Zim Update

Well, it's been about a month, so it's time for another update on what is happening in Zimbabwe.

The two biggest pieces of news are Robert Mugabe's health, he is 85 years old, and there are officially denied rumors that he has gone to Qatar for prostate cancer treatment, and he has missed some significant meetings.

Additionally, we are beginning to see senior ZANU-PF members vying for position, with, for example, someone having put up the party youth group (I assume that this mean young adults) to call for the removal of John Nkomo and Joyce Mujuru from the party presidium.

We are also seeing the situation with the Chiadzwa diamond fields get out of hand,with a threat by the world Diamond Council to suspend Zimbabwe from the Kimberly Process certification, which would label one of their few sources of hard currency "blood diamonds," though threat comes with a statement which immediately backtracks from the threat, though they are making noise about revisiting the issue in November.

The Parliament has also opened an investigation into the accusations of brutality, corruption, and slave labor, and the World Federation of Diamond Bourses has made a call for the prompt release of the Kimberly report.


The reason that this is significant is because it is a sign of loss of control by Mugabe. It's fairly clear that he feels that he cannot give the order for the Zimbabwean military to stand down in Chiadzwa because it would eliminate one of the few remaining means that he has to bribe reward loyalists, and it is unclear if the army would obey if he were to give the order.

This is an indication that Mugabe is losing power within ZANU-PF as people look to his exit.



On a more prosaic level, it looks like Mugabe is trying to kill Tsvangerai again: He has had to sack somemembers of his security team for "misplacing" transport for a significant portion of his security detail, which left him ill-protected.....Then again, maybe I'm just a cynic.

Meanwhile, the Mutambara faction of the MDC appears to be in the process of self destructing, with conflicting claims as to who leads the MDC-M, reports that the party has split in 3 parts, 3 MDC-M MPs moving to join the MDC-T, and Mutambara being unable to convince an MP from his own party to step down and take an ambassadorship in order to allow deputy president Gibson Sibanda to keep his position on cabinet as Minister of State for National Healing and Reconciliation. (The constitution prohibits a cabinet post being held by someone not an MP for more than 3 months)

We had Zuma taking over for the completely useless and biased Mbeki as mediator, and while we got some strong language, such as Zuma calling Mugabe's behavior in negotiations deviant, but the results, despite Tsvangerai's pleas for action, have not gone beyond a SADC call for an extraordinary summit.

Most notably, you have the issues of Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Gideon Gono and Attorney General, Johannes Tomana, both tremendously corrupt and incompetent ZANU-PF loyalists, which means that the power of the purse and state violence (though both the police and military) remain firmly in the hands of Mugabe.

With the elimination of the $Z as a currency, this has reduced Gono's power to pay off people, but he is once again attempting to reintroduce the local currency, though Finance Minister Tendai Biti is fighting him tooth and nail on this.


The harassment of MDC members of parliament continues, with police making trumped up arrests of opposition MPs.

It's clearly an attempt to reduce the MDC majority in parliament, since once convicted, they can no longer serve, and so there would have to be by-elections.

The problem for the ZANU-PF with this strategy is that they are polling in the single digits, (also here).

ZANU-PF has proposed 5-year extension on the current 1-year freeze on elections, but the MDC has made it clear that it has no interest in such a proposal.

The 2^nd of ZANU-PF is to make elections impossible, either by pleading poverty, or by refusing to staff the election board created by the unity government agreement.

Meanwhile, the IMF has issued $400 million in foreign currency reserves, which would be good news, except for the fact that Gideon Gono (remember him?) is insisting that he is in charge of disbursing all these funds.

I'd sooner have Bernie Madoff managing that money.