economy.

Yet, unlike most other African countries, Zimbabwe had a sophisticated manufacturing base as well. That sector employed thousands of workers who made things such as textiles, cement, chemicals, wood products, and steel. Zimbabwe also had a strong banking sector, vibrant tourism, and more dams than any other Sub-Saharan country except South Africa. Most people trusted the police and believed the court system would treat cases fairly; indeed, the low crime rate rivaled that of many European countries. Perhaps most important, the country had a secure rule of law, with a modern property rights system that allowed owners to use the equity in their land to develop and build new businesses, or expand their old ones. All that led to strong real GDP growth, which averaged 4.3 percent per year after independence in 1980. 

1. The Disparity in Farmland
Despite those successes, the notion of land reform had political appeal prior to 2000, when President Robert Mugabe began seizing commercial farms. Anyone flying over Zimbabwe on a clear day would have seen huge differences in the farming regions, and perhaps better understood the country’s long-standing concern with land reform. In some areas of the country, there were vast tracts of well-irrigated commercial farms, producing thousands of acres of tobacco, cotton, or other cash crops. In other regions, small, dusty communal farms were crowded together, typically suffering from a lack of water. Those farms produced maize, groundnuts, and other staple crops. About 4,500 white families owned most of the commercial farms. In contrast, 840,000 black farmers eked out a living on the communal lands—a legacy of colonialism.
More than 80 percent of white-owned commercial farms had changed hands since Mugabe came to power in 1980, and less than 5 percent of white farmers could trace their ancestry back to the original British colonists who arrived in the 1890s. Still, the disparities between blacks and whites fueled calls by Mugabe and others to return the fertile “stolen lands” to black Zimbabweans. 

2. However, what many observers missed was that the fertility of the land wasn’t determined just by rainfall or quality of the soil. Although communal lands tended to be in drier areas, many were directly adjacent to commercial farms or in high-rainfall areas. In addition, there were commercial farms in very arid parts of Zimbabwe. Yet in nearly all cases, the communal areas were dry and scorched, whereas the commercial lands were green and lush. 

3. The Disparity in Property Rights
Why the difference then? A good part of the answer lies in the difference in property rights between the two areas. Commercial farms had secure property titles that gave farmers large incentives to efficiently manage the land and allowed a banking sector to loan funds for machinery, irrigation pipes, seeds, and tools. Those institutions developed the most sophisticated water delivery system in Southern Africa (excluding South Africa). Of the 12,430 dams in this entire region, an astonishing 10,747 are in Zimbabwe. Although Zimbabwe has only 7 percent of the land area of the region, it has 93 percent of all the reservoir water surface area. 

4. That gave the country a tremendous cushion against droughts. Large commercial farms also employed about 350,000 black workers and often provided money for local schools and clinics. Small-scale commercial farms, run by about 8,500 black farmers, had access to credit and were also productive.
Communal lands, on the other hand, were typically plagued by tragedy-of-the-commons types of problems, as the land became overused and greatly eroded over time. In addition, without property titles, there was often squabbling over land use rights between village residents and the village chief, since each village had complicated use restrictions on how the land could or could not be used.
Unfortunately, the vital role that property rights played in underpinning the Zimbabwe economy was invisible to most people. What was immediately apparent to any observer was the enormous and tangible contrast between the vast and lush commercial farms and the small and dusty communal ones. War veterans saw the commercial farms as a just prize for having supported Mugabe during the independence movement 20 years earlier, and they continued to clamor for the commercial farmland prior to the 2000 parliamentary election. Nevertheless, Zimbabwe’s constitution forbade the wholesale seizure of the land without proper compensation, and the law-abiding people of Zimbabwe supported that notion by and large. In early 2000, they rejected Mugabe’s attempt to broaden the state’s confiscatory powers in a voter referendum. In addition, in a 2000 poll by the South Africa–based Helen Suzman Foundation, only 9 percent of Zimbabweans said land reform was the most important issue in the election.
Some of Mugabe’s advisers apparently knew better than to upend property rights. In early 2000, Mugabe was handed a confidential memo from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the country’s central bank. The memo predicted that going forward with farmland seizures would result in a pullout of foreign investment, defaults on farm bank loans, and a massive decline in agricultural production. 

