Week 52
A weekly selection from Zimbabwean newspapers
Byo marks Unity Accord with plea for peace (The Herald, state owned)
Zimbabwe’s Unity Accord commemorations should not be viewed solely through political lens, but should also address family dynamics amid rising concerns over discord among relatives, increasing divorce rates, and family members harming each other over minor issues, a top Government official has said.
Bulawayo Provincial Affairs and Devolution Minister Judith Ncube highlighted this yesterday as the province commemorated Unity Day with a thanksgiving church service.
Minister Ncube acknowledged that the signing of the December 22, 1987 Unity Accord by the late President Robert Mugabe and the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo laid the foundation for the peaceful country we have today.
She noted that the Unity Accord ended years of conflict that threatened to tear the nation apart.
Zimbabwe fails to pay white farmers who had land expropriated
White commercial growers in Zimbabwe said that the government has failed to pay part of $331 million in compensation to farmers for expropriating their land but reimbursed others who weren’t part of the deal.
In a joint letter to the finance ministry dated December 10, the Commercial Farmers Union and the Southern African Commercial Alliance asked for urgent talks with the government.
The letter said many of their members are now destitute and have had their dignity taken away as result of failure to get reimbursed through the so-called Global Compensation Deal.
Under an accord signed in 2020, the government agreed to compensate about 4,000 White farmers whose land was seized by state-backed militants, but it has repeatedly missed payment deadlines.
The government expects the deal to cost $3.5 billion over as many as 10 years.
Gukurahundi hearings preparations in final stretch (The Sunday News, state owned)
The Gukurahundi hearings steering committee will soon announce the exact date for the beginning of the highly anticipated hearings amid revelations that a co-ordination centre has since been established in Bulawayo.
The centre will act as a central hub for all operational, administrative, and logistical needs of the programme. The move underscores the committee’s commitment to ensuring a well-organised and impactful hearing process.
Responding to questions from Sunday News, the head of secretariat for the hearings, which have been dubbed the Matabeleland Peace Building Outreach Programme, who is also the Attorney-General, Mrs Virginia Mabhiza said the steering committee held a meeting last week in Bulawayo, which focused on the progress and final preparations for the Gukurahundi Community Engagement Outreach Programme to finalise all outstanding logistical arrangements.
The land reform programme: A legacy in tatters
But what began as a noble effort to address historical injustices quickly descended into chaos and violence.
In Hurungwe, one of the hardest-hit areas, white commercial farmers were driven off their land by mobs of indigenous black farmers, often with the tacit support of the government.
The farmers, many of whom had lived and worked on the land for generations, were forced to flee with their lives, leaving behind homes, livestock and livelihoods.
Across the country, white commercial farmers were forced off their land, often with little or no compensation.
Many were beaten, arrested or even killed.
The programme also had a devastating impact on the country’s economy.
Agricultural production plummeted, leading to food shortages and widespread poverty.
Water shortages hit towns…as Zimbabwe struggles to overcome impact of El Niño
These ongoing water shortages are blamed on a lack of planning and the ongoing El Niño drought. If the residents were hoping for a change in weather conditions, a report released today (Wednesday, December 11, 2024) by the World Meteorological Organization suggests that while the cooling La Niña climate pattern may develop in the next three months, it is expected to be relatively weak and short-lived.
Latest forecasts from WMO Global Producing Centres of Long-Range Forecasts indicate a 55 percent likelihood of a transition from the current neutral conditions (neither El Niño nor La Niña) to La Nina conditions during December 2024 to February 2025, the WMO explains.
Each election time, politicians from the governing Zanu PF have pledged to end Bulawayo’s water woes by working on the Zambezi water pipeline project meant to end the city’s water challenges. However, since the country’s colonial government laid out the plan more than a century ago, the project has not been implemented.
A 450-kilometre pipeline to bring water from the Zambezi River to Bulawayo was first proposed in 1912 by this country’s colonial government. Then, like now, the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project (MZWP) aimed to address the region’s chronic water shortages and to promote socio-economic growth.
A fire in a Zimbabwe market shows the consequences of economic collapse
For two decades, Zimbabweans have lived through relentless financial crises. A recent fire in the country’s largest market spotlights how difficult life has become for the average person here. Within hours, around $5 million in goods, cash, and property went up in smoke, according to official estimates. Nothing was insured.
The fire’s devastation is part of a wider crisis: Most Zimbabweans live on the precipice of economic disaster. Over the past two decades, relentless financial crises have doubled the number of people here living in extreme poverty – a figure that stands today at about 40%. Three-quarters of Zimbabweans toil in the informal workforce, one of the highest rates of off-the-books work in the world. This year, the government introduced a new currency, called the Zimbabwe Gold, or ZiG, to help stabilize the economy. Instead, it has plummeted ordinary Zimbabweans into further uncertainty.
In the early 2000s, a catastrophic agricultural reform program and an expensive war in Congo left Zimbabwe’s government flat broke. To fill its coffers, it decided to simply print more money, and then more again. By mid-2008, inflation hit 231,000,000%.
