“We lost admits Zvinvashe

The former army commander also urged fellow Zanu (PF) candidates at a counting centre in the province to live with the reality that they had indeed lost the elections to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai.

Zvinavashe, a former army commander who once vowed he would never salute Tsvangirai, spoke on Wednesday while addressing Zanu House of Assembly and local council election candidates during the recounting of ballots for three constituencies at Gutu rural district council offices in Masvingo.

There is no need to fight over these results. We must accept the reality that we have lost these elections to the MDC. What is important is to live together in peace, both losers and winners. We do not want violence in this area. We are relatives, he said.

Zvinavashe startled election officials and agents when he publicly suggested that Zanu (PF) candidates in Masvingo had lost because of the party’s presidential candidate – Mugabe.

Most of us lost these elections not because we are not popular in our constituencies. We lost these harmonised elections because of one man. People rejected us because we were campaigning for Mugabe. People in Masvingo have rejected him and we became collateral damage. There is no reason to fight with the MDC over this election. The real problem is that man not us, he said. – Agencies

Daily News hearing opens

HARARE – A new board appointed to consider an application to reopen the country’s largest private daily newspaper, four years after it was banned, started hearing the case on April 21.

The government last year replaced the Tafataona Mahoso-led commission, which had rejected a licence application for Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe’s (ANZ), publishers of the Daily News and the Daily News on Sunday, suggesting that it was biased and had cruel intentions.

ANZ made representations before the committee this week pending a ruling on the application in terms of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA).

The Daily News and Daily News on Sunday were banned in September 2003 by the MIC for publishing without an operating licence in terms of AIPPA.

In May last year a High Court judge ordered the MIC to consider a fresh application for the newspaper, and this culminated in the October installation of the Chinondidyachii Mararike-led board, which handled the case this week.

The board has demanded the ownership structure of the newspaper and evidence that the publishers were on a good financial footing to run the newspapers.

The Daily News – which began publishing in 1999 – was critical of Mugabe’s government and had seen its readership rising sharply as the country’s economic and political crisis deepened.

The Zanu (PF) regime, which denies mismanaging the economy, frequently accused the newspaper of being an opposition mouthpiece.  

Junior docs’ strike cripples hospitals

HARARE – Zimbabwe’s junior State hospital doctors are on strike and have rejected calls by Robert Mugabe’s military junta to return to work on humanitarian grounds, a spokesman of the doctors’ union has confirmed.

Junior doctors are on strike and it’s a car issue, Dr Simbarashe Ndoda, the spokesman of the Hospital Doctors Association told The Zimbabwean on Sunday.

The doctors went on strike on Monday demanding cars they were promised before the March 29 general elections under the framework of the central bank-initiated skills retention scheme.

The cars, paraded by Mugabe and central bank governor Gideon Gono on State television on the eve of the election, have all been given to consultants, matrons, district chief pharmacists and other senior medical staff.

Senior medical staff are eligible for car schemes and duty free car imports, yet they got cars at the expense of the junior doctors, who have to commute to work.

There were 400 cars – enough for the 200 junior doctors in Zimbabwe, Ndoda said. To date, not a single junior doctor has taken delivery of any vehicle. They lied to us.

Doctors are earning between Z$10bn (just US$100) and Z$12bn a month.

They want this increased in line with hyyperinflation, currently running at 165,000 percent, a survival allowance and a reasonable accommodation allowance.

Nurses are considering joining the strike, which has so far paralysed referral hospitals Parirenyatwa, Harare Hospital, Mpilo and UBH. Sources in the Zimbabwe Nurses Association said the military junta had pleaded with the nurses not to join the strike pending the outcome of their pay negotiations with the state.

Private doctors have more than doubled their consultation fees and are insisting on cash up front, arguing that health insurance firms have been taking more than two months to pay them, by which time the money would have lost value in Zimbabwe’s  hyperinflationary economy.

ANC supports MDC – Biti

JOHANNESBURG – MDC secretary general Tendai Biti and regional spokesman Nqobizitha Mlilo held a positive and encouraging meeting with ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe on Thursday.

They briefed the ANC on the electoral crisis in Zimbabwe, and the constitutional crisis that has arisen out of this electoral impasse.

There is both a de facto and de jure coup. The Zanu (PF) regime has militarised the country, said Mlilo.

We also briefed the ANC on the escalating brutal violence that is being unleashed by the regime on defenceless and unarmed civilians and provided statistics to that effect.

The MDC remains optimistic that the involvement of the ANC will help unlock the crisis in Zimbabwe. The commitment of the ANC to be continuously engaged with the role players in Zimbabwe is a very welcome one, said Mlilo.

We continue to appreciate the role the ANC is playing and we will continue to call on this gallant movement to provide guidance, which will ensure that the people of Zimbabwe regain their dignity. Zimbabwe remains an African problem, and the solution to the Zimbabwe crisis can and will only come from Africa. In this matrix the ANC is no small player.

 

MDC will never participate in run-off – Morgan tells Africa

JOHANNESBURG – Zimbabwe’s president-in-waiting, Morgan Tsvangirai, has told Ghanaian president John Kufuor that Robert Mugabe is illegitimate and irrelevant.

Speaking in Accra on Wednesday, Tsvangirai reiterated that his party would never participate in the re-engineered presidential polls arguing that the MDC had already romped to convincing victory in both the parliamentary and presidential polls.

He told African leaders that Mugabe was now using violence as a tool to penalise the mass of Zimbabwe for voting against him and his Zanu (PF) party.

We have stated before and wish to restate here in front of our African brothers that we will not participate in a stage-managed run-off simply because Mugabe does not want to accept that we won this election decisively.

We will leave no stone unturned in ensuring that the whole world confirms that he is illegitimate. We are calling on every village and city, every tribe and dialect, every man and woman, every head of state in Africa to stand in defence of the people of Zimbabwe, said Tsvangirai.

The MDC leader repeated his dissatisfication with South African President Thabo Mbeki’s double standards in dealing with Mugabe, arguing that he had failed to bring a solution to the Zimbabwe crisis.

We have stated before and wish to restate here in front of our African brothers that we are disturbed by the role that President Mbeki is playing in undermining our peoples’ victory.

We are disturbed by his conduct as a mediator, particularly by his comments regarding the crisis in our country as well as his disinformation campaign during the recent SADC meeting in Mauritius as well as during the just ended United Nations Security Council meeting in New York.

He added: We call on President Mbeki to be bold and take this historic opportunity to side with the people of Zimbabwe and not with any political party. – CAJ News