5. The memo would prove to be staggeringly prescient. Unfortunately, Mugabe ignored it. Between 2000 and 2003, his government went ahead and authorized the seizure of nearly all the 4,500 commercial farms. The official goal was to divide the farms into hundreds of thousands of small plots for traditional black farmers. In practice, most plots ended up in the hands of Mugabe’s political supporters and government officials, whose knowledge of farming was meager.
The Economic Implosion
The predictions of the central bank memo would come to haunt ordinary Zimbabweans. During the next four years, the economy began to implode with increasing speed. By 2003 it was shrinking faster than any other in the world, at 18 percent per year. 

6. Inflation was running at 500 percent, and Zimbabwean dollars lost more than 99 percent of their real exchange value. 

7. Today the economy continues its extraordinary freefall. Here are some other things that have happened since 2000:

Financial investors have fled, wondering if other businesses might be seized next. Foreign direct investment fell to zero by 2001, and the World Bank’s risk premium on investment in Zimbabwe shot up from 4 percent to 20 percent that year as well.

Because the government no longer enforced titles to land, there was far less collateral for bank loans. Dozens of banks collapsed; those that did not collapse refused to extend credit to farmers.

Commercial farmland lost an estimated three-quarters of its aggregate value between 2000 and 2001 alone as a result of lost property titles. That one-year loss, by my estimates, was $5.3 billion—more than three and a half times the amount of all the foreign aid given by the World Bank to Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980. 

8. Without equity in the banking system, vast networks of economic activity collapsed across all sectors of the economy. Seven hundred companies closed by the end of 2001, as industrial production declined by 10.5 percent in 2001 and an estimated 17.5 percent in 2002.

9. The demise of the agricultural sector led to widespread famine, as the commercial farmers left for other African countries such as Zambia, Nigeria, and Ghana, taking with them their intricate knowledge of farming practices.

The Zimbabwean government has blamed the country’s economic collapse on a variety of external factors, including Western conspiracies and racism. Mugabe’s most potent excuse, however, proved to be the drought. As he reiterated at the United Nations summit in September 2005, Zimbabwe’s economy is suffering because of “continuous years of drought.” 

10. In fact, dams in Zimbabwe were full throughout the economic downturn. 

11. Unfortunately, irrigation pipes are no longer owned by anyone, so they are being dug up for scrap in a free-for-all. Some are even melted down to make coffin handles, one of the few growth industries left in the country.
Yet, some people seem to believe Mugabe. The 2001–02 drought, for example, was called one of the worst in the past 50 years by an IMF official. 

12. In fact, after I analyzed the data from Zimbabwe’s 93 rainfall stations, it turned out that the 2001–02 “drought” came in 13th in the past 50 years, with rainfall in the 2001–02 planting year only 22 percent below average. Indeed, as Figure 1 shows, the close relationship between rainfall and GDP growth sharply disconnected in 2000, the first year of the land reforms. Subsequent years show above-average or average rainfall, even as the economy continued to plummet.
My econometric estimates indicate that the independent effect of the land reforms, after controlling for rainfall, foreign aid, capital, and labor productivity, led to a 12.5 percent annual decline in GDP growth for each of the four years between 2000 and 2003. 

13. The drop in rainfall in the 2001–02 growing season contributed to less than one-seventh of the overall downturn. Without above-average rains, Zimbabwe’s economy would have been in even worse shape, hard as that is to believe.
Zimbabwe thus provides a compelling case study of the perils of ignoring the rule of law and property rights when enacting (often well-intentioned) land reforms. We have seen how Zimbabwe’s markets collapsed extraordinarily quickly after 2000, with a domino-like effect. The lesson learned here is that well-protected private property rights are crucial for economic growth and serve as the market economy’s linchpin. Once those rights are damaged or removed, economies may be prone to collapse with surprising and devastating speed. That is because of the subsequent loss of investor trust, the vanishing of land equity, and the disappearance of entrepreneurial knowledge and incentives—all of which are essential ingredients for economic growth. I hope this lesson will not be lost on other countries that find themselves at the crossroads of land reform.

