NewsHawks 8 September 2023

Price US$1 Friday 8 September 2023 NEWS Ramaphosa plots talks after hotly-disputed Zim elections Story on Page 7 NEWS Kembo Mohadi bounces back from sex-induced wilderness WHAT’S Story on Page 14 INSIDE SPORT A protégé’s tribute: ‘People were just drawn to Streaky’ Story on Page 54 ALSO INSIDE After elections: Whither Zimbabwe? Government crackdown to pre-empt feared revolt intensifies

OWEN GAGARE ZIMBABWEAN police last night raided a popular nightclub in Harare, Eclipse Bar & Grill, on Nelson Mandela Avenue/Third Street just before midnight as the government intensifies its post-election crackdown to contain simmering social unrest and pre-empt a feared opposition-led revolt. The country’s political and security environment is increasingly becoming repressive and volatile, with basic liberties under threat and more draconian legislation being introduced. The government — evidently paranoid and feeling under siege — is currently running a draconian security operation, mainly in the capital, an opposition stronghold, around the clock to prevent gatherings of people amid fears of an uprising and post-election violence over the disputed recent elections. Eyewitnesses told The NewsHawks that police arrived in trucks and cars before storming the nightclub as part of a security operation which they have publicly confirmed while openly admitting its political agenda. “We were drinking and enjoying ourselves at Eclipse nightclub just before midnight when police raided the bar, ordering everyone to leave immediately. It was virtually a midnight raid which is clearly political because the club is always open until of late when this operation got underway,” one eyewitness said. “There was chaos inside and outside the club during the police raid. They aggressively ordered people to go home without telling us why. It was raw intimidation and needless use of brute force.” Another Eclipse patron said: “I’m not a political animal and didn’t even vote for anyone in the recent elections, but we are now living in a country in which people’s activities, including social events and drinking, are strictly controlled by the government with the help of a partisan police force.” The crowd of revellers outside Eclipse complained that their civil liberties were being violated by an authoritarian police force which has taken politics into nightclubs and other social gatherings. During last night’s operation, police went around Harare central business district searching for open bars, clubs and restaurants. At Nando's on Samora Machel Avenue police details shouted that people should leave and go home. They targeted customers ordering food at the 24-hour fast-food outlet. “They came to Nandos’ in trucks and cars, telling people to leave and go home,” one Nando's client said. “We didn’t immediately vacate the place because we had ordered food. This sort of behaviour is just repressive and oppressive.” Zimbabweans say their rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly are being increasingly threatened before, during and after the elections. After the “Patriotic Act” was signed into law in July, the situation is getting worse. Things will further deteriorate as the Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Bill, which will further undermine the right to freedom of association if adopted, will soon be signed into law. A source in the Office of the President and Cabinet say the Bill will soon be signed into law. “It will be signed into law soon,” the source said. The authorities have weaponised the law to persecute main opposition CCC members and supporters by subjecting them to arbitrary arrests, unlawful detentions and unfair trials. Members of civil society groups are also subjected to arbitrary arrests. President Emmerson Mnangagwa has claimed a disputed victory against his bitter rival, opposition CCC leader Nelson Chamisa, who has rePage 2 News NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 Govt crackdown to pre-empt feared mass revolt intensifies Cabinet tomorrow or Tuesday PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa hinted to Zanu PF party officials during a meeting at State House at the weekend that he is now finalising drafting his new cabinet ahead of its announcement on Monday or Tuesday. "We met the President and he indicated that he is finalising his new cabinet list this weekend," a senior Zanu PF official said. "We are expecting a fresh team which will be a mixture of the old guard and young turks given that the elections introduced new blood in parliament. The President has a lot of options now to appoint from." Insiders say Mnangagwa has huge room and latitude this time around to field his own preferred team since he has shaken off the shackles of control from his deputy Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga who had big influence on him and his appointments during his first term. Chiwenga installed Mnangagwa through a November 2017 coup, but the President has now become his own man after winning the elections by himself mainly using the Forever Associates Zimbabwe, a Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO)-controlled outfit that took over the running of elections from the military. In 2018, Mnangagwa was installed in power by the army which had ousted the late former president Robert Mugabe the year before via a disputed election. There is anticipation from some sections of society on how Mnangagwa will line up his new cabinet, especially economic ministries. Most business players and decision-makers are anxious to know who is likely to be the new Finance minister, although indications show that Mthuli Ncube is going back to the portfolio. Besides Finance, other ministries which are key include Industry and Commerce, Mines, Transport, Education, Health, Public Service, which controls the National Social Security Authority, Energy, Justice, Home Affairs, Defence, State Security, Local Government, Foreign Affairs and Information. There was a speculative cabinet list released on social media which had new names like Angeline Gata, Tinoda Machakaire, Joshua Sacco, Ngonidzashe Mudekunye, Tatenda Mavetera, Kindness Paradza, Barbara Rwodzi and Tafadzwa Mugwadi, among others.

NewsHawks News Page 3 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 jected the result as a "gigantic fraud" and a brazen subversion of the people's will, compounding the incumbent’s legitimacy problem. The Southern African Development Community's troika of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation has also rejected the outcome of Zimbabwe's recent flawed elections, while other observers gave a sceptical endorsement. Mnangagwa scraped through by a wafer-thin 2.6%, marginally better than 2018, ahead of his close challenger Chamisa. The President got 52.6%, while Chamisa got 44%. Tensions between Zimbabwe and its regional neighbours, especially Zambia, as well as some international community members over the elections are also fueling the current situation. There is a regional uproar over Zimbabwe’s elections. As the government escalates its crackdown, police are currently hunting down CCC national spokesperson Promise Mkwananzi over a 2020 court issue. The case was revived soon after Mkwananzi, previously arrested for political activism activities as the leader of pressure group Tajamuka/Sesijikile, was appointed CCC spokesperson. Earlier this week, police arrested and detained two Harare human rights lawyers Doug Coltart and Tapiwa Muchineripi representing opposition CCC members Womberaiishe Nhende and Sonele Mukhuhlani who were abducted and tortured by state security agents on Saturday last week. The lawyers were arrested on spurious charges of allegedly obstructing the course justice after they informed the police that the victims — their clients — were not fit to record statements due to their mental and physical condition, a position backed by doctors and nurses in attendance. At least 41 independent election monitors were arrested during the recent polls and their equipment seized by police. Realising that the 23-24 August general elections had degenerated into chaos and a farce, the government began deploying secret units of security forces, mainly law-and-order police, military intelligence and civilian intelligence, to assess the mood on the ground and manoeuvre to prevent a potential revolt, sources said. This involved a security threat analysis of the situation on the ground by intelligence services which concluded that the post-election environment is volatile, especially because Chamisa and his supporters believe the elections were stolen. Police confirmed the ongoing security operation in two public statements. One law-and-order police unit in plain clothes has been going around in Harare beating up people in bars and restaurants. Zimbabwe’s state security agency, Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) deputy director-general Gatsha Mazithulela was recently caught up in that operation. Mazithulela was badly beaten up in the early hours of 25 August by a law enforcement unit operating in suburban areas and town, violently closing bars and restaurants while forcing people to go home. Sources said Mazithulela was attacked at Zim Cafe Restaurant, which has two bars inside, at corner Kwame Nkrumah Avenue and Fifth Street in Harare; his favourite drinking place in the capital. After storming the bar, a 15-member state security squad, suspected to be military intelligence soldiers, viciously attacked Mazithulela, an academic who is one of the best scientists in the country and former pro-vice-chancellor at the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo, leaving him for dead. Eyewitnesses said they feared Mazithulela would die after he was brutally attacked before he was rushed to hospital by the bar owner who had hid under tables while the fierce raid took place. Sources said Mazithulela had tried to leverage his position and fight them using a chair after an explosive argument, but was overpowered by the ruthless group that had earlier the same night raided Angie’s Bar in Belgravia. His colleagues, including three journalists, were also brutally assaulted. Mazithulela has held top private sector positions abroad at the level of chief executive, especially in the chemicals, petrochemicals and energy sector, and also worked in government on technocratic capacities. Police confirmed a day after polling stations closed — on 25 August — that they are conducting patrols following an assessment of the political and security situation in the country, especially in Harare. Law enforcement officers are conducting motorised and foot patrols in central business districts, residential, industrial and other areas. Of late, police units have been getting increasingly aggressive amid paranoia and panic — a siege mentality from the authorities. Law-and-order police agents on 26 August tried to disrupt an opposition CCC Press conference addressed by Mkwananzi at Sapes Trust in Belgravia, Harare, leading to clashes with political activists and reporters. Sources say state security agencies believe Chamisa replaced Fadzayi Mahere with Mkwananzi, a former student activist leader, to cause trouble in the streets. Mkwananzi has been arrested many times for political activism. Police say they are now hunting him down over a 2020 warrant of arrest. Law-and-order police officers who stormed the recent CCC Press briefing and grabbed a speech from Mkwananzi — leaving him literally and metaphorically speechless — included Clifford Mugabiri, Jethro Tapererwa, Solomon Matambura and Panganai Gwati who led the aggression before they were repelled by the party officials and journalists. The attack on CIO boss Mazithulela has highlighted the problem of indiscriminate violence against innocent citizens. Mazithulela seems to have been unlucky of late. Last year, a man was shot dead during a breakin at his Harare home on Crichton Road in the Groombridge area of Mount Pleasant. Three years ago, a CIO agent drunkenly pointed a gun at Mazithulela as he was leaving his farm in Norwood in Umguza, Matabeleland North province. Given the high political stakes, unstable environment and the volatile situation, the security operation underway is fueling agitation and anxiety. Repression is worsening. Coltart and Muchineripi were arrested after they were called out to help two CCC members who were abducted on Saturday night last week, badly tortured and hospitalised. One of them gave an interview from his hospital bed on Monday morning, revealing gruesome brutality and injuries. The police had arrived at their hospital to “interview" them in the evening despite their horrific condition. They then called Coltart who told them his clients were in a bad state to be interviewed. Instead of finding a solution to the situation, police insensitivity got aggressive and arrested the two lawyers for allegedly “obstructing justice”. In the run-up to the elections, opposition rallies were disrupted and banned, some prominent members, including then MP Job Sikhala, jailed and activist Tinashe Chitsunge killed as repression and violence continue to grip the troubled nation. President Emmerson Mnangagwa

