Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Deadheads -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Estimated Prophet who wrote (21471)	7/14/2000 3:04:54 PM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Respond to of 49844

Verdict seconds away in FLa. tobacco case. turn on your TV

To: Estimated Prophet who wrote (21471)	7/14/2000 3:06:17 PM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 49844

Waving Your Hands, An Offence? Harare (Zimbabwe Independent, July 14, 2000) - Is waving your hands at a soccer match an offence? Only in Zimbabwe, it appears. The official allegation that people attending the World Cup qualifier between Zimbabwe and South Africa at the National Sports Stadium last Sunday were guilty of provoking the riot police by giving the MDC's Chinja sign is a telling comment on the status of human rights in Zimbabwe. A good-natured crowd of 40 000 - many of them families out for the day - were teargassed and stampeded by a poorly-trained and ill-disciplined riot police with standing instructions to crush any manifestation of support for the opposition. For make no mistake, the shocking events at last Sunday's match which saw 13 innocent lives snuffed out can be directly linked to the crackdown currently taking place in cities such as Harare and Kwekwe. That is the "political agenda" we are all aware of, not the harmless gestures John Fashanu foolishly referred to after his meeting with President Mugabe and his nephew Leo on Monday. Yes there were "hooligans" present at the soccer match on Sunday afternoon - and they all wore riot police uniforms. Commissioner Augustine Chihuri's strong-arm tactics may impress his political masters. But what will the world think of Zimbabwe's capacity to host matches of this sort? This was another own goal. The appointment of a police board of inquiry - to be advised by Fashanu but otherwise comprising senior police officers - is unacceptable. Any inquiry needs to be independent of the force it is investigating. And given Fashanu's anxiety to reflect Zanu PF perspectives, it must be asked what use he is going to be? A political scenario is unfolding of a beleaguered regime lashing out in all directions at its opponents after their gains in last month's poll. It is political retribution writ large. On the farms President Mugabe's militias are maintaining their terror tactics against farmers and farm workers whose sole crime was to support the MDC. Army officers from Pomona barracks and civil servants have been helping themselves to plots on Calgary Farm, as this paper disclosed last week. Until the disruption Calgary Farm produced horticulture for export. The owners of Idaho Farm at Norton have been threatened with death if they don't leave immediately. The police, instead of evicting the squatters as by law they are required to do, negotiated a 24-hour extension for the owners! All this is continuing despite the fact the government has taken the constitutional means to acquire land. The only motivation must be a desire to punish perceived MDC supporters and whip up support for Mugabe's rapidly declining political fortunes within his own party. What he failed to achieve by democratic means he will now try and achieve by other means. And the country will pay the price. Next week we are likely to be introduced to a cabinet of decidedly limited talents. Names being touted suggest a recycling of failed politicians with a couple of token businessmen thrown in. They will very soon be hostage to the same forces that have ransacked the economy to date. The government's proposal for a National Economic Recovery Council, to be headed by the president, is equally threadbare. It will be guided by the Millennium Economic Recovery Programme that just about every economist of note has dismissed as fatally-flawed, not least because of its archaic revolutionary terminology. Zanu PF and the economy are a fatal combination. The party has no idea what steps need to be taken to get the country out of the woods. It thinks a little tinkering will do the trick. Herbert Murerwa's forlorn mission to Maputo to court IMF boss Horst Koehler reflects the dilemma. He may know what needs to be done. But he knows equally well that Mugabe will sabotage whatever is agreed! The National Economic Consultative Forum, with its handpicked government stooges and misdirected academics locked in the assumptions of a bygone era, is equally irrelevant in its present form. Zimbabwe has to bite the bullet and accept that its chronic condition leaves no room for nationalist posturing. We are in this state of affairs precisely because Zanu PF and its allies refused to accept the consequences of persistent disregard for targets they had earlier agreed to. Contrary to Mutumwa Mawere's assertion that foreigners are to blame for our predicament, we all know how we got here. This week alone millions of dollars of potential exports have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency as Zanu PF supporters disrupted agriculture. While the ruling party appears determined to go on getting it wrong, there is at least the consolation that we will have in parliament a large contingent of MPs who are prepared to expose the trail of destruction and point out what needs to be done. The election has strengthened not only the democratic forces at work but the consensus that Zanu PF cannot go on inflicting such damage on the fabric of the nation in the name of some spurious historic mission. Last Sunday's tragedy exposed once again the determination of our rulers to crush any democratic expression. The response has been overwhelming: this time round nobody is going to allow a police command structure that is delinquent in its duty to crush a democratic movement whose time has come. That won't be any consolation to the victims. But it has hardened a growing national resolve not to be bullied by yesterday's men.