By Craig J. Richardson

Foul Play

Exclusive: How Zimbabwe VP General Chiwenga had a hand on Solomon Mujuru death

By Our Reporter / Thursday, 26 Dec 2019 03:54AM / Leave a Comment / Tags: Solomon Mujuru death, Zimbabwe VP General Chiwenga / 80 views

HARARE-(MaraviPost)-General Solomon Mujuru died in 2011 in a fire at his Beatrice farmhouse just outside the capital Harare under mysterious circumstances

An inquest into Mujuru’s death concluded that there was no foul play despite speculation to the contrary.

General Constantino Guveya Chiwenga’s actions over the decades prove he might be responsible for Mujuru’s murder.
To Continue To The Content
He has proven to be a ruthless operator with no regards for his comrades and even his wives.

In 2012 Nehanda Radio reported that a senior army officer said that there is even more serious infighting within the army over Mujuru’s death.

This is because a secretly conducted investigation by the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and police is accused Chiwenga of killing Mujuru.

It’s become very clear that General Chiwenga was gunning to succeed President Robert Mugabe and so determined to eliminate anyone opposing his plans.

According to the report Chiwenga was running a hit squad within Zanu PF and the army which is seeking to assassinate anyone that he views as an obstacle.

Chiwenga’s bitterness with Solomon Mujuru

Solomon Mujuru and Dabengwa
In the 1980s it became public knowledge that Solomon Mujuru was sleeping with Chiwenga’s wife.

The wife (not named for legal reasons) is also an ex-combatant.

When Chiwenga was tipped off the affair soon after he returned from his post in Bulawayo where in 1981 was attested to the newly formed Zimbabwe National Army as a brigadier commanding First Brigade.

One lunchtime Chiwenga returned home only to find his wife naked in his bedroom and Mujuru had escaped through an open window.

Mujuru forgot his jacket and beret in Chiwenga’s bedroom. Chiwenga as a junior to Mujuru could not confront him, but he sent his wife and kids packing.

Later on, after failing basic Officers course at the Zimbabwe Staff College he bribed a junior officer to give him answers for practical Intermediate Staff Course.

It is alleged that he accepted a green coded paper with suggested solutions which are available only after the exam.

Chiwenga was expelled from the course after refusing to name the junior officer who had given him the paper.

He then went on to shoot himself through the right shoulder in an attempt to end his life and was admitted at Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare.

To save himself from the military job, Chiwenga told President Mugabe that his senior Mujuru and the wife he had sent away affected his performance.

He presented the Mujuru’s items that he had left in his bedroom.

Mugabe gave Chiwenga a lifeline and since then Mujuru and him only had a working relationship.

Chiwenga and his relationships

Chiwenga has been married and divorced several times. His known first wife is in Mozambique and is a war veteran.

Chiwenga son Tawanda, far right
He then married another ex-combated who now lives in Nuneaton in United Kingdom and have four children, all boys.

Soon after he cohabited with a Harare socialite and businesswoman only identified as Mwamuka.

Their relationship went sour after Mwamuka one lunchtime turned up at the officers’ mess at KG6 barracks and lashed out at Chiwenga. She scolded him that he was not man enough and barren.

She told him of his poor bed performance in front of his colleagues.

Chiwenga was so embarrassed and the wife was later restrained.

Chiwenga parted ways with Mwamuka soon after .

Jocelyn Chiwenga kicked out of farm
Jocelyn Chiwenga kicked out of farm
In 1998 he later married Jocelyn Jacobsen (née Mauchaza) who was a waiter at Jobs Nightspot in Harare and they divorced in 2012.

There were no children from his marriage to Jacobsen, but in June 2009, as the wife of Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) commander, grabbed the triplets of a poverty-stricken mother who appealed for help on national television.