Page 4 News NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 NATHAN GUMA WHILE Zimbabwean authorities are still ranting and raving at Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema and the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) Election Observer Mission head Nevers Mumba for the rejection of the country’s recent sham election results, a secret regional lobby is underway for an extraordinary summit to be convened on the Zimbabwe situation. Lusaka has reportedly been lobbying some Sadc countries to call for an emergency meeting to discuss Zimbabwe’s recent shambolic elections which have left the country, region and sections of the international community divided. Zimbabwe, which sits at the heart of the region, has also been a destabilising factor. Hichilema, who is currently on a state visit to China to meet President Xi Jinping for bilateral talks, is the chair of the Sadc troika of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation. He deployed Mumba to lead the Sadc election observer mission to Zimbabwe. Mumba’s team said Zimbabwe’s elections did not meet the benchmarks in the country’s constitution, the Electoral Act and Sadc Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections. The mission, comprising members and experts from different countries across the region, effectively rejected Zimbabwe’s elections in an unprecedented move of courage and decisiveness. This triggered an apoplectic uproar, with Harare officials, assisted by their Zambian allies, supporters and apologists, fulminating and thundering at Hichilema and Mumba, calling them names without dealing with the substance of their report. Mnangagwa’s spokesperson George Charamba described Mumba as a “hired gun”, while Zanu PF mouthpiece Chris Mutsvangwa suggested he is a Western puppet. But Mumba has vigorously defended his team, which has now produced the final report, dismissing pot-shots aimed at him and Hichilema as immaterial. He says the report belongs to Sadc, not him or any other individual as the Harare authorities claim, and if Zimbabwe wants to reply to it then it must follow protocol through the regional body’s headquarters in Gaborone, Botswana. The lobby’s narrative is that Zimbabwe has again failed to hold free, fair and credible elections. The country remains locked in a trajectory of disputed polls that will compound challenges for economic recovery and destabilise the region. The elections again exposed widespread irregularities, illegalities and a blatant disregard for the law and international best practice measured against the country’s own constitution, electoral law and Sadc principles and guidelines governing democratic elections. Sadc member states are under pressure to take strong and effective action to deal with one of the region’s most protracted grave crises — Zimbabwe. Its credibility as a real force for democratic change and progress is on the line here and its leaders are being pressured to insist on proper elections and settlement of the Zimbabwe question. They are also being forced to deal with the issue in view of other Sadc elections ahead: Eswatini in September, Madagascar (November), Democratic Republic of Congo (December), and Botswana 2024. For the emergency meeting to take place, Hichilema must first convince the Sadc summit troika, which includes chairperson Angolan President João Lourenço. Other members of the summit troika are Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is the incoming chair, and outgoing chair DRC President Felix Tshisekedi. The recent Sadc summit in Luanda last on 17 August Summit elected Lourenço the chair and Mnangagwa incoming chairperson. It also elected Hichilema as chairperson of the organ on politics, defence and security cooperation and Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan as incoming chair. Namibian President Hage Geingob is the outgoing chair. For Hichiliema to pull off the extraordinary summit meeting, he would also need to carry his own troika of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, meaning getting the support of Tanzania and Namibia. With that core in place, then the bigger task is to convince South African President Cyril Ramaphosa who has been fighting in Mnangagwa’s corner, but has his own initiative going on behind-the-scenes. As incoming Sadc chair, Mnangagwa wields clout to scuttle the lobby. Charamba hinted at that. Charamba suggested Mnangagwa will next year use his Sadc power of incumbency to kill the damning elections report. Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi, whose country hosts the Sadc headquarters, is also pro-Mnangagwa. Even though several Sadc leaders congratulated Mnangagwa on his disputed victory, only three Sadc leaders attended Mnangagwa’s muchhyped inauguration — Ramaphosa, Tshisekedi and Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi. This suggests Mnangagwa, who is battling a political legitimacy problem, is not strongly supported across the region. Compared to the late former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe who had the experience, stature, capacity and respect to keep Sadc behind him, Mnangagwa is not in the same class and league. After Charamba’s rant, the Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services ministry’s permanent secretary, Nick Mangwana, who is government spokesperson, confirmed there is a lobby for an extra-ordinary summit, blaming Zambia, without naming it, for the development. “There is some treacherous lobbying going on by one Sadc member state to have an extraordinary summit on Zimbabwe. The other members are seeing through this and it’s not going to happen. This agenda being pushed by this member state is not its own. It’s doing a hatchet job for some powerful nations,” Mangwana said. While the Sadc mission’s mention of structural and systemic challenges in Zimbabwe reflects a break from the past, the question is whether it has the political will, courage and capacity to push further. South Africa’s Institute of Security Studies says Sadc leaders may not have the guts to bring back onto the regional agenda and tackle the Zimbabwe situation. “Zanu PF can rely on Sadc’s collective management style grounded in comradeship and the primacy of stability rather than confrontation or action. “Sadc is unlikely to muster the political consensus and willpower to put Zimbabwe back on the bloc’s agenda. Not all member states will be comfortable with Sadc election observer mission (SEOM)’s findings, which could set an unwelcome precedent that represents a departure from its previous approach. “With Zanu PF’s manoeuvring and Sadc’s approach of non-interference, the regional bloc is unlikely to act on the disputed elections.” Zimbabwe has been a scar on the conscience of the region for sometime now. At an extraordinary summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in March 2007, Sadc asked former South African president Thabo Mbeki to mediate talks between the ruling Zanu PF and then main opposition MDC. Mbeki’s mediation ended up with a Government of National Unity in 2009. Lobby for Sadc emergency summit on Zim heightens Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema (left) with his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa

NewsHawks News Page 5 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 ZIMBABWE has again failed to hold free, fair and credible elections. The country remains locked in a trajectory of disputed polls that will compound challenges for economic recovery. The elections again exposed widespread irregularities and a blatant disregard for the law and international voting standards. Making no mention of the multiple aberrations identified by observer missions, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) declared incumbent Emmerson Mnangagwa of the ruling Zanu PF the winner with 52.6%. Nelson Chamisa’s Citizens' Coalition for Change (CCC) got 44% of the vote. Disaggregated results are not available, and ZECllec claims it isn’t obliged to make them public despite this being international best practice. Zanu PF fell short of a two-thirds parliamentary majority but retained a comfortable majority with 136 seats. The CCC increased Parliament’s opposition seats to 73. The Zec announced the election results in record time, possibly to frustrate efforts to independently verify the count. The CCC rejected the outcome but withdrew its planned Constitutional Court challenge because "Zimbabwe’s courts were captured by Mnangagwa and Zanu PF", the party said. The playbook of bias in Zimbabwe’s courts, as seen in 2018 and in numerous election-related cases brought by the CCC, means that a court challenge would only legitimise Mnangagwa’s victory. So, in a move reminiscent of the 2008 Robert Mugabe rushed inauguration after a discredited election, Mnangagwa did the same. The Sadc mission’s mention of structural and systemic challenges reflects a break from the past Even the historically cautious Southern African Development Community (Sadc) Electoral Observation Mission (SEOM) couldn’t ignore the flouting of regulations and Sadc principles. Its preliminary report found that the ‘rural vote may be compromised by alleged intimidation attributed to a group called Forever Associates Zimbabwe (Faz), which is said to be a quasi-security intelligence organisation.’ It noted that ‘the Patriot Act is incompatible with the spirit of section 61(1) of the Constitution, and paragraph 4.1.2 of the Sadc Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections, which requires Member States to uphold, amongst others, the freedom of expression.’ In response, Zanu PF and the government have mounted a sustained campaign to shut down the SEOM’s criticism. The African Union’s (AU) report also profiles widespread concerns but doesn’t pronounce on them as Sadc does. At the start of vote counting, the government halted independent observation by local civil society organisations (CSOs) when police raided the Zimbabwe Election Support Network and Election Resource Centre data centres, arrested staff and accredited local observers, and confiscated laptops and cellphones. The government says it had intelligence that some organisations intended to illegally announce results based on the CSOs’ parallel vote tabulation. These actions shut down the Zimbabwe Election Support Network’s established independent Parallel Voter Tabulation process. Ironically, in the 2018 elections, both Zec and the government used the parallel tabulations to corroborate the results. Key election observer missions adjudged the polls as falling short of minimum standards. The SEOM’s unprecedented report was scathing, identifying a raft of procedural and process deficits at odds with the Zimbabwean constitution, Electoral Act and Sadc’s Principles and Guidelines for Democratic Elections. The ruling party’s hysterical reaction suggests it deemed the Sadc findings serious and damaging The Sadc mission noted Zec’s lack of readiness, even though the commission had declared it was fully prepared. The mission found a lack of transparency around the voters’ roll, the contentious delimitation report, skewed access to state media, voter intimidation and deeper structural concerns including the conflation of party and state interests, the manipulation of the judiciary and problematic legislation. Most of these issues have been recurring items in Sadc reports on Zimbabwe’s elections in the past two decades. However, the mention of structural and systemic challenges reflects a break from the past, exposing various concerns that opposition and civil society have repeatedly raised. Zanu PF and the government pushed back, attacking the SEOM report and its team leader, Zambian politician Dr Nevers Mumba. Other observer missions received the same treatment, including a personal attack on the European Union observer mission head. The ruling party’s hysterical reaction suggests it deemed the Sadc mission’s findings serious and damaging. So, what happens now? What consequences will the observer missions have, and how will the African Development Bank (AfDB)-led debt arrears negotiations resolution process be affected? It remains to be seen who will buckle first, although Zanu PF is unlikely to concede any ground. It can rely on Sadc’s collective management style grounded in comradeship and the primacy of stability rather than confrontation or action. Zanu PF is also the past master of diplomatic manoeuvre in the region, as the Sadc tribunal case showed. Nevertheless, the country faces a political dilemma, and getting that genie back in the bottle won't be easy. Sadc is unlikely to muster the political consensus and willpower to put Zimbabwe back on the bloc’s agenda. Not all member states will be comfortable with SEOM’s findings, which could set an unwelcome precedent that represents a departure from its previous approach. The regional and international communities will likely seek a conciliatory middle-of-the-road approach. Meanwhile, several Sadc leaders, including the presidents of South Africa, Namibia, Tanzania and Botswana, have congratulated Mnangagwa. So, while Sadc probably won’t backtrack on its SEOM report, it will park the concerns rather than elevate them to a rejection of the election result. The Sadc Panel of Elders’ visit to Zimbabwe is unlikely to change this scenario. The initiative has been shrouded in confusion, with no clarity on its goals and mandate, or if Sadc might retain a formal brief on Zimbabwe. The EU mission and Carter Center reports largely resonate with the SEOM report. But given the current AfDB-led debt resolution process, the international community and the AU are unlikely to escalate the election issue further. Comments by former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano, who is in Zimbabwe on an AfDB mandate, are important. Chissano indirectly endorsed a Zanu PF victory, and seemingly referred to the governance pillar of the AfBD process when he said the next administration must tackle electoral reform. The regional and international communities will likely seek a conciliatory middle-of-the-road approach under the guise of constructive engagement. Creditors seek the Zimbabwean government’s commitment to stay engaged in the AfDB process, with its three pillars of governance, economic reforms and land reform. Geopolitical imperatives and sheer fatigue with the Zimbabwean issue among Western creditors will shape their debt resolution efforts. They will have to live with the unsettling reality that the Mnangagwa administration is not a partner you can do business with and expect to act in good faith. — INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY STUDIES. Zimbabwean electorate vote in darkness during the recently-held general elections. After elections: Whither Zim?

