Zimbabwe Cuts Access to Aid - NYTimes.com

“Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans — orphans and old people, the sick and the down and out — have lost access to food and other basic humanitarian assistance as their government has clamped down on international aid groups it says are backing the political opposition, relief agencies say….

“On Friday and Monday, representatives of aid groups were summoned by administrators in four districts and instructed to cease all work in the field until a bitterly contested presidential runoff was held on June 27 between Mr. Mugabe, in power for 28 years, and the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai…

“the police and the army warned the groups not to say anything publicly about their withdrawal and not to conduct any operations at night.

“Aid workers and human rights groups say the restrictions are meant to prevent them from witnessing attacks on opposition supporters, often in nighttime raids, amid the government’s increasingly violent and deadly crackdown on those it sees as a threat to its hold on power…

“Zimbabwean political analysts and civic leaders say that Mr. Mugabe and ZANU-PF, his governing party, are themselves seeking to use food as a political weapon in a country, once the region’s bread basket, where hunger now afflicts millions. The government recently bought 600,000 tons of corn. By barring NGOs from giving out food in some areas, the governing party controls food distribution and can use it to reward supporters and punish opponents.”

Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/world/africa/04zimbabwe.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Violence in Zimbabwe Disrupts Schools and Aid - New York Times

…Teachers, who served as nonpartisan supervisors at polling stations, have been systematically singled out, with 496 questioned by the police, 133 assaulted by thugs and 123 charged with election fraud, according to the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe. Teachers who worked for the opposition also said they had been attacked.

An unsigned editorial in Saturday’s issue of The Herald singled out teachers as part of an elaborate British- and American-financed plot to rig the election and get rid of Mr. Mugabe.

The editorial described the teachers as having been trained in South Africa and by the National Democratic Institute, a nonprofit group based in Washington whose chairman is Madeleine K. Albright, the former American secretary of state. It said the teachers were fleeing “to avoid the long arm of the law.”

Zimbabwe Opposition Rejects Runoff - New York Times

“…The state’s move against the election officials was severe. The Herald reported, for example, that the police arrested a primary-school headmaster, Shadreck Mufute, 47, ‘on allegations of depriving President Mugabe of 10 votes which he allegedly gave to Morgan Tsvangirai in the presidential race.’

The state opposed giving Mr. Mufute bail. The magistrate granted him bail of $600 million in Zimbabwean currency — only about 14 United Stated dollars on the black market — but required that he report to a police base every Friday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Herald reported that Mr. Mufute’s lawyers denied the authenticity of the document used as the basis of the charge against him and said he had neither prepared it nor signed it.”

“…Shadreck Mufute (47) who is the Hartzell Central Primary School headmaster appeared in a Mutare court […]

Mufute was arrested this week on allegations of depriving President Mugabe of 10 votes, which he allegedly gave to Morgan Tsvangirai in the presidential race.

When he first appeared in court on Tuesday, Mufute had applied for refusal of remand but Mutare provincial magistrate, Mr Livingstone Zimuto Chipadza, dismissed the application.

The provincial magistrate however, granted Mufute $600 million bail and ordered him to continue residing at Hartzell Primary School until the matter was finalised.

Mr Chipadza also ordered Mufute who will appear in court on April 23 to report at Old Mutare Police Base every Friday between 6am and 6pm.”

On an as yet unconfirmed date one Shadreck Mufute, a ZEC elections officer who was stationed at Ward 25 in Mutasa South was arrested in Mutare and charged with fraud under section 136(a) of the Criminal Code, alternatively contravening section 87 of the Electoral Act, as amended in that he allegedly willfully failed to perform his public duty. His warned and cautioned statement was recorded on 7 April 2008 but had not been finalized due to lack of power (ZESA) at the police station. He appeared in the Mutare Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday 8 April 2008 where he was represented by a ZLHR lawyer. The lawyer and the prosecutor initially agreed on bail, but in court the prosecutor opposed bail, advising the ZLHR lawyer that he had instructions to vehemently oppose bail due to the political sensitivity of the matter. Mufute was remanded in custody pending the handing down of the magistrates’ ruling today.

“…A presidential election is scheduled here for March 29, and [mother of three] Gladys Sithole said she hoped this time Mr. Mugabe would finally lose. Now 84, he is a former guerrilla fighter who has led the nation since independence in 1980. ‘Mugabe was a hero of the liberation struggle, sure,’ she said. ‘But now there is an even bigger struggle, the struggle to survive, and he is killing us.’