Chiwenga is reported to have pulled up at the young mothers Unit F lodgings in a convoy of Mercs, accompanied by army bodyguards and said she was taking the three babies.

The whereabouts of those kids is unknown today. Their divorce ended so bitter and went all the way to Supreme Court exposing a vast amount of wealth.

Chiwenga also dragged his ex-wife to court over missing guns telling the courts Jocelyn used to beat him up with fists.

Chiwenga with his influence used the military to evict and bar her from his properties.

In 2011 he married Marry (Mary) Mubaiwa, a former model and wife of footballer Shingi Kawondera, while still married to Jacobsen.

Marry’s relationship to Chiwenga was through the late heroine Kiki Divaris whose Miss Zimbabwe project was a prostitution ring to recruit sex workers for chefs.

Joice Mujuru and Oppah Muchinguri revealed in past interviews that these practices all started from Mozambique during the war of liberation and late Robert Mugabe, Solomon Mujuru and all used to get women of their choices that way.

In 2012 Marry bore their first child, a son, and a year later she bore a girl. In 2019, suffering from an undisclosed ailment, Chiwenga checked into a South African hospital.

A fracas arose when his wife Marry visited him. She was later charged with attempted murder.

In December 2019 Chiwenga filed for divorce from Marry citing infidelity issues, forged marriage certificate and that she takes drugs.

It is also reported that one of their child’s DNA failed to match his.

He grabbed his children and handed over Marry’s kids with footballers to her mother. Right now Marry spends her Christmas in prison.

Chiwenga is currently linked to other two women. Reports suggest that he plans to reunite with his UK based wife, a move ZAOGA leader Ezekiel Guti has engineered .Chiwenga has a son who is a pastor in that church.

Kawome: Is she engaged to Chiwenga?
The other woman is Uncle Roland Muchegwa’s ex-wife, Michelle Kawome.

Reports say Michelle is very unlucky when it comes to love relationships.

After leaving an abusive relationship with South Africa based Zimbabwe tycoon Uncle Roland, she fell in love with a top married Harare lawyer who died behind wheels in December 2017.

Kawome recently announced she is engaged to a mysterious man.

Who is it? Mystery surrounds the circumstances leading to the fatal accident that claimed the life of prominent Harare lawyer, Edmore Jori who left behind his wife and three children.

Chiwenga’s Greatest Betrayal

On 6 November 2017, when Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa was dismissed by President Robert Mugabe, he fled the country two days later, citing “incessant threats” against his family.

At the time Chiwenga as army head was on an official visit to China, where he learned that Mugabe had ordered his arrest upon his return to Zimbabwe.

However, soldiers loyal to Chiwenga, disguised as baggage handlers, overpowered the police at the airport and cleared the way for his arrival on 12 November 2017.

On 13 November 2017, Chiwenga released a press statement chastising those responsible for the dismissals of government officials in the ruling ZANU-PF party.

He warned that the armed forces would be forced to intervene should the “purging” not stop.

In response, ZANU-PF’s spokesperson Simon Khaya-Moyo released a press statement accusing Chiwenga of “treasonable conduct”.

On 14 November it was reported that soldiers and armoured military vehicles were seen headed towards the capital, Harare.

Several roads were later blocked in the city including the one leading to President Robert Mugabe’s private residence, as well as one leading to the ZANU-PF aligned national broadcaster, Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC).

In the early hours of the next day the military spokesperson, Major General Sibusiso Moyo, appeared on ZBC Television announcing that the military had not taken over the country and that the president and his family were safe.

He also announced that the armed forces would be “targeting criminals around him [Mugabe] who are committing crimes… that are causing social and economic suffering in the country”.

It was later reported that several ZANU-PF politicians and government ministers were detained or arrested, including the finance minister, Ignatius Chombo

In all this, Chiwenga has been disloyal to a man who has been by his side throughout his career, Robert Mugabe.

Attempts to kill his Brother Apostle Talent Chiwenga

Hey ZANU PF supporters.