Page 6 News NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 OWEN GAGARE MOST Southern African Development Community (Sadc) member states believe Zimbabwe’s 23 August general elections were flawed and agree with the preliminary report of the regional bloc's electoral observer mission which concluded that the elections fell short of requirements of the Zimbabwean constitution, Electoral Act and the Sadc Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections. The joint African Union-Comesa electoral observer mission also condemned aspects of the elections. In its preliminary report, the Sadc election observer mission led by former Zambian vice-president Dr Nevers Mumba said while the polls were largely peaceful, they did not meet constitutional requirements and its principles and guidelines governing the conduct of democratic elections in the region. Only three heads of state — South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, his Mozambican counterpart Filipe Nyusi and Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi — attended President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s inauguration ceremony on Monday, as the majority of leaders snubbed the occasion. Conspicuous by their absence were African Union chair Azali Assoumani, President of the Union of Comoros, Sadc and Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, the chairperson of the Sadc Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation. Sadc is a regional economic community comprising 16 Member States; Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, United Republic Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. A diplomatic source told The NewsHawks this week most countries in the region believe the election was a sham, largely because of briefings they had received from their diplomats and the Sadc observer mission, hence the reluctance to endorse Mnangagwa. “The Sadc observer mission's preliminary report angered Zanu PF and the Zimbabwean government, but behind the scenes, it has the support of the majority of Sadc member states, despite some leaders congratulating Mnangagwa or attending the swearing-in ceremony,” said a diplomat. “This includes South Africa, which has been pushing for dialogue between Mnangagwa and Chamisa although Ramaphosa has publicly congratulated the President.” The Zimbabwe polls were marked by massive voter suppression in the opposition party’s strongholds with voting being conducted at night in several constituencies in Harare and Bulawayo. There was also voter intimidation countrywide with the Central Intelligence Organisation-run Forever Associates Zimbabwe (Faz) collecting voter information outside polling stations before and after voting, under the guise of conducting exit polls. Faz was on the ground for more than a year and was involved in collecting voter information, for intimidation purposes, at various stages of the electoral cycle, including during the voter registration and inspection exercises. Electoral processes were also done in a non-transparent and sometimes unconstitutional manner to aid Mnangagwa and Zanu PF. This includes the delimitation exercise where gerrymandering was at play to ensure Zanu PF victory. Crucially, the opposition was denied an auditable voters’ roll while Zec printed and distributed ballot paper without the knowledge of opposition parties. There has also been concern over changes to electoral law during the election period and the manner in which postal voting was conducted. Many police and prison officers were forced to vote under the supervision of senior officers. In its preliminary report, the Sadc election observer mission said some aspects of the polls violated the constitution. “The mission observed that the pre-election and voting phases, on 23-24 August 2023 harmonised elections were peaceful, and calm. However, the mission noted that some aspects of the harmonised elections fell short of the requirements of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, the Electoral Act, and the Sadc Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections (2021),” the report reads. The mission also highlighted gerrymandering during the delimitation exercise. In representative democracies, gerrymandering is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency. “The mission was informed that the delimitation exercise that was conducted in 2022 was marred with controversy. In one way or another, concerned stakeholders claimed that the report that Zec submitted failed to observe the constitutional requirements for such an exercise, and that there were divisions amongst serving commissioners of the Zec regarding the veracity of the report,” read the preliminary report. The Sadc observer mission report attracted criticism from senior Zanu PF and government officials who claimed it was influenced by Mumba. Mumba was singled out for attack amid propaganda, with officials claiming that he accompanied Mnangagwa’s main challenger Nelson Chamisa when he went to vote, an allegation he dismissed. Mumba pointing out that that he had held meetings with Mnangagwa and Zanu PF secretary for administration Obert Mpofu as part of the Sadc efforts to meet all stakeholders. The Sadc secretariat then released a statement on 26 August in support of Mumba, while revealing that the preliminary report had input from stakeholders from all member nations. “The secretariat of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has noted with deep concern, statements made about the SEOM and the personal attacks directed at the Head of the Sadc Electoral Observation Mission (SEOM), Dr Nevers Mumba, the former vice-president of the Republic of Zambia, since the SEOM released its Preliminary Statement on 25 August 2023,” the report reads. “Some of these statements and attacks which have been aired on television, social media and newspapers are crude, scurrilous and misleading. The Sadc Electoral Observation Mission (SEOM) is currently in the Republic of Zimbabwe to observe the electoral process of the 23-24 August Harmonised Elections in line with Article 3 of the Revised SADC Principles and Guideline Governing Democratic Elections (2021). “The Chairperson of the Sadc Organ on Politics Defence and Security Cooperation, His Excellency Mr. Hakainde Hichilema, President of the Republic of Zambia, appointed Dr. Nevers Mumba to lead the SEOM in Zimbabwe. The SEOM is mandated to observe elections in terms of the Sadc Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections, and all Sadc Member States, including the Republic of Zimbabwe, are signatory to these principles, which have been operational since 2004. “All member states send individuals to serve as observers under the SEOM. For the August 2023 Harmonised Elections in Zimbabwe, observers were seconded from the Republic of Angola, the Republic of Botswana, the Kingdom of Eswatini, the Republic of Malawi, the Republic of Mozambique, the Republic of Namibia, the Republic of South Africa, the United Republic of Tanzania, and the Republic of Zambia.” However, a day later, Namibian President Hage Geingob congratulated Mnangagwa through his X social media handle. “On behalf of the people and Government of the Republic of Namibia, I extend warmest congratulations to @edmnangagwa on his re-election as President of Zimbabwe. I also extend felicitations to @ZANUPF_Official our sister party on the victory in the peaceful elections of 23-08-23,” he said. On August 28, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan followed suite. “On behalf of the Government and the people of the Republic of Tanzania, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to His Excellency, President @edmnangagwa, on being re-elected as the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe. I am looking forward to continuing working together in fostering the historic, economic and diplomatic relations between Tanzania and Zimbabwe,” she said. On the same day, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa extended congratulations to Mnangagwa through a statement in which he said the elections took place under a difficult economic environment, "due to the burdening sanctions which the people of Zimbabwe continue to unjustly endure". "Furthermore, South Africa has taken note of the preliminary pronouncements by the invited international observer missions including the African Union (AU) and the South African Development Community (SEOM) Observer Missions," the statement added. He then took to X to write: “I congratulate President Emmerson Mnangagwa on his re-election. I wish him and the people of Zimbabwe well for the upcoming term.” Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi also extended his congratulations on Friday, saying “your resounding victory is a clear demonstration of the trust and confidence that the people of Zimbabwe have in your visionary leadership.” He said his government would continue working closely with the Zimbabwean government. Mnangagwa losing battle to win Sadc hearts, minds Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema

NewsHawks News Page 7 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 Ramaphosa plots talks after hotly-disputed Zim elections BRENNA MATENDERE THE South African government and the governing ANC under President Cyril Ramaphosa are engaged in new secret talks with Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa's freshly-minted administration to resolve their neighbouring country’s protracted and simmering problems destabilising the region. Zimbabwe's problems are also fuelling social discontent south of the Limpopo River, in South Africa, and across the region. This comes in the aftermath of Zimbabwe's recent sham elections rejected by the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) and some influential international election observers. The latest charade of flawed elections has become a new catalyst for engagement in Zimbabwe. Ramaphosa was in Harare for Mnangagwa’s inauguration. ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula also came for engagement with Zanu PF and he met his counterpart Obert Mpofu and other officials, spending a number of days in the capital talking. “Ramaphosa and Mbalula were in Harare mainly for talks with Mnangagwa and Zanu PF to fix the Zimbabwe situation in the aftermath of yet another disputed elections,” a source told The NewsHawks. “Even if they support Zanu PF publicly, privately they are saying the Zimbabwe situation can’t be allowed to continue like this. It is not affecting Zimbabweans, but the whole region. Sadc leaders are clear on that, but they want to get a handle on the situation.” Further, renewed engagement on Zimbabwe led by South Africa comes ahead of the country’s 2024 elections that are a do-or-die for Ramaphosa and the ANC who are now fast-losing popular support amid social unrest due to governance, social and economic problems at home. The South African situation is worsened by the damaging ripple effect of the intractable crisis north of Limpopo River. Various sources have told The NewsHawks that South Africa and Ramaphosa are now under renewed pressure from growing internal problems and a tireless international diplomatic lobby to decisively tackle the Zimbabwe situation. “The South Africans are aware that Zimbabwe and the region can’t afford another disputed election; going round in circles. The crisis has gone on for far too long without a solution. So they want Mnangagwa and Zanu PF to engage to deal with the situation and break the cycle of disputed polls which prolongs the crisis,” a source said. “By publicly supporting Zanu PF and its leaders, the ANC and its leaders are hoping that it will build confidence, trust and cooperation to deal with the situation decisively. It’s a strategy and a means to and end.” Further information emerged this week when confusion broke out over Zimbabwean academic Professor Ibbo Mandaza's planned public lecture at the ANC-affiliated OR Tambo School of Leadership. Mandaza was scheduled to deliver the timely address under the topic: The State of Democracy in the Sadc Region: A Reflection of the National Elections in Zimbabwe, to a wide regional audience. The invite said Mandaza would deliver the lecture on Thursday. However, a letter apparently written by Mbalula to the Principal of OR Tambo School of Leadership David Masondo emerged saying the lecture has been postponed as the ANC leadership is locked in "delicate engagements regarding the situation in Zimbabwe". The letter said if the address went ahead now on an ANC platform, which OR Tambo School of Leadership is, that would "complicate these initiatives". To avoid that, the address must be delayed, it said. But a statement issued by the OR Tambo School of Leadership after the letter was leaked said the lecture was going ahead. Eventually it was postponed after an ANC intervention behind the scenes, saying it would undermine its engagement with Zanu PF and Zimbabwe. Mandaza is a proponent of a transitional authority in Zimbabwe to break the deadlock. The development reveals a tussle on the issue within the ANC political axis. Yet the cat is now out of the bag: Ramaphosa and Mbalula, who were in Harare on Monday for Mnangagwa's inauguration, are privately pressuring Zanu PF for a new deal in Zimbabwe to fix the country’s problems and stop a spillover into their own struggling economy, especially ahead of their own elections. The deal involves an inclusive governance framework taking into account various political and civil society formations, especially the main opposition CCC led by Nelson Chamisa. Both Zanu PF and CCC, which are battered by the gruelling election battle, want to talk. Zanu PF hardliners do not want to, fearing being sidelined from the patronage feeding trough, but they are in the minority. The CCC is eager, even though not happy with how Ramaphosa and Mbalula have been handling the Zimbabwe situation, especially labelling them "puppets of the West". Yet in a bid to prove good faith and restore some confidence to engage Mnangagwa and Zanu PF, Ramaphosa and the ANC have gone to the extreme in defending the Harare regime which is under siege for failing to resolve Zimbabwe's crisis following the 2017 coup that ousted the late former president Robert Mugabe. Ramaphosa and Mbalula have of late been aggressively fighting in Mnangagwa and Zanu PF’s corner to maintain contact between Pretoria and Harare, while attempting to be an "honest broker" — a contradiction in terms. The ANC said as a freedom struggle ally of Zimbabwe's liberation movement, initially represented by Zapu and now Zanu PF, it is firmly on the side of Harare's ruling party. This gives it access to Zanu PF, but makes it impossible for it to be seen as an honest broker by the CCC. The ANC wants to play that role previously played by former president Thabo Mbeki before Zimbabwe's Government of National Unity in 2009 at the height of political and economic meltdown amid hyperinflation. The CCC now thinks the ANC is engaging in bad faith, but the South Africans say that is a means to an end, not to be whined about too much. There is a new clamour for Zimbabwe to form a similar arrangement in the aftermath of another disputed election. The calls for that reverberate in Zimbabwe and the region, as far as Kenya. Professor Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba has delivered an impassioned speech on the issue. The disputed polls have left Zimbabweans, the region and international community more divided, necessitating a new intervention. “To the Sadc leadership, we urge you to move in and do that which is good and right. This is the time to give meaning to the biblical story of the Good Samaritan,” Lumumba said. “Zimbabwe is suffering. Let us be the Good Samaritans. Let us be our brothers and sisters’ President Emmerson Mnangagwa (left) with his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa

Page 8 News NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 keepers. This is the time for the African Union to rise up from her slumber and do what which Kwame Nkrumah said: To be a body that mediates and midwives peace. This is the time for Sadc and the AU to send in a fact-finding mission. This is the time.” Ramaphosa and Mbalula's approach has angered many sections of Zimbabwean society that feel they are not helping the situation, but complicating things by aiding and abetting Mnangagwa and Zanu PF misrule, particularly because people do not know what is happening now. Even those who feel South Africa has a genuine case to broker a deal and complain about immigrants now say by supporting and subsidising Zanu PF mismanagement for some nebulous diplomatic initiative that is ineffective, Pretoria is now part of the problem — not the solution — and should not complain when immigrants flood its country in new rising waves that are sure to come in months ahead. In fact, some Zimbabweans say immigrants must now flood South Africa more to make Ramaphosa and Mbalula appreciate the gravity of the problem and act holistically; a cynical approach. This also increases and justifies Zimbabwean immigrants' sense of entitlement on being in South Africa, which angers poor and marginalised South Africans, the impoverished subaltern that stoke xenophobic fires. That will almost certainly fuel renewed xenophobic conflict. Ironically, the ANC has moved to the right on the immigration issue to be anti-immigrants ahead of elections for votes, joining reactionary parties like Gayton Mckenzie's Patriotic Alliance and Herman Mashaba's ActionSA while inflaming the situation through an equally vocal and state-sponsored Operation Dudula. In the South African diplomatic chessboard, Pretoria thinks the only way to handle Zimbabwe is to keep Zanu PF and its leaders on the leash through measured secret engagements behind the scenes, with gratuitous public appeasement to ensure private rapprochement. Although South Africa has huge leverage on Zimbabwe given its economic and military muscle, its capabilities are however not deliverable on this due to its internal lack of capacity and liberation struggle fraternal brotherhood now under challenge from Zambia and other subtle shifts on the balance of forces in this dramatic state of flux. South Africa's vast economic interests loom large in the whole matrix as the country remains Zimbabwe's biggest trading partner. Ramaphosa is using Mbeki's controversial quiet diplomacy template in that regard to further Pretoria's economic interests. A Sadc diplomat based in Gaborone, Botswana, said: “South Africa has huge economic interests in Zimbabwe, so it is worried that if this situation is allowed to deteriorate and be further prolonged things may end up becoming difficult to fix and its national interest will suffer. “Diplomacy is a universally accepted means for securing national interests. It is through diplomacy that the foreign policy of a nation travels to other nations. It seeks to secure the goals of national interests. “Those attacking Ramaphosa are failing to understand this basic reality. National interest is a key concept in international relations. All the nations are always engaged in the process of fulfilling or securing the goals of their national interests. The foreign policy of each nation is formulated on the basis of its national interest and it is always the framework of engagement. It is a universally accepted right of each state to secure its national interests. A state always tries to justify its actions on the basis of its national interest. The behaviour of a state is always conditioned and governed by its national interests. Hence it is essential for us to understand why South Africa is behaving the way it does towards Zimbabwe. South Africa wants this Zimbabwe crisis to come to an end. Zimbabwe is now practically a domestic policy issue for South Africa. It can even partly influence next year’s elections in South Africa. That is why Ramaphosa wants a solution in Zimbabwe before South African elections.” The renewed talks between Zimbabwe and South Africa are guided by Pretoria’s economic interests, particularly interests of the elites which Ramaphosa represents. “At the core of Ramaphosa’s fresh diplomacy on Zimbabwe are his country’s political, commercial and security interests,” the diplomat said. “Because of elections coming in South Africa, the Zimbabwe issue has become more urgent for Ramaphosa. If Zimbabwe’s crisis is allowed to fester and deteriorate further, it will hurt South Africa more and Ramaphosa’s re-election prospects next year.” Mbeki allowed Mugabe to steal the 2008 presidential election after he had been defeated in the first round of polling by the late main opposition MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai. He even defended Mugabe when he withheld first round results for six weeks, infamously saying there was no crisis in Zimbabwe. After that, Mbeki emerged presenting himself as an "honest broker" and forced Tsvangirai to sign a skewed deal, badly mismanaged by the opposition itself later to give Zanu PF a new lease of life in 2013. With Israeli security company Nikuv rigging the elections for millions paid by the government, Zanu PF cruised to a landslide. Pretoria has been consistent on that. This continued under the brief Kgalema Motlanthe reign and later the Jacob Zuma administration. Hence, Zuma did not condemn the coup against Mugabe and helped Mnangagwa secure regional and international acceptance and legitimacy. Picking from that, Ramaphosa started his own engagement in 2020, sending two missions to Harare, one led by former ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule and the other by Sydney Mufamadi, which were thwarted by Mnangagwa and his hardliners. This followed the 31 July 2020 protests and the subsequent crackdown. Ramaphosa walked away and let Mnangagwa dig more while sinking in a hole until he was grounded there. When Mnangagwa became isolated, Ramaphosa came back with a lifeline, making loud pronouncements on sanctions on Zimbabwe. The recent election rejected by the Sadc Election Observer Mission, with the support of Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema and many others behind the scenes, gave Ramaphosa new leverage. Hichilema is also chair of the Sadc troika of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, a key regional instrument of intervention currently unleashed on Zimbabwe. South African ally Angola is the Sadc chair, making things easier. Zambia is also close to South Africa from a historical perspective despite the new shift under Hichilema. The current contradictions in Sadc provide a new golden opportunity for regional leaders to tackle the Zimbabwe crisis, but only if there is decisive leadership and statesmanship which clearly Ramaphosa has not offered yet. Having secured re-election through a sham election and fraud, with many Sadc leaders except three snubbing his much-hyped inauguration, Mnangagwa is vulnerable now and wants to talk. Ramaphosa knows that and has moved in, but his strategy is questionable. However, Ramaphosa, a former trade unionist who knows how to bargain, is an experienced negotiator with impressive credentials in that area, having led far much more complex negotiations for a new South Africa and other missions abroad. Yet Zimbabwe is the biggest test of his presidency in that regard, made all the more difficult by problems back home, with power outages being emblematic of that challenge now back on the regional and international diplomatic radar. ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula

NewsHawks #ZimElection2023 News Page 9 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 BRENNA MATENDERE SOUTH African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Namibian counterpart Hage Geingob have come under fire in their countries for rushing to endorse the disputed re-election of President Emmerson Mnangagwa in polls that were largely condemned by the Southern African Development Community (Sadc), African Union and international observer missions. Maximalliant Katjimune, a legislator from Namibia's opposition Popular Democratic Movement, while making his submissions in the country’s Parliament on Wednesday, demanded to know why President Geingob rushed into congratulating Mnangagwa for winning a discredited election. “Elections in Zimbabwe have over the years been tainted by irregularities, voter suppression and lack of transparency. And the elections held on the 23rnd of August to 24 were no different. That is why when president Geingob was the first president of Sadc to congratulate Mnangagwa in a disputed election, it raised concern. “This action by President Geingob is inconsistent with Namibia's democratic principles and human rights. Both regionally and internationaly. Moreover, Mr Speaker, the Sadc observer report on the elections came to the conclusion that aspects of the elections fell short of the requirements of the constitution of Zimbabwe, their Electoral Act and the Sadc principles on free and fair elections,” he said. The MP told Parliament that he intended to ask Namibia’s minister of Foreign Affairs about Geingob’s endorsement of Mnangagwa’s victory in a disputed election. On the other hand, South African President Ramaphosa also came under fire in his country's Parliament from main opposition Dwmocratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen for attending Mnangagwa's inauguration and hobnobbing with other dictators under the Brics bloc led by Russia which is waging a war of aggression on Ukraine. Steenhuisen said Ramaphosa had chosen to support Zimbabwe’s disputed elections because his governing ANC is likley to follow the same path of rigged polls in future. “You are standing with autocrats and dictators who are sacrificing the principles in our own constitution. This is not human rights on what Brics can do to South Africa; it's about what Brics and particularly Russia can do to ANC. “It is for the same reason that you attended Emmerson Mnangagwa's inauguration. You are willing to give false legitimacy to Zanu PF because you know full well that your own party is following in their footsteps,” he said. Steenhuisen directly criticised Ramaphosa who was present in Parliament, saying he did not seem to care for the suffering of Zimbabweans who will now endure the rule of an illegitimate government. “Mr President, do you care nothing about the suffering and deprivation experienced by women of Iran and the people of Zimbabwe that are now shackled in an illegitimate election which your own Sadc region has cast aspersions on?” he asked. Concerns are high that Zimbabwe’s pariah state status, earned during the era of the late president Robert Mugabe over his draconian rule and electoral theft, could now gain momentum in the aftermath of the shambolic polls which saw most African leaders shunning Mnangagwa’s low-ley inauguration last week. The Southern African Development Community has been Zanu PF’s solid line of defence in sanitising controversial elections held since the emergence of the main opposition MDC in 1999. However, for the first time, Sadc condemned last week’s elections, opening the floodgate of condemnations by other election observer missions. Led by former Zambian vice-president Nevers Mumba, the Sadc Electoral Observer Mission (SEOM) said the elections violated Zimbabwe’s constitution, Electoral Act and was also in breach of the regional bloc’s Principles and Guidelines for Democratic Elections. “Our goal was to observe the process(es). If the process was flawed, the result cannot be legitimate,” said a forthright Mumba. The European Union, British government, United States government, Au-Comesa and the Commonwealth have also condemned the elections, highlighting the risk of Zimbabwe’s complete international isolation which could render the country a fully fledged pariah state. SA, Namibia leaders blasted for supporting sham elections South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Namibian counterpart Hage Geingob (below)

