From a Kubatana member:

Is Dictatorial Behaviour A Form Of Mental Illness? If So can We Capture Such Individuals And Hand Them Over To Psychiatrists. 4 How Can U Entrust A Whole Country To A Madman?

The Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe has just issued the following statement:

VMCZ WORKERS DAY SOLIDARITY STATEMENT

29 April 2011

The Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ) joins the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and all Zimbabweans in commemorating Workers Day on May 1 2011.  This year’s commemorations which are to be held under the theme, ‘Respect our Rights, Save the Economy, Save Our Jobs,’ are significant in that they reflect the continued commitment to the pursuit of better livelihoods by all workers in Zimbabwe. This is despite the fact that the majority of workers are still surviving under difficult circumstances due to the high cost of living as well as the lack of adequate provision of social services.

In tandem with its mandate and mission, the VMCZ also takes this opportunity to express gratitude to the workers through their national union, the ZCTU, for their principled belief in the necessity of freedom of expression and freedom of information for the realization of better working and living conditions for all in Zimbabwe. Indeed, the VMCZ, as an organization with a mandate to ensure self regulation of the media, derives strength not only from the media fraternity but also from the working people of Zimbabwe who are keen on seeing a fair, balanced and accountable media.

Indeed as stated by the ZCTU in the May Day celebrations of 2009 and 2010, it may be dawn, but workers must continue the struggle. The VMCZ urges the ZCTU to continue with the same understanding over and about the struggle for media freedom in the country. This is because although the print media has expanded, there are still no changes to the electronic broadcast media, with ZBC enjoying a patently biased monopoly of our airwaves.

Once again, the VMCZ congratulates the ZCTU and the working people of Zimbabwe on this occasion of the 2011 May Day celebrations.

The Sunday Mail of Saturday 23, April 2011 reported that 68 people were killed between the Independence and Easter holidays, with the most terrible accident being reported on Good Friday near Chivu where five people from the Musoni family lost their lives. In the report the accident was caused when the driver of a Nissan pickup tried to overtake, but the driver of the car in front was just selfish enough on the busiest and narrow highway which our government has taken ages to widen and resurface.  The talk of widening Zimbabwe’s major highways is only heard when an accident like this one happens. The only progress seen so far is that of pulling down trees and digging ditches along the roads stretching just as far as Pambudzi (close to Boka Auction Floors) on the way to Masvingo. With this kind of progress one can see the completion of this task in 2050 or even beyond.

Though easing transport woes in the country the influx of second hand Japanese cars has also contributed to the road carnage with all sorts of bad drivers now on the highway. These cars are affordable and most of them are automatic which makes the task of changing gears easy even for my niece in primary school.  I am not advocating for the banning of these cars but just to be responsible when driving and to make sure that you get your car checked for mechanical faults. One can be a good driver but if you are on a bad road with bad drivers chances are you will be involved in an accident.

Read Ethan Zuckerman:

We need to recognize activists who don’t use technology. He offers the story of Alaa Abdel Fatteh, a celebrated young activist who’s active both online and offline. Evgeny notes that his parents are seasoned Egyptian dissidents. “Alaa spent five weeks in jail, his father spent five years,” but Alaa got more attention because he’s a blogger. “This doesn’t mean that cyberactivism is not important, but that we tend to fetishize it.” More

I’ve just been reading about Facebook and Twitter being blocked in Uganda. Museveni is worried about new media helping people to organise protests in response to state repression and economic hardship. I’m pretty sure that Mugabe wouldn’t feel a move like that was necessary in Zimbabwe. People don’t protest here, no matter how much we get kicked in the teeth. Reading Peter Godwin in the New York Times, I have to agree that the pressure from neighbouring states helps to turn up the heat on dictators. Neighbours can’t ignore wide scale protest. But they can ignore silence. Which is what Zimbabweans are very good at. We’ve had stolen elections, detentions, torture, mind blowing inflation and food shortages. We didn’t respond. Will we ever? What is certain is that SADC, the AU and Showerhead will continue to ignore the crisis in Zimbabwe because we let them.

I’m reminded of a quote from Viktor Frankl; What is to give light must endure burning.

Here’s Godwin’s latest:

Making Mugabe Laugh

Barely was Laurent Gbagbo, wearing a sweat-damp white tank top and a startled expression, prodded at rebel gunpoint from the bombed ruins of his presidential bunker in Ivory Coast, than Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced this conclusion: His ejection, more than four months after he refused to accept electoral defeat, sent “a strong signal to dictators and tyrants throughout the region and around the world. They may not disregard the voice of their own people in free and fair elections, and there will be consequences for those who cling to power.”