“She may conceivably get her wish. Mr. Mugabe is burdened not only by Zimbabwe’s persevering misery, but also by two formidable rivals. One is Morgan Tsvangirai, a well-known opponent with trade union support; he won 42 percent of the official vote in 2002, when inflation was a mere 139 percent. The other is Simba Makoni, a onetime cabinet member backed by influential figures in the governing party itself; these dissidents are no longer willing to wait for Mr. Mugabe’s death to initiate the succession.

“Could this actually be the end for one of the world’s most enduring and complicated political figures, by most accounts a ruthless, vengeful man, revered and reviled, who has presided over one of Africa’s most epic economic debacles? If Mr. Mugabe did somehow lose, would he withdraw quietly? Would disputed elections propel Zimbabwe, like Kenya, into chaos and killing?…”

Full article on the New York Times site here.

Yesterday we had a good (long) flight from Harare to London. For the most part the weather was clear all the way, giving us spectacular views of the Congo rainforest, the endless sands of the Sahara, clusters of villages and cities along the southern Mediterranean in Tunisia, the French Alps, sunset over Paris, and then the bright lights of London as we circled Heathrow waiting to land. Those who had window seats took some great photos of the trip. See you later today!

They’re at:
http://vimtozim.org/photos/album/vimers-at-work/

One unexpected change in the schedule that happened just yesterday is that we got to talk with Africa University’s vice chancellor, Rukudzo Joseph Murapa, in a short informal meeting at our hotel last night. He told an inspiring story about how he was born and grew up in this very area of Zimbabwe, went to study and work in the US for several years (for such politicians as Hubert Humphrey and Everett Dirkson and then for organizations like the World Bank), and then eventually came back to Zimbabwe and Africa University (AU).

Mr. Murapa said that although he’s officially charged with implementing the AU master plan (which calls for adding two additional “faculties” — schools — before 2008) his own personal passion is the establishment of an Institute of Peace, Leadership and Governance at AU. His dream is to create a permanent program to will train Africa’s future and current leaders and help them bring lasting prosperity to their countries through peace and through transparent, people-oriented government — a goal and a point of view that’s quite certainly shared universally by the AU students (and hopefully future leaders) from the DRC (Congo), Mozambique, Angola, and Burundi that I’ve been helping the past few days in English.

This past weekend was so packed with activities that I didn’t have time to come into AU to connect to the Internet and upload and download messages. But I’ve downloaded all the comments and will show/read them to everyone tonight at dinner.

Also, immediately after this post I’ll upload a guest posting by my cousin Norma where she describes a small part of our activities yesterday.

And then tomorrow I hope to be able to post a few select photos of your favorite VIMers in action. This morning I went around to all our stations and took a few photos of each team member. I just need to reduce the file sizes of the images before I can try to upload them.

That’s all for now! -Mark

-Marsha Dorgan is having great — and surprisingly speedy — success in her efforts to plan for expanding AU’s “Dream Dairy” into a full working farm, and to begin to build a piggery at the Hartzell center.

-Marie and Katie Heyes again helped out at the Old Mutare Hospital. Marie led some AIDS awareness classes, and she described a session she had with high school girls who talked about incidents they knew of where fathers or uncles of the girls had beaten or raped them and that it was still difficult to get authorities to take such reports seriously.

-Several people — Jane Ellen Johnson, Norma Taber, Alicia Willis, Dorothy Mercer, Fran Mohnke, Sue Neff, Karen McDonald, Barbara Brooks, Megan McClure, Brenda Matson, Berta Mae Ives, and Chris Taber — again helped out classroom teachers or in the library at the Primary School in the morning. And then in the afternoon organized and led a wildly over-subscribed Bible School program for kids who stayed after school.

-Anna Wood, Shirley Andrews, and Francie Markham helped out at Hartzell High School.

-Susan Henthorn and Margie Schleicher again helped out at the Africa University library

-And Gordon Schleicher, Pete Harris, and I again helped out with the intensive English classes at AU for students from DRC (Congo), Angola, Mozambique and Burundi. Gordon and Pete talked with a group of theology students, and were inspired by the stories of how some of the students came to decide to enter the ministry.

Yesterday evening we also had a short but very interesting presentation from the headmaster of Hartzell Primary School, Shadreck Mufute. He said he thought the biggest need the school had was for better accommodations for the teachers. Their salary is fixed by the government, but the school would be better able to attract and retain good teachers, he said, if they were able to provide better living quarters for them.

…more to come

Today began with an energetic Chapel service at Africa University, complete with several US Methodist bishops in attendance, and then we all split up again to go our separate ways.

I spent the morning with a discussion group composed of some students in AU’s intensive English program. These are students from neighboring countries such as Angola, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burundi who need to improve their English some before studying at AU. So we spent the morning practicing their English by talking about topics like war and peace, economic development, political corruption and elections — all issues of the day both for their countries and for mine.