Page 10 #ZimElection2023 News NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 BRENNA MATENDERE POLITICAL analysts say the decision by the opposition Citizens' Coalition for Change (CCC) led by Nelson Chamisa to abandon a planned court challenge against President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s controversial re-election was a good move, given that Zimbabwe’s compromised judges were likely to rule against the party. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) declared that Mnangagwa won the presidential vote on 23 August with 52.6%, while Chamisa got 44% of the total votes cast. The remainder was split between other smaller parties. While expectations were high that the opposition would go to court to challenge the results of the polls on the grounds that they were rigged while engaging in other political and diplomatic manoeuvres, CCC spokesperson Promise Mkwananzi said the opposition party would not pursue litigation in its quest to set aside Mnangagwa’s controversial win, arguing that imbabwe’s courts are captured. In an interview with The NewsHawks on Thursday, University of Zimbabwe political scientist Professor Eldred Masunungure said the party's stance can be lauded based on the historical context, but he reiterated that the stakes remain high. “If the decision to abandon the litigation route is viewed with a historical and contextual lens, it becomes the most logical and defensible albeit controversial one. In appealing the disputed Zec declaration to the Constitutional Court, in light of lessons from the recent past, CCC would have succumbed to ‘Einstein insanity’. . .” said Masunungure. However, he pointed out that while the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) and the African Union could help the CCC in nullifying the rigged elections, it would be hardliners mostly in Zanu PF who could stand in the way. “Nonetheless, the party and its leader find themselves boxed in the horns of a difficult dilemma from which there is no easy exit,” said Prof Masunungure. “The best Sadc — with support from the AU, and possibly the UN — can do, is facilitate negotiations, hopefully leading to some inclusive political formula. The elephant in the room are the hardliners in both parties, especially in the ruling party.” Stephen Chan, a professor of world politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, concurred that the CCC is not going to get a reprieve in the courts, but he emphasised that the party must now sustain its opposition to Zanu PF. “Given the way the courts were used in the build-up to the elections, an instrument to debar non-Zanu PF candidates from contesting the elections, there has been no reason for the CCC to suddenly believe they have changed,” Chan said. “Having said that, the CCC may not, in fact, have sufficient numbers of V11s to sustain a challenge purely in formal evidence terms. The CCC was thinly stretched in the elections and the very late opening of polling stations and then their opening again for an extra day would have made scheduling in terms of agents' time and alertness very difficult.” But Chan said that the CCC must soldier on. “People still have families to look after, even in an election. Basically, the CCC has now to sustain a political opposition, but in the full understanding that the majority of the world, and high opinion in Africa itself discounts the probity and honesty of these elections,” he said. Political analyst Vivid Gwede told The NewsHawks that the biggest implication of the CCC's decision not to go to court is that the party has avoided sanitising Mnangagwa’s stolen election via the compromised courts. “The opposition further denied Mnangagwa an opportunity to legitimise his disputed election through the courts. There are credible reasons why the opposition should think the courts are captured which include the handling of past election disputes and cases in the run up to the election, controversial extension of the bench's tenures through constitutional amendments and the controversial monies they were given ahead of elections,” Gwede said. “The courts, for instance, failed to rule fairly on the issue of the voters’ roll and banning of the opposition rallies by the police. Zimbabweans therefore expect Sadc to act on its findings." Political analyst Rashweat Mukundu said CCC had done well, given the voter suppression in urban areas, intimidation of voters in rural areas, the gerrymandering of constituencies by Zec, the lack of transparency and accountability by the electoral commission, police banning CCC rallies and the activities of Faz in intimidating and politicising Zec. “So, my take is that the opposition did so well and it increased its strength, rather than weakening. We tend to focus so much on the presidential election, but I think we also need to reflect on council and parliamentary elections. The opposition managed to stop a twothirds majority by Zanu PF and also took control of all urban centres,” he said. “The strategy going forward, of course, is a difficult one because we are dealing with a brutal authoritarian state which has captured key state institutions like the judiciary. So, there is no way that the judiciary under its current setup is going to look at any electoral challenge that can threaten Zanu PF's hold on power in a favourable manner. So, in essence, it is a waste of time for the opposition to go to court because the judiciary will always rule in favour of Zanu PF. “Then, it is important that CCC as part of its push for broader governance reforms, including changes to the electoral process, pushes for engagement with Sadc. The observer mission report must be tabled by Sadc by the observer mission body, and recommendations emphasized upon so that Zanu PF and state institutions take into account all these issues in a reform process. “So, I think there is no easy way out of the political crisis that Zimbabwe is in. There is no easy way for the opposition. Every option, including pushing for the involvement of the region and pushing for reforms at parliamentary level is needed and one can only wait for time hoping the path that the opposition takes will result in change of some sort.” CCC spokesperson Promise Mkwananzi said the party had dispatched envoys on a diplomatic offensive to push for fresh polls. “We are following the political and diplomatic route to bring pressure to bear on Mr Mnangagwa and his Faz [Forever Associates Zimbabwe] to concede that there was no election and cooperate in line with Sadc guidelines to bring forth a fresh, free and fair election,” Mkwananzi said. He was quoted by ZimLive.com as saying the CCC would also pursue mass protests. However, Mnangagwa said the country’s security forces are prepared to crush any uprising and jail those holding protests. Among the few dignitaries who attended Mnangagwa’s inauguration were South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Mozambican counterpart Filipe Nyusi and the Democratic Republic of Congo leader Felix Tshisekedi. Africa has 54 heads of state, 16 of them from Sadc. Zambian President and leader of the Sadc Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, Hakainde Hachilema, did not attend the inauguration while a final Sadc election observer mission report tabled to the regional bloc by team leader Nevers Mumba stated that the polls fell short of regional standards. Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi also did not attend the inauguration. Zanu PF's acting information director Farai Marapira is on the record as saying that by abandoning the legal route, Chamisa and his party had conceded that they lost the elections. CCC makes correct move by avoiding compromised courts CCC spokesperson Promise Mkwananzi

NewsHawks #ZimElection2023 News Page 11 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 OWEN GAGARE CCC leader Nelson Chamisa decided not to contest President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s controversial win in the 23 August elections in the Constitutional Court in line with section 93 of the constitution after getting legal advice that a pattern of bogus electoral judgements issued by the courts in the pre-election period, would continue, among other reasons. Chamisa was expected to file an online electoral petition on deadline day last Saturday, but changed his mind after going through the legal advice, paving way for Mnangagwa’s inauguration on Monday. Section 93 (1) of the constitution says a challenge to the presidential election should be lodged in court within seven days. “Subject to this section, any aggrieved candidate may challenge the validity of an election of a President or Vice-President by lodging a petition or application with the Constitutional Court within seven days after the date of the declaration of the results of the election,” reads the constitution. The constitution gives power to the ConCourt to declare a winner or “invalidate the election, in which case a fresh election must be held within sixty days after the determination.” Below is part of the legal advice given to Chamisa: Bogus electoral judgments Leading to August 2023, a lot of litigation bearing on the conduct of free, fair and credible elections was brought. All the matters bar one (the Bulawayo 12, and even then on appeal and after a massive push back) produced bogus judgments. As far as the Constitutional Court is concerned, it was predominantly seized with the Kasukuwere matters which were all resolved on bogus grounds. These challenges brought are key because they speak to some of the matters that must of necessity be raised in any petition. A brief run down of some of the matters is imperative: Markham v Zec This matter was brought by an opposition parliamentarian who enforced his right to a voters’ roll. The application was dismissed although the Electoral Act (Chapter 2:13), makes it clear that any Zimbabwean is entitled to a copy of the voters’ roll. The voters' roll that was used in the elections was not given to candidates. Mwonzora v Zec This is a matter brought by one of the opposition leaders in which he challenged the delimitation exercise. The application was dismissed although all the political parties concerned accepted that the delimitation exercise was unlawful. In dismissing the application, the courts did not say the delimitation exercise was lawful. Statutory instruments and amendments to electoral laws. The Mnangagwa administration sought to amend the constitution through a statutory instrument after the proclamation of the election dates. Two issues arose. First, a statutory instrument could not amend the constitution. Second, no law could be amended for purposes of elections once an election was proclaimed. Notwithstanding its clear merit, one of these applications failed and the other is yet to be determined. Next was the security cantonment case on ring fencing Dzivaresekwa Barracks. It too failed. Mangwana v Kasukuwere This is a case brought by a Zanu PF activist which sought to bar a presidential candidate from contesting in the elections. The former Zanu PF candidate enjoys support in the Mashonaland provinces and his participation would have made rigging in those provinces difficult. The relief granted in this matter strengthened Mnangagwa’s hand. The Bulawayo 12 A total of 24 cases were brought seeking to bar the Bulawayo 12 from contesting. In the High Court, the applications were granted on bogus grounds. What is even more illuminating is that the applicants, all Zanu PF activists, relied on documents that the CCC had no access to and which they could only have been given by Zec. Double candidates. During the nomination process, Faz lodged nomination papers on behalf of certain individuals in order to create double candidates. The double candidates plainly admitted that they had not paid nomination fees and were accordingly not involved in the process of their nomination. Indeed when a challenge was brought, Faz procured for all of them legal representation by a single firm of legal practitioners. Although their nomination had nothing to do with the CCC, upon a suit being brought by the CCC seeking a declaration that they were not its candidates, one of the Electoral Court judges who has a complaint pending against him, heard the matter and dismissed the application. An appeal was lodged but the Supreme Court flatly refused to hear it and even rejected heads of argument that had been file by the CCC. Resultantly, there were double candidates during the elections to the prejudice of the CCC. Final voters' roll case The voters' rolls given to candidates had discrepancies with the list of polling stations issued, which made it clear that this was not the voters' roll that was going to be used during the elections. This matter was placed before the same judge who had heard the first voters' roll case and he, once again, as he had done with the first one, dismissed it. Observers Certain local observers were barred from exercising their functions on bogus grounds. A challenge brought by them was unsuccessful although the action taken against them was both unlawful and unprecedented. The rallies The CCC had more than 110 rallies barred in the run up to the elections. Challenges brought against these bars failed. In certain instances, the courts would set down the challenges on dates that were after the scheduled rallies. This was particularly the case in Bindura where the CCC was meant to have its election launch rally. Bail denial In Seke constituency, CCC members including a chief election agent for a candidate were assaulted by Zanu PF officials. When they sought sanctuary from the police, they were promptly arrested and denied bail. They remain in custody. On the other hand, Zanu PF officials who murdered a CCC supporter lawfully going about his business in Glen View, were all admitted to bail. Cheza, a losing CCC candidate, who narrowly lost to a candidate responsible for the disappearance of a police officer who had refused to be used by Zanu PF, is himself in custody over flimsy complaints, having been arrested a couple of days after the elections. Ballot papers case Contrary to its statutory obligations, Zec did not advise political parties of the details relating to the printing of ballots, their number and related issues. When it was taken to court, it undertook to avail those details by the 19th of August 2023. It then purported to give such details on the 18th instant but refused to provide the serial numbers. Elections were held before this matter was finalised and it is now known that whilst Zec claimed to have printed ballot papers, there were no such ballots in all opposition strongholds on voting day. All these cases demonstrate a pattern, all too perceptible, and it would be ill-advised for the CCC to ignore it. Bogus poll-related rulings that shaped CCC decision CCC leader Nelson Chamisa