Ms. Nyangoni remembers her late mother, also a trader, coming home at the end of her workday with big plastic bags full of nearly worthless cash. If they were lucky, the family might be able to exchange the money for a single loaf of bread. The price tag: nearly 100 billion Zimbabwean dollars (about $5).
2025 Budget: A shallow, hollow, narcissistic and dishonest anti-people ritual (ByTendai Biti)
The 2024 budget statement was presented in backdrop of a tough and challenging year for the working people of Zimbabwe. A year in which the citizen had been abused by extreme levels of inflation, emasculation by a rigged exchange rate, extortionate taxes, power shortages, poverty and the aftermath of a scorching drought.
Naively, the citizen and business thus hoped for a bold, honest, decisive and technically sound budget that would address the crippling challenges of the day, offer hope and carthasis to a broken fatalistic desperate and disparate population.
Regrettably, finance minister Mthuli Ncube’s budget was nothing but a shallow, hollow, narcissistic and dishonest anti-people ritual. The budget correctly bluetooths everything cataleptic about the Mnangwagwa regime: incompetent, ideologically vacuous, corrupt, insensitive, vicious and toxic.
Seven issues amplify the fatality of Ncube’s project. First is the clear failure to calibrate the budget in United States dollars. In a volatile high inflation environment, expressing the budget in a local currency ravaged by serious inflation pressures is clearly a faux pas.
BRICS a catalyst for global growth: Murwira (The Herald, state owned)
Zimbabwe sees its partnership with BRICS as a vital catalyst for global growth and development, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Professor Amon Murwira has said.
BRICS, founded in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, expanded to include South Africa in 2010, with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates recently invited to join.
The BRICS members are advocating for a new global economic order, moving away from the Western-aligned Bretton Woods financial system.
This coalition of major emerging economies aims to enhance their interests and influence on the global stage.
During a virtual meeting with ambassadors from BRICS countries, Prof Murwira lauded the inclusive nature of the partnership.
“We strongly believe that we all want a world with no barriers between North and South, East and West. As partners, we should continue to strive for unity, friendship and cooperation among nations,” he said.
Council pumps raw sewage into Lake Chivero (The Herald, state owned)
Harare City Council has been discharging raw sewage into the Mukuvisi River, which flows into Lake Chivero, the city’s main water source, for the past two weeks, The Herald can reveal.
This has created serious health and environmental hazards, resulting in Zimparks banning all fishing activities at Lake Chivero, where thousands of fish have died, alongside animals including four rhinos and three zebras.
The pollution, primarily from raw sewage, has caused a surge in cyanobacteria, posing health risks to both humans and wildlife.
The Herald team traced the sewage discharge back to the Crowborough Sewerage Works, one of Harare’s five treatment plants, which has a capacity of 54 million litres per day.
Load shedding here to stay, says Zesa
Zesa Holdings executive chairman, Sydney Gata, has ruled out a quick fix to the energy crisis citing foreign currency shortages to cover the shortfalls.
“More than 50% of our dependable capacity has been wiped out. This is the main reason behind load shedding,” Gata told journalists during a press briefing.
“The other factor is that power inputs to supplement the deficit are expensive and they demand foreign currency.
“We do not have enough foreign currency to make up for the deficit.”
As of yesterday, the country was generating 869 MW split as 695 from Hwange, Kariba 124 MW and independent power producers 50MW.
In July, Zimbabwe turned to South Africa and Mozambique, to import 200 megawatts of electricity to alleviate the country’s power shortage.
President launches land tenure programme (The Herald, state owned)
President Mnangagwa will today launch the new Land Tenure Implementation Programme in Kwekwe to bolster the land ownership model, unlock huge amounts of finance, spur economic growth and enhance productivity.
This follows an adjustment to the country’s land tenure system announced by President Mnangagwa in October to improve land tenure security.
Under the new era, all land held by beneficiaries of the Land Reform Programme under 99-year leases, offer letters and permits, will be held under a bankable, registrable and transferable document.
Addressing the 380th Ordinary Session of the ZANU PF Politburo at the revolutionary party’s headquarters, President Mnangagwa, who is also First Secretary of the ruling party, said he will be launching the new programme at Pricabe Farm in Kwekwe.
Afrexim bank tables US$250 million for Kariba floating solar panels power project
The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) will finance a 250MW solar power project at Kariba Dam which is being driven by Zimbabwe’s largest electricity consumers, mainly mines.
Millions of floating solar panels on the world’s largest man-made lake will be installed and could start generating power after 18 months of the project starting.
Afreximbank showcased its support for the hybrid floating solar photovoltaic facility during the Africa Investment Forum in Morocco which ended last Friday.
“This transformative project will integrate solar energy with existing hydropower infrastructure, boosting Zimbabwe’s renewable energy capacity and ensuring reliable power for industries and mining under a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement,” the bank said.
Edward Cross, the chairman of the Intensive Energy User Group made up of mining companies including a former local unit of Rio Tinto and Mimosa, said they received “oversubscribed” interest for financing.