So I’ll do my best here to provide short summaries of what’s going on, but photos and more in-depth discussions will probably have to wait until we’ve returned.
Yesterday the entire group went on a tour first of Africa University (AU), and then of the various facilities at the Hartzell Mission — a primary school, high school, orphanage, and clinic — across the way from AU.

We were all impressed with AU’s beautiful campus and buildings (many of them made
possible by donations from Methodist groups around the world), as well as by the enthusiasm and dedication of the various staff members we met and talked with in the administration office, the library, the health sciences school (”faculty”), and the agriculture school.

At Hartzell we visited the clinic and left for them the various medicines several team members had brought. And then we walked by the (newly built) cottages of the orphanage, stopping to talk with all the friendly and curious kids, and their house mothers, who came out to greet us.

Later we were taken on a quick tour of the Hartzell Primary School, where we were treated to a dance performed by some students and to a couple songs by the choir. We also had a wonderful and lively tea with the school’s headmaster and his teaching staff — probably the highlight of the day for many of us.
Today everyone split up to go to their individual assignments, either working at Africa University in some way or at Hartzell Primary. I’m sure we’ll hear all about these experiences later this evening.
As I said, this is just a very short, quick posting of the latest news. All of us are having experiences that I know we’ll want to share with our friends, family, and others much more in-depth than is possible right now in this medium. -Mark

Right now we’re at the hotel in Mutare, where we just finished a very nice dinner. The hotel has only one dial-up connection, so I’m writing for everyone.

Tomorrow we’ll tour Africa University, so I expect others will be able to write something too at that time.

I’ve managed to get a post by email system up and running. This will allow anyone who will have access to their home email account while they are in Zimbabwe (or now, too, for that matter) to easily post a message to the blog on the main page of this site just by sending an email message.

You will just need to send the email (I’ll let everyone know the address for it) from the email address you entered in when you registered for the site (see http://vimtozim.org/wp-admin/profile.php if you’re not sure what it was). The program matches the return email address of the message with the site’s registered users and their email addresses, and then posts the message only if there’s a match.

We can also upload images by email using this program. For example, this message was posted by email, and I attached to this email message a (relatively large) photo of Christopher with his new camera. It should display a resized version of the image at the top of this post, with a link in the image to the full-sized version. Hope it works. :)

We’ll probably continue to make tweaks and improvements to the site over the next few weeks, but for now team members are all invited to take a look at the site, to sign up for access to the discussion forum and for information about how to post to the blog (if you like), and to let family and friends know they can come to VIMtoZIM.org to get the latest news and info about the trip.

Here are some basic instructions:

1) Subscribing — Family, friends, or team members who would like to subscribe to the blog and automatically receive new postings as they occur, either by email or in a news reader (like My Yahoo), can either enter their email address into the box at the top on the right (”Subscribe by email”) or they can click on one of the news reader buttons under the “Subscribe” heading on the lower right.

2) Posting — Any team members who think they might be interested in posting to the blog can click on the “Register” link under the “Admin” heading (the link is: http://vimtozim.org/wp-register.php) and fill out the registration form. You’ll receive an automated email message with a password, which you can then use to log on to the site. And then sometime later I’ll send you information about how to post messages.

3) Photos — Any team member who will want to post photos to the site is invited to do so with the VIMtoZIM2006 Flickr account (http://flickr.com/photos/vimtozim2006/). Just send me an email message (see below) asking for details. Or if you have your own favorite online gallery site where you expect to post photos of the trip, send me the URL to your gallery and I’d be glad to include a link to it from the VIMtoZIM.org site.

4) Calendar – I’ve set up a team events and activities calendar that’s accessible from a link at the top of the main page. As of now only the first couple of days of the trip are filled in — the rest of the schedule should be in later today. Hopefully, we’ll be able to keep this updated as the schedule changes.

5) Forum — The site/team forum is also up and running. Anyone can view the forum postings, but only team members who register for forum access will be able to start discussions or post comments. To apply for membership by going to this link:

http://vimtozim.org/forum/people.php?PostBackAction=ApplyForm

and filling out the form (on this form you get to choose your own username and password). I’ll then receive an email message that someone wants to register, and if it matches an email address on the team list, I’ll approve it and you’ll have access.

Finally, I’d like to encourage anyone who has questions either about this site or about the trip to post them to the forum — so that everyone else can benefit from the questions and answers too. (Of course, if anyone has difficulty registering for the forum and can’t even get in at all, feel free to send me an email message directly.)

Mark
@taber.net