Page 12 #ZimElection2023 NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 NATHAN GUMA ZIMBABWE’S overtures to rejoin the Commonwealth could come to naught in the aftermath of a tainted general election, with members of the British Parliament saying Harare’s re-admission must rise or fall on the credibility of the 23 August poll. The country has been seeking re-admission to the Commonwealth, two decades after quitting following clashes between the club of mostly former British colonies and the long-time ruler Robert Mugabe over policy conflicts, human rights abuses and violation of the group’s democratic values. President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was re-elected for his final term, has been struggling to sanitise the discredited polls that have for the first time been rejected by the Southern Africa Development Community Observer Mission (SEOM). In the past, the southern African regional bloc has maintained a soft stance towards Zanu PF's electoral fraud. In its preliminary report, the SEOM said the country failed to meet local and international principles and guidelines governing democratic elections. The Commonwealth observer mission has also highlighted intimidation, lack of independence of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) and an uneven campaign field as key factors likely to have undermined the credibility of the 2023 electoral process. This week, in the House of Lords, British parliamentarians debated a motion raised by non-affiliated member Baroness Kate Hoey on the United Kingdom government’s assessment of Zimbabwe’s general election. “My Lords, the United Kingdom commends the Zimbabwean voters for their peaceful participation in Zimbabwe’s recent elections. However, the UK shares the view expressed in international election observation mission preliminary statements that the pre-election period and election day fell short of regional and international standards,” Hoey said. “The UK is also concerned about the lack of transparency surrounding the compiling of results by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and the severe disruption of domestic observation. My Lords, it was obvious to every independent observer that those elections were not free and fair. In the words of Nelson Chamisa himself, they were a 'blatant and gigantic fraud', but the hard-hitting Sadc report questioned the credibility of the elections and the breaches of its own standards.” She also expressed concern over the further shrinking of civic space in the post-election period. “The saddest thing is that, as the election observers left, the familiar pattern of widespread arrests, abductions and torture of grassroots supporters of the opposition is taking place as we speak all over the country. There were even lawyers arrested last night in a hospital where they were representing torture victims—the same kind of retribution that Mugabe did after 2008. “Does the noble Lord agree that now is the time for full support by His Majesty’s Government for Sadc’s efforts to resolve the crisis, and in particular for our newly arrived ambassador to re-evaluate all facets of our relationship with a Zimbabwean Government who flout their own laws through acts of violence and torture, and to give some hope even in the darkest days to the perseverance and courage of the Zimbabwean people?” she asked. In response, Lord Guilford of the Conservative Party suggested that the UK takes a lenient stance towards Zimbabwe as it will be important in helping fight off dominance of Africa by the Chinese and the Russians. However, another Conservative member, Lord Wimbledon, said the UK must review its relationship with the Zimbabwean government. Another member, Lord Kingsmill, who was also part of the observer mission to Zimbabwe, said Harare has failed to implement reforms which were laid out by the observer mission to the 2018 general election. “My Lords, I have just returned from Zimbabwe. I was a member of the Commonwealth observer group, and we did an extensive report, the interim statement of which members can find in the Library. “A lot of factors, many of which were also raised in 2018, led us to doubt the credibility of this election. Will the minister agree that the ideal would be for Zimbabwe to re-enter the Commonwealth, but it can do so only when it meets the standards of proper democracy, the rule of law and free elections?” Zimbabwe’s re-engagement has also been predicted to be bumpy by UK-based think-tank Africa Risk Consulting (ARS). “The disputed election could also have an impact on Mnangagwa's agenda to re-engage with Western and multilateral institutions who have imposed a pre-condition that Zimbabwe holds a credible election before talks can progress. “In fact, on 1 September, United Kingdom’s (UK) development and Africa minister Andrew Mitchell noted that the UK shares the view with other electoral observer missions that Zimbabwe’s pre-election and election day fell short of regional and international standards.” Electoral squabbles dent Zim Commonwealth bid Baroness Kate Hoey

NewsHawks #ZimElection2023 News Page 13 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 OWEN GAGARE LEGAL advice given to CCC leader Nelson Chamisa says Chief Justice Luke Malaba and Constitutional Court judges are “fully and faithfully captured” by President Emmerson Mnangagwa and had received hefty bribes ahead of the 23 August general elections such that they were not expected to be impartial when handling the opposition party’s electoral challenge. The lawyers also highlighted the fact that Mnangagwa amended the constitution to extend Malaba’s tenure at the helm of Zimbabwe’s judiciary to ensure he presides over any electoral disputes meant there was no chance of a successful application. The CCC did not challenge the election results after obtaining the advice, although the polls were condemned by the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) Election Observer Mission. The Sadc team highlighted that the polls fell short of constitutional, Electoral Act and Sadc requirements. The joint African Union-Comesa mission also condemned aspects of the elections. Article 11.7.1 of the Sadc Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections mandates the region’s observer mission to observe the conduct of procedures and processes concerning electoral complaints and challenges by citizens, prospective voters and those seeking election, including the provision of effective remedies for violations of election-related rights. Lawyers however argued that the domestic remedies are not effectual in the case of Zimbabwe. “In the case of Zimbabwe, those remedies are not available at all. The Zimbabwean judiciary is fully and faithfully captured,” the lawyers said. “Infamously, Emmerson Mnangagwa has bragged that he is the army, the police and 'the judiciary', a claim typified by the continued incarceration of Citizens' Coalition for Change (CCC) senior official Job Sikhala on trumped-up political charges which were meant to exclude him from the elections. Indeed, one of the CCC candidates, Godwin Hakata, won the national assembly elections whilst in prison, having been arrested for taking part in a car procession on his way to a sanctioned rally. “Zimbabwe lacks a functional separation of powers. The executive fully controls the judiciary and that has been enabled by a skewed appointment system in terms of which Mnangagwa has stuffed the courts with his sympathisers. Though Zimbabwe has a public interviews systems that precedes the appointment of judges, it is an open secret that the results of those interviews have been religiously ignored.” The lawyers said the lack of separation of powers had led to the politicisation of judicial institutions. Party lawyers said various judgments “show beyond any doubt that the judiciary is disposed towards Mnangagwa and does not consider itself bound to the constitutional ideal of independence”. “For this reason, even judges whose behaviour has been errant, have upon pledging loyalty to Mnangagwa, been spared from giving account. A case in point is that of Justice Chinamora whom the Judicial Service Commission recommended must face a tribunal arising out of clear misconduct,” the lawyers said. “Though Mnangagwa is constitutionally enjoined to appoint such tribunal, he has not done so to date. Going into the elections, Justice Chinamora heard more than ten electoral challenges, found in all against the challengers and is definitely paying back Mnangagwa for his decision to protect him. "In that regard, it must also be noted that the Chief Justice designated all High Court judges as Electoral Court judges but only a handful, being not more than five judges, heard matters in the Electoral Court.” Chief Justice Malaba In terms of the 2013 constitution of Zimbabwe, Malaba should have retired on 15 May 2021 when he turned 70 years. Lawyers however said: “In a bid to ensure that he would be available to deal with any electoral disputes in 2023 having come to his aid in 2018, Mnangagwa unlawfully amended the constitution and extended Malaba’s retirement age to 75, the first time a whole constitution was amended to accommodate one person, and a judge at that. “The extension was a fool’s errand because in terms of the constitution, any extension of a term limit must not benefit the incumbent. “The matter was litigated upon. The High Court per three judges, all of whom have now been victimised in various ways, held that Malaba’s term could not be extended and he was obliged to proceed on retirement. Mnangagwa’s government was incensed and responded through the minister of Justice in contempt of court and issued various threats to those and other judges” A bench comprising Justices Jester Helena Charewa, Happias Zhou and Justice Edith Kuda Mushore ruled that Malaba as the incumbent could not benefit from an amendment of the constitution extending term limits. The judges said tenure is defined by both the fixed term and the stipulated retirement ages. The judgement was in respect of two matters that were heard together on 15 May challenging President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s extension of Malaba’s term in office by five years, after he reached the age of 70. “In terms of s328 (7) of the constitution, such an extension is an amendment to the constitution. It cannot benefit the persons who held or occupied the office at any time of the amendment,” the judgment read. “Any extension of the length of time that persons who were judges of the Constitutional Court and Supreme Court to the amendment of s18 through the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No.2) 2021 would be a violation of the applicants’ right as protected by s56 (1) and s69 (3) of the constitution of Zimbabwe”. The judges said at the time the applications were filed, Malaba had not turned 70. They said the applications were filed following indications that he might or would benefit from the new section 186 of the constitution by having his tenure extended by another five years. “In view of the conclusion we have reached, Honourable Justice Luke Malaba ceased to be a judge of the Constitutional Court and Supreme Court at 0000hours on 15 may 2021 when he turned 70 years. Equally he ceased to be the Chief Justice of the Republic of Zimbabwe at that time,” the judges said. The lawyers said the three judges were threatened and victimised after the ruling. Justice Mushore has been dismissed “on flimsy grounds”, while Justice Charewa was transferred to an outlier posting against her wishes. Justice Zhou has been rendered redundant. Malaba was rescued after a third party brought litigation before the Constitutional Court which sought to nullify the judgment of the High Court. “This notwithstanding that Malaba and his fellow judges who had been cited in the litigation, had appealed to the Supreme Court. Notwithstanding that the Constitutional Court judges were cited in the litigation and had exercised their right of appeal, they sat as a court, in a matter in which they were interested and nullified the judgment of the High Court,” the lawyers said. “As a result of this judgment, Malaba has continued in office. In the run up to the elections, Malaba issued orders in chambers in the Kasukuwere matter without hearing parties. He solely dismissed applications that could only be dealt with by seven judges. He has shamelessly played the part for which he was hired. “In any petition, Malaba would be the one to sit in judgment. He has already played his hand in a manner consistent with the unlawful extension of his tenure. It is inconceivable that having had his tenure extended by Mnangagwa under these unlawful circumstances he could turn against him in the most crucial matter of Mnangagwa’s political career.” The lawyers highlighted that Malaba “was the first to receive undue gifts from Mnangagwa’s administration in the form of an ex gratia payment of close to half a million dollars.” “This is in direct breach of the principle of the independence of the judiciary. That the gift was received straight from Mnangagwa’s minister of Finance and not from the Judicial Service Commission does make a bad situation worse.” Justice Bharat Patel Patel, one of the judges who wrote the Constitutional Court judgment which nullified the High Court judgment which had found that neither Malaba nor any of the Constitutional Court judges could benefit from the extension of tenure, was the first judge to benefit from the tenure extension. “He continues to sit on the Constitutional Court bench and is one of the judges who must hear the presidential petition in the event of it being filed,” the lawyers said. “Patel, just like Malaba, had his tenure extended for purposes of the 2023 electoral litigation.” The bribed judiciary The lawyers said ahead of the August 2023 elections, all ConCourt judges received an ex gratia payment from the ministry of Finance. “They received some US$400 000. These payments are not part of their conditions of service. The payments are not loans. No agreements of whatever nature were signed by them and the nature of the arrangement has been left deliberately fluid,” the lawyers said. “These are bribes and the fact that they were received some few months before the elections is telling. This matter has been raised in Parliament by Temba Mliswa, then an independent member. “Now all these judges are expected to sit in judgment and deal with a matter that affects their benefactor, who recently gave them undue gifts.” The lawyers alleged that five of the judges also received payment from Metbank in 2018 after the presidential petition hearing. “These payments were also never part of their conditions of service and have to this very day not been declared,” the lawyers said. 2018 challenge The lawyers also expressed concern that the same judges who heard Chamisa’s 2018 electoral challenge would hear any potential challenge. They said the 2018 judgement “has been criticised by academics and judges alike”. “The Supreme Court of Malawi emphatically refused to follow the judgment which has received worldwide condemnation. There is no chance that these judges could dispense any justice this time around,” argued the lawyers. “For all these reasons, the Citizens' Coalition for Change cannot expect an impartial hearing from Zimbabwean courts. For that reason, there are no domestic remedies available to it,” the lawyers said. No justice from captured judges Chief Justice Luke Malaba

