WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-02-03 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: The BeardedMan
Howzit
“Unity is happening. We cannot afford to go into the elections as pieces,” an official from the main Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) faction, led by former trade unionist
Morgan Tsvangirai, told AFP on condition of anonymity. “So far it’s a coalition and for logistical purposes we will pool our resources together for the elections. We will start building proper structures after the elections.“Tsvangirai’s faction seem to think that there is no doubt that the unification will happen and it will work, but the Mutambara faction are still dragging their heels.
“There was progress, there is progress, perhaps there will be progress,” faction spokesman Gabriel Chaibva told AFP. “We held marathon meetings since yesterday evening to early hours of this morning and we agreed in principle to a coalition but there are still some sticking points.“
He said a national council comprising representatives from the two sides was meeting in the capital.
“These things could have been resolved last year and we wouldn’t have rushed as we are doing now,” he said. “We had agreed that each formation would contest not less than 30 percent of the seats and (now) Tsvangirai wants 100 percent of the seats in Harare and Bulawayo.“
Just why any coalition/unified party/whatever should not contest across the board I am not sure. Surely the best way to set about giving Mugabe something serious to worry about – apart from cooking the books and maintaining the pressure on the opposition and the allied activists…
But I am even more mystified at the reluctance of the Mutambara faction to sign up to 100% representation.
“The two sides are racing against time, with less than a week before the deadline to approve election candidates and less than two months of campaigning until the polls take place on March 29. Once a formidable force posing the stiffest challenge to Mugabe’s more than two-decade stranglehold on power, the MDC was riven by factionalism following a row over senate elections in 2006. The factions temporarily set their differences aside and vowed to launch a united front against Mugabe last year after Tsvangirai and several members of the party were beaten by security forces breaking up a planning prayer rally by several opposition groups.“
More fun and games in Zimbabwean law courts. The extradition of former SAS man Simon Mann was upheld and his lawyers appeal to have the action revered was thrown out by the High Court.
The extradition was done in typical Mugabe style – under cover of darkness – and the first anyone knew about it was when Mann was not at the prison in Harare as expected.
Mann has opposed the deportation order all along on the grounds that he would be tortured in Equatorial Guinea as other members of the coup plot allegedly have been. “It is illegal. He has been abducted,” said Jonathan Samkange, his lawyer. “Deporting a person at night is not only mischievous but unlawful.“
The prison at Black Beach in Equatorial Guinea is reputedly worse than Chikurubi. If that is at all possible. My recollections of Khami prison near Bulawayo are of a squalid, dirty environment. I doubt very much that it has improved any since I was last there (as a policeman – not as an inmate!).
In Mann’s case Equatorial Guinea have given an undertaking that in the event of a conviction (hardly likely to be anything other than that…), they will not be seeking the death sentence. I am, however, concerned that any sentence of imprisonment is a holding facility such as Black Beach, will be the same as a death sentence – just a little more drawn out.
And I do despair for his family. To probably serve two separate jail sentences in different countries for the same alleged crime is beyond any understanding I may have.
“Mann, who served a four-year sentence in Zimbabwe for trying to buy weapons, made frantic efforts to avoid extradition. He once told his lawyer that if he was ever sent there, “I will be a dead man”.
It is understood that Mann tried to resist being taken out of his Chikurubi cell around midnight on Wednesday. Mann told the officials who had come to collect him that he had an appeal against his deportation pending at the Supreme Court. However the officials ignored his pleas and bundled Mann out of the prison under heavy security and took him to Manyame Air Force base. He was on a plane to Equatorial Guinea by about 1am on Thursday morning.“
I am completely amazed that the Mugabe regime should act before any appeal has been heard out in court in Zimbabwe. The other thing, of course, is how correct were the government in holding Mann in custody after the end of his sentence served in Zimbabwe?
Extraditing Mann to Equatorial Guinea is rather like pardonning a prisoner sentenced to death – after the execution has taken place1
“Mann’s lawyers are insisting that he should be returned to Zimbabwe because he was deported in violation of the law. This was because they had given notice that they would file an appeal against High Court judge Rita Makarau’s ruling on Wednesday upholding an earlier decision to deport him. “Once Mann’s lawyers had noted their intention to appeal at the Supreme Court, his deportation should have been stopped pending a decision of the higher courts,” said one lawyer, who did not want to be named. Mann’s lawyers will go to the Supreme Court on Monday to try to persuade the country’s highest court to have him returned.“
Sadly I don’t see many chances of Mann being returned – even if an appeal is successful – as he now falls under the jurisdiction of the Equatorial Guinea government
In its report for 2008 released earlier this week, the HWR said
Zimbabwe was among a group of pseudo-democracies whose rulers used “outright fraud and control of electoral machinery” to win elections. Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu accused the rights group of attempting to prejudge polls even before a single vote was cast. “How can they know of an election that is yet to be held? That tells that they have a bias against the ruling party and its government,” said Ndlovu.“Simple really… All we have to do is look back at each and every election from 1980 onwards, and we see a littany of rigged elections, cooked books, a long tale of oppression, intimidation and duress.