If you take your time and peruse through the above. You might see the link between ZANU PF failure to run institutions and the current threat to millions of lives in Zimbabwe.

You might also see that help from USA, UK other countries and organisations has been ongoing for decades. However, things have clearly got worse and the rhetoric is more insulting by the day.

If you are ZANU PF. Help your relatives on the ground by using your head to think.

Maybe if things improve without a ZANU PF Gvt, you might never need to send money home for basic essentials. You might only need to send money as tokens of appreciation.

Choose your country first not your party. Look at J Moyo, Kasukuwere and others. Chewed up and spat out like sugarcane chaff that is no longer sweet, or like used condoms with nothing inside.

Think ZANU PF supporters think.

https://www.usaid.gov/zimbabwe/agriculture-and-food-security

“It’s Your Responsibility To Put Food On The Table, Not Zanu PF,” – MP

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-aid-to-help-hundreds-of-thousands-of-zimbabweans-on-the-brink-of-starvation

Police recklessly opens live fire at fleeing kombi and injures three passengers with gun shots

Three passengers were shot and injured along Mutare Road in Msasa, Harare, after a police officer opened fire on a kombi whose driver had failed to stop at the Mabvuku turn-off roadblock.

Shupikai Kachaya (27), suffered an ankle injury, Dylan Chidhava (24), was injured on the left buttock, and Violet Wairesi (32), was injured on the right thigh. The injured passengers were taken to Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals where they are reportedly receiving treatment but are however believed to be in stable condition.

Zimbabwe Republic Police have confirmed the incident and apologised for the injuries, and they however believe it coulld have been avoided had the driver stopped at the roadblock.

National Police Spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi said a silver Nissan caravan commuter omnibus (registration number ADZ 5261) ignored a police roadblock at Mabvuku turn-off when the driver was signalled to stop. The police office then fired  two warning shots but the driver did not also stop. The police offer proceeded to fire at the kombi with the intention to deflate the tyres but he instead shot the passengers.

“The police found out that the driver had no driver’s licence and failed to obey police instructions to stop. There was no route authority, vehicle licence and passengers’ licence.”

The driver of the kombi has been charge with attempted murder for driving towards the police officer and reckless driving.

Our police force is full of idiots!!!! They should have avoided unnecessary injury and possibly death but they think their actions are justified 😳

“Zimbabwe Republic Police have confirmed the incident and apologised for the injuries, and they however believe it could have been avoided had the driver stopped at the roadblock.“

Didn’t the kombi have number plates or distinguishing marks? In any event it is reckless code of conduct to discharge a firearm where it would cause injury or death to innocent people, only in Zimbabwe does this kind of behavior occur.

Police shoot civilians

Once again, armed police manning a roadblock shot live bullets at fleeing commuter omnibus filled with passengers, and injured three innocent civilians. This is not the Zimbabwe we want. What will the authorities do about this? When will they sort out this behaviour? This behaviour is sickening, and this needs to END NOW!!

Excelgate

Zanu PF terrorist gang must stop abusing MDC regalia

We are deeply concerned by the sad developments that took place this evening at the SAPES Trust at the launch of Excelgate, a book written by Prof Jonathan Moyo, which exposes how Zanu PF rigged its way to power in 2018 with the help of the dirty hands of a compromised Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.

Hired youths clad in MDC regalia disrupted the event in a desperate attempt to mislead the nation and the world into believing they are MDC activists.

The MDC will never associate with such acts of barbarism only home to Zanu PF in the form of the Kwekwe based Alshabab, Chipangano and the notorious Mashurugwi.

Mnangagwa’s blue eyed boys must stop taking advantage of the man-made poverty in our midst to use their ill-gotten wealth to send youths for unruly errands. These youths require sustainable jobs and better education rather than being trained to become agents of terror to our peace loving citizenry.

While we implore the law enforcement agents to act the way they do to any dissenting voices, we also warn these unruly youths and their handlers to desist from abusing our party regalia forthwith.

Obey T. Sithole
MDC National Youth Chairperson.