Page 14 #ZimElection2023 News NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 BERNARD MPOFU ZANU PF second secretary Kembo Mohadi, who resigned from the government as the country’s co-Vice President in shame two years ago, amid allegations he was using his office for sexual encounters with married women — including aides — has bounced bounce back as President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s second Deputy President, as first reported by The NewsHawks. Mohadi resigned in shame following allegations he was using his office for sexual encounters with married women, including subordinates. However, he retained his position as Zanu PF vice-president and second secretary after his resignation and was re-appointed to the post at the Zanu PF congress last year. Constantino Chiwenga and Mohadi on Friday took the oath of office at State House before Chief Justice Luke Malaba and President Mnangagwa. Also in attendance was the Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Misheck Sibanda and other senior government officials. Last November, Zanu PF and senior government officials told TheNewsHawks that Mohadi was almost guaranteed to be named Vice-President in the next cabinet should Mnangagwa win the elections. Despite the damaging scandal Mohadi has been tasked with carrying out crucial national duties which usually assigned to sitting members of the executive. After his resignation, Mohadi traversed the length and breadth of the country doing Zanu PF political and electoral duties with security personnel on the public service payroll in tow, in what critics said was a clear demonstration of the excesses of party-state conflation in Zimbabwe. Mohadi has also been using the motorcade he had during his tenure as vice-president, and has been enjoying protection by the Presidential Guard, a military unit that protects members of the executive as well as the secret service. Before his recent appointment Mohadi continued to have VVIP privileges, including a motorcade and beefedup residential security at his upmarket Glen Lorne home in Harare at taxpayers’ expense, years after he was forced to resign in ignominy. A Zanu PF central committee report, presented during congress, revealed that Mohadi was also being funded by the party. His tours were allocated ZW$31 059 700. “These are nationwide travel costs for the VP Mohadi engaging provincial and district coordinating committees,” read the report. During congress, Mnangagwa sang praises of Mohadi, jokingly describing him as a naughty but honest person. In what was seen as a jab at Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga who harbours presidential ambitions and was mounting a challenge to become president before losing steam ahead of congress, Mnangagwa said Mohadi is honest about his ambitions. Unlike the other past vice-presidents, Joice Mujuru and Phelekezela Mphoko, whose security was whittled down after they left government un the aftermath of Robert Mugabe’s ouster, Mohadi retained vast privileges as he remained Zanu PF co-deputy leader, a reminder of how the ruling party corruptly siphons public resources for its benefit and to sustain its stay in power. This gave Mohadi an opportunity to rehabilitate himself and bounce back after Mnangagwa retained power after the disputed 23 August elections. Mohadi bounces back from his sex-induced wilderness Vice-President Kembo Mohadi

NewsHawks #ZimElection2023 Page 15 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 NATHAN GUMA THE return to active politics of former Public Service minister Prisca Mupfumira, who once said she could not face a corruption trial due to mental illness, has raised questions over whether she will be able to effectively perform her duties as a senator. It also exposes the government’s insincerity in fighting corruption, analysts have said. Mupfumira was sworn in as senator this week, four years after being charged for grand corruption involving US$95 million at the state-run National Social Security Authority (Nssa) pension fund. In 2019, she tried to avoid trial, claiming that she had been suffering from depression and needs time to recover as she has undergone a medical operation. The prosecution laid out charges ranging from alleged abuse of money to financing Mupfumira’s political campaign and to directing investments of up to US$62 million into a bank against the advice of Nssa's risk committee. In April last year, Mupfumira tried to halt the trial by seeking postponement of the case while blaming the magistrate for formulating a case against her. She has, however, made a rebound into active politics as one of the Zanu PF senators from Mashonaland West Province. Political analyst Rashweat Mukundu said Mupfumira’s political return raises questions on the integrity of Zanu PF, and her ability to carry out official duties. “What messages is the party sending to the people of Zimbabwe?” Mukundu asked. “What leadership are the people like Mupfumira going to bring to Parliament? What policies and morality does she have if she has to be in Parliament?” He added: “While it is a sad situation, it also exposes Zanu PF. Its leaders like Mupfumira were declared unfit to stand trial after (allegedly) fleecing the state of millions of United States dollars, and the same people are being brought back as leaders. We have to question whether there is such a deficit of talent in Zanu PF that even the people the court said are mentally unstable are brought back as leaders. “So, the key agenda of Zanu PF is not to deliver on any agenda. It is essentially to promote and to protect whatever wealth that many of them have ill-gotten from the state, Treasury and people of this country.” Mukundu said Mupfumira’s return to active politics also shows the government’s insincerity in fighting corruption as she still has criminal charges to answer. “This is a dash and a rush to the feeding trough and an attempt to protect the feeding trough and also a clear lack of reasoning on the part of the ruling party, that those people who failed to stand trial for their crimes are now rushing back and being elected into policymaking positions. It clearly tells us that Zanu PF has no qualms in associating with criminality and that they have no qualms in protecting whatever they have looted.” As previously reported by The NewsHawks in June, Zimbabwe’s corruption fight has been further weakened following the National Assembly’s approval of clause 5 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Amendment Bill, amending the Act, which makes it difficult for the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) to secure convictions. Zacc commissioners and other stakeholders believe securing convictions will be made harder, given that the amendment will require prosecutors to prove that a public official had knowledge that his or her conduct was illegal. For instance, section 174 of the Act read:“(1) If a public officer, in the exercise of his or her functions as such, intentionally; (a) does anything that is contrary to or inconsistent with his or her duty as a public officer; or (b) omits to do anything which it is his or her duty as a public officer to do; for the purpose of showing favour or disfavour to any person, he or she shall be guilty of criminal abuse of duty as a public officer and liable to a fine not exceeding level thirteen or imprisonment for period not exceeding fifteen years or both. “(2) If it is proved, in any prosecution for criminal abuse of duty as a public officer that a public officer, in breach of his or her duty as such, did or omitted to do anything to the favour or prejudice of any person, it shall be presumed, unless the contrary is proved, that he or she did or omitted to do the thing for the purpose of showing favour or disfavour, as the case may be, to that person. “(3) For the avoidance of doubt it is declared that the crime of criminal abuse of duty as a public officer is not committed by a public officer who does or omits to do anything in the exercise of his or her functions as such for the purpose of favouring any person on the grounds of race or gender, if the act or omission arises from the implementation by the public officer of any Government policy aimed at the advancement of persons who have been historically disadvantaged by discriminatory laws or practices.” The section has however been amended by the repeal of sub-section (1) and the substitution of — “(a) if he or she does anything which he or she knows is contrary to or inconsistent with his or her duty as a public officer; or “(b) he or she omits to do anything which he or she knows it is his or her duty to do; with the intention of conferring an undue or illegal benefit on someone else or of unfairly or illegally prejudicing someone else, he or she shall be guilty of criminal abuse of duty as a public officer and liable to a fine not exceeding level thirteen or imprisonment for a period not exceeding fifteen years or both.” Zacc commissioners say the amendments will make it harder to secure convictions. However, Veritas, a legal think-tank that provides information on the work of Parliament and the laws of Zimbabwe, believes the move is positive. “This clause amends section 174(1) of the principal Act. The current framing of the offence of criminal abuse of office as provided for in terms of section 171(1) is very broad in its scope in that it gives room for public officers to be prosecuted for honest mistakes made during the course of their duties. Hence the amendment will limit the crime to include an essential element of knowledge on the part of a public official that his or her conduct was illegal,” Veritas said in a commentary. Mupfumira bold return to politics is scandalous Former Public Service minister Prisca Mupfumira

Page 16 #ZimElection2023 NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 BRENNA MATENDERE FOUR years after the death of former president Robert Mugabe and almost six years after he was toppled in a 2017 military coup in that propelled Emmerson Mnangagwa to power, there is growing consensus that Zimbabwe's multi-faceted crisis has worsened. Mugabe died an angry man on 6 September 2019 at Glen Eagles Hospital in Singapore. Mugabe divided opinion. Admirers feted him as a principled revolutionary who sought to economically empower the black people through education and deliberate policies such as the indigenisation laws. But detractors despised him as a dictator who vandalised one of Africa's most promising countries to a laughing stock. In his 37 years at the helm, Mugabe built an authoritarian regime which brutally suppressed opposition political activism, civil society and human rights defenders. The free media was not spared as Mugabe entrenched his grip on power. He is also remembered for implementing the controversial land reform programme in which productive white commercial farmers were violently evicted from farms and replaced with elite Zanu PF politicians, bureaucrats and activists. This led to economic collapse as the farms suddenly became derelict. When Mugabe was eventually toppled by his lieutenants in a coup, many Zimbabweans celebrated amid high hopes his successor, Mnagangwa, would catapult the country to exciting heights. But far from being the expected messiah, Mnangagwa has presided over a crippling political and economic meltdown which has left many Zimbabweans nostalgic over Mugabe’s era. The Mugabe era was ruinous, therefore it speaks volumes when people say he was a better leader than Mnangagwa. Political crisis The political crisis reached unprecedented levels after the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) election observer mission, for the first time, condemned the conduct of the 24 August polls. This never happened under Mugabe despite numerous contestations by the opposition MDC then led by the late opposition party icon, Morgan Tsvangirai. Sadc regarded Mugabe as a statesman and held him in high esteem but under Mnangagwa the reverence that Zimbabwe enjoyed in the regional bloc has now suddenly been lost. Under Mnangagwa, more repressive laws which have shrunk the democratic space have been enacted as the 80-year-old strongman redoubles efforts to entrench his authority. Mnangagwa signed the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Amendment Act 2022, also known as the "Patriotic Bill", in a move that was described by civil society groups and pro-democracy activists as the death of democracy in Zimbabwe. It was the latest in a raft of measures, which included the banning of opposition political rallies and the use of legal instruments to disqualify political nemesis such as the disqualification of presidential hopeful Saviour Kasukuwere, ahead of the 23 August elections. The Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Amendment Act 2022 Act criminalises any Zimbabwean citizen or national caught "wilfully injuring the sovereignty and national interest of Zimbabwe" and those who participate in meetings with the intention of promoting calls for economic sanctions against the country. Some of its provisions are: l Criminalising any citizen caught "wilfully injuring Zimbabwe’s sovereignty, dignity and independence as a nation"; l Criminalising those who participate in meetings with the intention to promote, advance, encourage, instigate or advocate sanctions or trade boycotts against the country and; l The death penalty for those perceived to have conspired to unseat the government, including individuals acting as agents or proxies for such entities. Some legal experts said the law was ambiguously worded, complicated, and difficult to understand. Therefore, it is susceptible to misunderstanding and law enforcement agents can interpret it broadly to fit their targeted agenda. For months, civil society organisations had lobbied the international community to urge the Zimbabwean government not to enact the law which gives the state leverage to crack down on freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, but Mnangagwa turned a deaf ear to the calls. The Private Voluntary Organisation Amendment Bill, which was approved by Parliament and awaits Mnangagwa’s assent, prohibits civil society groups from political involvement, gives the newly established Office of the Registrar of PVOs the power to penalise non-compliant organisations, and empowers the registrar to collect registration fees from all PVOs. More political prisoners, such as opposition leaders Job Sikhala and Jacob Ngarivhume, are languishing in Mnangagwa’s prisons. Economic collapse When it comes to how ordinary Zimbabweans really feel about the economic situation, it is the runaway inflation that has had a devastating impact on their daily lives than overall growth or investment data. At the end of 2017 when Mugabe was removed from office, the annual rate of inflation — defined as the rate at which prices were rising — was around 5%. Inflation remained low until towards the end of 2018, but then rose sharply through the first half of 2019, reaching an annualised rate of 176% in June. This is a measure of general consumer prices across the economy. Professor Steve Hanke, an economics expert at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, who independently calculates rates of inflation, said the current inflation figure is considerably higher than official figures and is now over 611%, making it the highest in the world. If this is narrowed down to just food prices, the picture looks even bleaker. The annual food inflation figure released by the United Nations measured at more than 250%. Under Mugabe, civil servants earned about US$540 but their total earnings have dropped to about US$300 to date after combining salary and allowances figures. However, in RTGS, the salaries are an average equivalent to US$30. Crisis Coalition of Zimbabwe spokesperson and president of the Amalgamated Rural Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (Artuz) Obert Masaraure concurred, saying life has become harsher under Mnangagwa’s rule. “Mugabe had a soft spot for the teaching fraternity and as a dictator he would only go against teachers when he felt like his power was threatened. The easiest comparison is on teachers' income. Under the last term of Mugabe's presidency, teachers were earning US$540 which was slashed to US$30 by the government of Emmerson Mnangagwa,” Masaraure said. “In the early '80s Mugabe even afforded children free education and went on to spearhead construction of thousands of schools. It was clear that Mugabe treated education as a public good that shouldn't be commercialised.” Masaraure added: “Of course, later, because of economic mismanagement, Mugabe's government failed to fund education. Mnangagwa, on the other hand, treats education like a commodity that has to be consumed by those who can pay for it. Almost 50% of learners failed to write public examinations in 2020 because they couldn't afford the price. "Mugabe dismally failed to run parastatals but never attempted to either privatise them or strip them of their assets. Under Mnangagwa's Zimbabwe is open for business, public property is being placed into private hands.” Now a second term now firmly ensconced in his hands, Mnangagwa has promised to turn around the economy and improve the lives of restive Zimbabweans who witnessed rampant corruption and plunder of the country’s national resources during the first term of a politician known as "The Crocodile". With his election victory failing to attract global endorsement, it remains to be seen how Mnangagwa will reintegrate Zimbabwe into the family of nations and steer the country to economic recovery and ultimately prosperity. Mugabe was a better devil: Citizens Late former president Robert Mugabe