That’s how!
“Zimbabwe holds presidential, parliamentary and local government elections on March 29, which analysts predict will be won by Mugabe and ZANU PF despite an acute economic crisis blamed on state mismanagement. The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party is expected to contest polls under protest after Mugabe ignored calls by the opposition party to postpone elections and implement a new constitution that would level the political field. HRW said failure by Mugabe's government to punish perpetrators of political violence raised the fears that the elections will not free and fair.“
There never – and in likelihood, there never will be – free and fair election in Zimbabwe… not if Mugabe stays at the top of the tree.
“There are serious concerns over whether the forthcoming elections will be free and fair. Impunity that perpetrators of political violence enjoy in Zimbabwe conveys the message that violence in the run-up to and the aftermath of the 2008 elections will also go unpunished,” the rights body said.“
That is the saddest thing of all. Mugabe systematically dismisses any report that holds his government in a bad light. And any that point to his election victories as rigged are bound to get special mention by his regime.
Any body, no matter where from or who, is treated dismissively by Mugabe as a matter of course. And somehow, in the dismissal, there will be mention that the body is driven by Western governments – or some such rubbish…
“Mugabe, in power since 1980 and seeking another five-year term in March, denies mismanaging Zimbabwe, and in turn accuses his Western enemies of sabotaging the his country's once brilliant economy.“
I would have thought that Mugabe, being the educated man that he his, would not have looked to do something to ally the teachers in the country with his government.
I would also have thought that Mugabe would recognises the value of teachers – people that teach the leaders of tomorrow – and therefore would hopefully look to treat them a whole bunch better. And that would include his poxy government making the room for the teachers to have a pay increase.
But even Mugabe, the man that dreams up the most inane ‘fixes’ for the country’s economic decline, leads a broke party, a broke government – and hence, helps himself from the coffers of the RBZ.
To put it another way – just how much does Uncle Bob owe the State coffers? Just how mortgaged is our country Zimbabwe – and just how much is Mugabe and all his cohorts, ministers and extended govenmental body worth in today’s world? Not just in cash, but all by way of assets?
The union said organizers in Masvingo were briefly detained by police at rural Chikato School on Friday after a headmaster called police. The union reported harassment in Matabeleland, Mashonaland Central and Manicaland provinces as well. Earlier this week police in Masvingo summoned PTUZ President Takavafira Zhou demanding that he explain his union's position on the strike. The union said 80% of state primary and secondary schools have been hit by the labor action. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change formation led by MDC founder Morgan Tsvangirai urged the government to heed complaints by teachers about poor working conditions or face further deterioration of the education system.“
Obviously, any statement made by the MDC on the government and their policies, will be ignored with some vigour. The government love putting the opposition to the knife, and any people standing in the way… regardless of who they are.
“But a spokesman for the Zimbabwe Teachers Association professed ignorance of any strike by teachers, saying Zimbabwean teachers do not need to strike because negotiations with the government are at an advanced stage.“
Only time will tell.
Then there is the competency of drivers of public services vehicles – and I am not pointing a finger at this particular driver…
I believe that it is only a matter of time before one of the Air Zimbabwe aircraft decided to take on the aerodynamics of a brick.
So far, Zimbabweans have been lucky.
“A bus veered off a highway and crashed into a tree in southern Zimbabwe, killing 14 people and injuring 55, state radio reported Saturday.
Nine of the victims died at the scene of the accident near the southern town of Masvingo, 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of Harare, the radio said. Five died on the way to a nearby mission hospital and the main Masvingo hospital.
The bus was carrying 75 people.“
Many things may have contributed to the accident. Many things. But one thing that will not appear in the Traffic Accident Book and the subsequent Sudden Death Dockets and possible criminal docket, is the name of the person responsible for those factors…
Robert Gabriel Mugabe.
“Bus accidents are common in Zimbabwe, blamed on shortages of replacement tires and spare parts. The heaviest seasonal rains since colonial-era records began a century ago have also left poorly maintained streets and highways pitted by potholes and crumbling asphalt.“
You were appointed to serve the nation.
Instead you caged the nation.
Decades long you fed us stories
The age of endurance is behind the times,
We are grey with pain and fury.
Don't sit and wait to be discarded
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
Tread on the noble heels of Mandela
The first ambassador of freedom
To liberate an entire race
Caught amid a storm with zero humidity.
Marrily R Kuzonye
(Site)
-o00o-
Source: http://thebeardedman.blogspot.com/2008/02/sunday-3rd-february-2008.html