Zimbabwe’s 87-year-old president, Robert Mugabe, who began his 32nd year in power this week, must have chortled when he heard that one.

The parallels between Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe are striking: both were once viewed as the singular successes in their respective regions, the envy of their neighbors. Both Mr. Gbagbo, a former history professor, and Mr. Mugabe, a serial graduate student, are highly educated men who helped liberate their countries from authoritarian regimes.

Both later clothed themselves in the racist vestments of extreme nativism. Mr. Gbagbo claimed that his rival Alassane Ouattara couldn’t stand for president because his mother wasn’t Ivorian; Mr. Mugabe disenfranchised black Zimbabweans who had blood ties to neighboring states (even though his own father is widely believed to have been Malawian).

The two countries have also been similarly plagued by north-south conflicts. And when they spiraled into failed statehood, both leaders blamed the West, in particular their former colonial powers – France and Britain – for interfering to promote regime change.

Finally, the international community imposed sanctions against both countries, including bans on foreign travel and the freezing of bank accounts that have largely proved insufficient.

But here’s where the stories crucially diverge – why Laurent Gbagbo is no longer in power, while Robert Mugabe, who lost an election in 2008, continues to flout his people’s will.

The most important point of departure was the sharply contrasting behavior of regional powers. The dominant player in West Africa, Nigeria, immediately recognized the validity of Mr. Ouattara’s victory in United

Nations-supervised elections, and worked within the regional alliance, the Economic Community of West African States, to unseat the reluctant loser. But Zimbabwe’s most powerful neighbor, South Africa, played a very different role. Instead of helping to enforce democracy, it has provided cover for Mr. Mugabe to stay on.

Partly this is due to what is called “liberation solidarity.” Most of the political parties still in power in southern Africa were originally anti-colonial liberation movements – like those in South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Angola – and they tend to abhor the aura-diminishing prospect of seeing any of their fellows jettisoned.

It is also because South Africa eyes the Zimbabwean opposition – which morphed out of a once-loyal trade union movement – through the suspicious lens of its own trade union movement’s contemplation of opposition politics.

As a result, instead of supporting the Zimbabwean opposition in 2008, Thabo Mbeki, then the South African president, bullied it into a power-sharing government of national unity headed by Mr. Mugabe. This democracy-defying model has threatened to metastasize into the mainstream of African politics; that same year it was also applied to Kenya, where a unity government was set up to end post-election bloodshed. When Mr. Mbeki was deputized by the African Union to broker a solution in Ivory Coast, that was the Band-Aid he reached for – but it was rightly rejected by Mr. Ouattara.

Of course, the other crucial difference is that in Ivory Coast, the dictator’s ejection came at the hands of men with guns. The northern rebels moved on Abidjan. The United Nations peacekeepers, trussed by restrictive mandates as always, nevertheless protected Mr. Ouattara until the French expanded an airport-securing operation into something altogether more ambitious. They basically prized Mr. Gbagbo from his bunker, though to avoid bad postcolonial optics, they brought the rebels in to make the final move.

In contrast, for refusing to plunge the country into a civil war, Zimbabwe’s democratic opposition has been rewarded by the international community by being largely ignored.

Next month, a group of southern African nations will discuss Mr. Mugabe’s continued resistance to agreed-upon reforms intended to pave the way to free elections. Either South Africa must get Mr. Mugabe to honor them, or it must withdraw its support for him. If it won’t, then the international community needs to push South Africa out of leading the negotiations, and engage more directly.

Zimbabweans need help if their voices are to be heard. If the United States wants to prove that Mrs. Clinton’s words were more than empty rhetoric, it should begin by pressuring South Africa. Otherwise Zimbabwe’s hopes for freedom will founder, even as Ivory Coast regains its stolen democracy.

Peter Godwin is the author of “The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe.”

Source

The case of Munyaradzi Gwisai and five others who were charged with treason in February and released a month later is not over yet. They still face strict bail conditions which limit their freedoms, and will appear in court on Wednesday.

Read this email from one of the detainees for more information:

We wish to thank you all for the unwavering support you gave during our time of incarceration and now as we go towards trial for the malicious charges of treason. Without your support, we could have been fodder for an angry and intolerant system. we are happy to be out on bail and take part in the day to day struggles for social economic and political democracy in the world. Only our numbers can match the might of war mongers and dictators around the world. On Wednesday the 20th of April, we appear at the Harare Rotten Row court number 6 for further remand. We may be out but the bail conditions are extremely harsh and limit our capacity to fully enroll in the struggle for democracy. it is our hope that with your full support, we will be brought to final freedom. Any actions of support are welcome and we hope to meet you at 0800hrs in court next week.