[In the bulletins below, is an excellent story about what happened after that maniac from hell, Robert Mugabe went and smashed all the houses. Now the people live in shacks, where previously they actually had homes! I hope a warm place in hell is reserved for Mugabe.

Furthermore, I note the MDC won the mayoral election in Bulawayo, the 2nd largest city. So, that should surely displease Mugabe and cause him to vent his terror on people some more.

Mugabe, the outright piece of communist rubbish that he is, seems to delight in terrorising and oppressing the unarmed, the women and the children. Jan]

* Southern African Summit Seen Sidestepping Zimbabwe – Southern African leaders meet in Botswana this week under the shadow of yet more turmoil in Zimbabwe, but analysts expect little action to confront a crisis many fear could spread instability to the region. Heads of state of the 13-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) meet on Wednesday and Thursday in Botswana under growing pressure on Africa to address Zimbabwe’s woes. The razing of shantytowns and illegal businesses prompted a fierce rebuke from the United Nations, which says the two-month operation has left 700,000 people without homes or livelihoods and worsened a spreading food crisis. Political analysts say the renewed diplomatic pressure was a major factor in Nigerian President and African Union (AU) Chairman Olusegun Obasanjo’s appointment of former Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano to mediate between Mugabe’s ZANU-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

* MDC Wins Bulawayo Mayoral Election – Zimbabwe’s main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party won a crucial weekend election for mayor of the country’s second biggest city of Bulawayo, to maintain its grip on urban centres. The MDC’s candidate, Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube, who was also the previous mayor of Bulawayo , polled 29,575 votes to retain the mayorship. The candidate of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU PF party, Dickson Abu Basutu, garnered 5,509 votes, while there were 262 spoilt papers in the low-turnout poll. Ndabeni-Ncube’s victory ensures that the MDC retains control of all major cities except the capital, Harare , where the government wrestled control by firing former opposition executive mayor Elias Mudzuri and his council.

* Emergency Medical Service Provider Wants Govt Guidelines – MARS – one of the country’s major pre-hospital emergency medical service provider – has implored the government to identify national guidelines on minimum requirements for ambulance services. Speaking at a graduation ceremony of at least 60 emergency service providers in Harare last Friday, MARS managing director Jonasi Mushangari said it was of no good if they continue training staff yet there was not enough resources to attend to the emergency cases. “We would want to urge the Ministry, (Health and Child Welfare), to put a legal framework that guides ambulance services on the minimum vehicle specifications and minimum equipment required in an ambulance and then enforce the regulations. What good is a professional if he/she is not adequately equipped to deal with different scenarios encountered while at work?” Mushangari said. A draft document on the minimum requirements has since been submitted to the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare through the Allied Health Professional’s Council. Mushangari said they were awaiting the Ministry’s response.

* Zim Informal Businessmen In Dire Straits – Simbarashe Muchemwa points at a heap of broken asbestos and charred metal sheets – remnants of his makeshift furniture shop in Harare’s Glen View township – and shakes his head. “This was my means of livelihood. It’s a loss that will take me years to recover from,” says the 30-year-old father of three. Muchemwa says he ran a burgeoning carpentry business in the township that was renowned for its streetside furniture makers, supplying his products to leading department stores. “I earned enough to feed my family, pay bills and look after my extended family in my rural home,” he says. Muchemwa’s shop was razed along with hundreds of similar small businesses in Glen View during the government’s demolitions campaign that left hundreds of thousands homeless and destitute. He now scrapes a meagre living on small repair jobs that he says are few and far apart.

* Shacks Replace Houses In Zimbabwe’s Urban Renewal – Last week, about a month after the Zimbabwean government demolished people’s houses as part of Operation Murambatsvina, I went back to Harare to see what had become of those displaced by the so-called urban renewal programme. I stood on the ruins of what used to be Joshua Nkomo Heights. This settlement, in Harare’s western Kambuzuma township, had become home to hundreds of former veterans of Zimbabwe’s armed struggle. It had about 400 houses before the demolition. Now, plastic shacks have sprung up from the ruins. In one of these shacks I found Never Nyatwa, whose five-roomed house was demolished. He vowed that he would not leave, even though the government had been withholding food relief in an attempt to force them to move. Nyatwa lives in the shack with his wife and 20-year-old unemployed daughter. He said they had been told that they had to move to a holding camp or relocate to their rural village in order to qualify for humanitarian aid. “Before the demolition, I was a self-employed motor mechanic and sustained my family. Why should I now move to a holding farm for handouts?” asked Nyatwa.

* Counting Mugabe’s Troubles – Zimbabwe’s government has for years pronounced that “Zimbabwe can go it alone!”, and, if necessary, would do so, and would be as successful as Malaysia had been in the late 1990s. But, to quote trite but relevant cliches, eventually chickens come home to roost and, as a result, the Zimbabwean leadership has had to swallow the bitter pill of crawling on hands and knees to solicit assistance from others to enable Zimbabwe to extract itself from the economic quagmire to which it has been reduced. The economy has been devastated, contracting by more than a third in the past five years. Almost three-quarters of the employable population are unemployed, an estimated 78% of the populace barely survives at levels below the poverty line, while almost half the population is suffering malnutrition, their incomes being below the food line. Zimbabwe’s balance of payments has been so negative that available foreign currency exchange does not even meet half of its import and other current foreign exchange outgoings, let alone service external debt.

No worries.

‘debvhu

Source: The Bearded Man
URL: http://thebeardedman.blogspot.com/2005/08/mon…br>[Posted by: Mandebvhu of: The Bearded Man
URL: http://thebeardedman.blogspot.com]/p>