Dear Friends.

There was a terse little announcement from the SADC Summit in Maputo on Thursday 05.11,09 from Morgan Tsvangirai that his party had lifted their boycott of the GNU with immediate effect for a thirty day period, in which time Robert Mugabe would be expected to deal with the ‘pertinent’ issues that had led to the MDC’s disengagement. We all know what those ‘pertinent’ issues are, whether they remain intact after the Summit will only be evident in the coming thirty days. If Morgan Tsavangirai has not been arm-twisted by SADC into dropping any of his demands then by 05.12. 09 the country should have a new Attorney General, a new Reserve Bank Governor, Roy Bennett will be installed as Deputy Minister of Agriculture and the Provincial Governors will also have been installed in their posts. The next thirty days will surely be a test of Mugabe’s authority; will he be able to persuade his supporters on the ground, the army, the police and the hated CIO security agents, that the GNU is a political reality which they must accept or will he once again introduce all the usual red herrings of sanctions and British involvement to muddy the waters? The MDC have now added the name of George Charamba to the list of unacceptable Zanu PF officials. Will Charamba now tone down his ‘hate’ speech and will ZBC/TV and the government controlled Herald begin to report more fairly- or at all - on the MDC? The next thirty days will be a test not only of Mugabe’s honesty but also of Tsvangirai’s strength of purpose.

For me and the thousands of others who signed the AVAAZ online petition to ban Zimbabwe from the Kimberley Process, the shock of the week was the failure to expel Zimbabwe for the blatant human rights abuses committed at the Chiadzwa diamond fields. Despite all the credible documentary evidence of murder and brutality committed against Zimbabwean citizens, despite clear evidence of the massacre of 200 people at Chiadzwa, the Kimberley Process meeting in Namibia failed to expel Zimbabwe or even to impose a six-month ban on diamond sales. Instead, they will send a monitor to Chiadzwa to check up on the human rights situation and oversee the production and sales procedures! The Kimberley Process is an international diamond certification process, set up in 2003 to monitor the sale of the gems and ensure that ‘blood diamonds’ are no longer sold on the international market. The Process involves some 99 members representing 75 countries who make up 99.8% of the world’s diamond production. Obert Mpofu, Zimbabwe’s Mining Minister, was present at the meeting in Namibia. There was “insufficient evidence” he declared, that Zimbabwe was in breach of Kimberley Process rules and, unbelievably, the meeting chose to accept his word. But not so unbelievable when we see that Zimbabwe was defended by South Africa, Namibia, Russia and the DRC, all diamond producing countries. You would think that they would all be concerned to clean up the diamond trade but, in fact, it was their veto that let Zimbabwe off the hook. Liberia’s Minister of Mines had visited Chiadzwa back in July to see for himself and he spoke movingly about how the diamond trade had funded the bloody wars that have killed thousands in his own country and in the DRC. None of that made any difference to the Kimberley Process decision; in blatant defiance of their own rules, Zimbabwe’s ‘blood diamonds’ will continue to be sold, enriching army generals, ministers of state and all the other assorted crooks who support Robert Mugabe’s continued stay in power. Their motives are at least understandable, greed is after all a universal phenomenon, but what remains incomprehensible is South Africa’s continuing support for the dictator. The business community in South Africa appears to be equally indifferent to human rights considerations as they gobble up more and more businesses in Zimbabwe. Today we read that a Johannesburg based firm called the New Reclamation Group will form a joint venture with Zimbabwe to mine the Chiadzwa diamond deposits. The New Reclamation Group is a scrap metal company partly owned by Old Mutual plc, another South African company whose business interests include a sizeable share holding in Zimpapers, the owners of The Herald and Chronicle, whose hate speech and pernicious propaganda have propped up the evil Zanu PF regime for decades and kept the Zimbabwean public disinformed on every issue – from crucial election issues to horrific human rights abuses. Old Mutual plc is the second largest share holder in Zimpapers. Pretty ironic that a company based in South Africa, a country where the press operates freely and which prides itself on one of the most liberal constitutions in Africa, should be so closely connected with a Zimbabwean newspaper group that daily spews forth virulent racist propaganda. South Africa’s constitution, adopted in 1996 clearly states in its bill of rights that all its citizens regardless of sexual orientation, race or gender have the right to live in “a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights.” Those noble ideals seem not to apply when South African government and business deals with Robert Mugabe and the country he has ruined. Instead of censuring his appalling record of misgovernance, South Africa protects him at every turn. Leaving morality aside, as the South Africans so obviously have, perhaps the forthcoming 2010 World Cup with all its potential business opportunities will convince them that their support for the geriatric dictator is a serious error of judgement? Meanwhile, South Africa continues to buy up our impoverished and desperate country where 50% of pupils cannot afford to write their O level exams this year because the fees are just unaffordable and half the population is living on food aid. I’d say they are very ‘pertinent’ issues and not likely to be dealt with in the next thirty days.

Yours in the (continuing) struggle PH. aka Pauline Henson author of Case Closed published by Mambo Press in Zimbabwe, Going Home and Countdown political detective stories set in Zimbabwe and available from Lulu.com and Amazon.

.................