NewsHawks #ZimElection2023 News Page 17 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 KELVIN JAKACHIRA THE opposition Citizens' Coalition for Change (CCC) House of Assembly candidate for Mutasa South constituency, Regai Tsunga, has filed a petition with the Electoral Court seeking nullification of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission's declaration of Zanu PF candidate Misheck Mugadza as the winner of the 23 and 24 August polls. Mugadza was declared winner after he received 11 608 ballots against Tsunga’s 10 383. Tsunga is challenging both the result of the election and the declaration of Mugadza as the winner, arguing that the poll failed to meet the minimum standards in the constitution of Zimbabwe, the African Union (AU) and Southern African Development Community (Sadc) Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections. He is arguing that the poll was not held in compliance with the principles set out in the Electoral Act [Chapter 2:13], and further that it was marred by irregularities and electoral malpractices which rendered it a null election. In his petition, Tsunga cited Zec’s alleged lack of transparency and openness on election day that left voters, candidates, observers, monitors and polling agents in total darkness as to what was happening before and during the election days. He argues that Zec’s lack of transparency and the shambolic manner in which it conducted the plebiscite is a breach of “section 67 of the constitution of Zimbabwe that guarantees the people of Zimbabwe the right to free, fair, regular [and credible] elections”. Tsunga brings further scrutiny to Zec by challenging the alleged manipulation of “the delimitation process to commit an unfair practice of gerrymandering, mixing voters who have no community of interests and generally producing an unwieldy constituency that can never have their interests reconciled.” Mutasa South constituency has three urban wards and six rural and semi-rural wards. One urban ward in Mutare's Chikanga township was removed from the constituency during the delimitation process. In his petition, Tsunga cites severe irregularities and malpractices in wards constituted by resettled farmers in wards 25 and 21 where the electorate live under the constant fear of being evicted from farms for lack of title or security of tenure to the detriment of their ability to vote freely and without fear of retribution. “As a result they are unable to fully exercise their constitutional rights as provided for in the Bill of Rights, including fundamental freedoms of association, assembly and expression as well as the rights under section 67 to free, fair, regular and credible elections owing to insecurity of tenure and threats of eviction” said Tsunga in the petition. He also argued that the resettled farmers are a captive electorate living under constant fear and subjugation and always being controlled and manipulated against their will. “This is why rural farmers must be given title deeds or some form of security of tenure so that they can become citizens and not subjects,” added Tsunga. The petition also raises a litany of malpractices and irregularities allegedly committed directly or indirectly by Zanu PF candidate Mugadza. Tsunga concludes that “ultimately it is a combination of voter suppression in urban and peri-urban areas and a combination of strategic voter suppression and voter coercion, in rural and farming wards by Respondent, Zec, Zanu PF, traditional leaders and the Forever Associates Zimbabwe (Faz) that created an unfair and uneven play field and tilted the election in favour of the Zanu PF candidates in Mutasa South.” Tsunga argues that something is fishy in the extension of elections from 23 August to 24 August 2023 and that such extension was meant to create conditions to assess Zanu PF’s performance on 23 August 2023 and use the 24th of August to implement a “rigging mechanism” to offset the gains he and his CCC political party had made on 23 August. “The sudden emergence of a highly performing Respondent and Zanu PF on 24 August 2023 after generally weak and losing performance on 23 August shows Zec's failure to hold the elections as proclaimed and as required by the constitution on 23 August, created an opportunity for largescale electoral malpractices by the Respondent to overturn the electoral deficit of 23 August. This totally destroyed the credibility of the elections in the eyes of the electorate,” said Tsunga. The CCC presidential candidate, Nelson Chamisa, has rejected the election result of 2023 and has also refused to recognise President Emmerson Mnangagwa as duly elected, arguing that the poll was so devoid of any credibility that it cannot be said to be an election at all. Chamisa, however, has chosen not to file an election petition despite preparing one, arguing lack of confidence in the independence of the judiciary in Zimbabwe. The judiciary has been under the spotlight during the election, which has seen higher levels of pre-election litigation than ever before. The Sadc Election Observer Mission (SEOM) has also taken the unprecedented step of condemning the elections as not held in accordance with the Zimbabwean constitution, Electoral Act and the Sadc Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections. After the 2000 elections, the opposition filed around 40 election challenges for MPs, but not a single of these cases was finalised by the judiciary by 2005 when the parliamentary term lapsed. CCC candidate challenges shambolic election results CCC House of Assembly candidate for Mutasa South constituency Regai Tsunga

Page 18 #ZimElection2023 News NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 OWEN GAGARE THE 23 August general elections have come and gone, but the fallout from the sham elections condemned by the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) and the African Union-Comesa observer missions persists despite President Emmerson Mnangagwa being inaugurated at the National Sports Stadium on Monday. Only three heads of state — South African President President Cyril Ramaphosa, his Mozambican counterpart Filipe Nyusi and Democratic Republic of Congo president Félix Tshisekedi — attended the ceremony. The low turnout of leaders was seen as a snub to Mnangagwa after adverse electoral observer mission preliminary reports. The controversial elections generated more heat than light in many cases, but there are many things we learnt during the polls. 1. Mnangagwa is an unpopular president The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) declared Mnangagwa the winner with 2 357 711 votes, 52.6% of the vote, while his main challenger Nelson Chamisa garnered 1 967 343, representining 44% of the vote. This was more than the 50%-plus-one vote needed for one to be sworn in as president. The wafer-thin margin of victory was despite Mnangagwa pouring a lot of resources into his campaign while also activating instruments of coercion such as the police and the Central Intelligence Organisation to nullify the opposition. He also utilised the partisan Zec and the judiciary to maintain his grip on power. In many constituencies, Mnangagwa was out-voted by Zanu PF legislators betraying his lack of popularity even within Zanu PF. For instance, in some constituencies won by Zanu PF, Mnangagwa was beaten by Chamisa. He however sailed through because he knows how to gain and maintain power by fair means or foul. To him elections and being in power are not a popularity contest, but an act of realism and machievelism. 2. Legitimacy questions to persist Mnangagwa may have gained power, but many Zimbabweans and members of the international community will question his legitimacy, given the controversial manner of his victory. The fact that Chamisa chose not to challenge his victory in court means that, unlike in 2018, the Constitutional Court will not have a chance to sanitise his controversial re-election. Mnangagwa was well prepared for a court challenge and had pulled out all the stops to ensure that his ally, Chief Justice Luke Malaba, is at the helm of the judiciary by amending the constitution, to ensure he remains in office beyond the age of 70. The elections were condemned by a cross-section of observer missions, including Sadc and the African Union, which have in the past given a thumbs-up to Zimbabwe’s controversial polls. This left Mnangagwa without the critical support he needed in his ill-fated quest for legitimacy. Legitimacy is crucial for Mnangagwa, given that he rose to power through a military coup in 2017, before consolidating power after the disputed 2018 elections. 3. Zanu PF is still a force Despite decades of misrule and economic mismanagement by Zanu PF and its leaders, the ruling party still has capacity to win power through a combination of reliance of its historical legacy, experience, social base with a mixture of vote-buying, patronage, political programme, intimidation and terror. Zanu PF has also managed to exploit hunger and poverty, channeling aid through its party structures, despite using public resource. The party still has major influence, especially in rural provinces, as seen by massive wins, particularly in the Mashonaland provinces, Masvingo and Manicaland. This is despite an Afrobarometer survey report released in June last year showing a rise in Chamisa’s popularity and waning support for Mnangagwa. 4. Zanu PF is evolving The polls also showed that Zanu PF under Mnangagwa is evolving into a quasi-securocratic entity, with the army playing a diminishing role. Forever Associates Zimbabwe (Faz) played a key role, blatantly intimidating voters at various stages of the electoral cycle and on voting day. The influence of Faz won the polls for Zanu PF despite massive criticism from opponents and observers. But Zanu PF was not concerned because the party is rooted in politics of realism. The end justifies the means. 5. Zanu PF closes ranks during elections Although Zanu PF is heavily divided amid mistrust and haggling between Mnangagwa and his deputy Constantino Chiwenga, the two worked together during the elections as they sought to ensure that Zanu PF wins the polls. This has been a consistent feature in Zanu PF, even during the Mugabe era. The factions will battle during primary elections and other internal processes, but close ranks during polls, only to resume the fight for influence once power is retained. 6. Zanu PF’s regional aura has diminished While Zanu is part of the liberation movement in the region, its aura has diminished. There are many reasons. One of the reasons is that party leader Mnangagwa does not have the same history, stature and influence like former president Robert Mugabe, who was seen as a liberation icon in many parts of Africa. The emergence of new leadership without war credentials has also shaken the liberation brotherhood in the region. It is therefore not surprising that Sadc has, for the first time, condemned Zimbabwe’s elections, leaving Mnangagwa and Zanu PF stunned. 7. Chamisa is a force to reckon with Despite lack of proper organisation, institutionalisation and funding, Chamisa did very well in the elections, outpolling Mnangagwa in several constituencies won by Zanu PF. If he had a political party, structures and money he could have done better. He remains far more popular than the Citizens' Coalition for Change (CCC), as he out-polled his legislators consistently, although the party gained more seats in this election, while his tally declined. 8. Chamisa needs capacitation around him Despite gaining more seats, the CCC’s lack of organisation, structures and political strategy were exposed. Internal processes were not solid as shown by the confusion during the party’s candidate selection process and nomination. With better organisation, the party could have won more than the 73 seats it acquired. The CCC was limited by internal divisions, mistrust and purges and needless cronyism. Some big hitters, who add value and not necessarily popularity, such as Tendai Biti, were sidelined in the countdown to the polls. It is indisputable that Chamisa needs to organise his politics, retain people with capacity and have structures. Other than problems of organisation and internal leadership, some problems included lack of capacity to field polling agents throughout the whole country. There was also lack of capacity to carry out a scientific approach to an election, including having internal projections and ensuring a parallel voter tabulation. 9. The political environment remains authoritarian, repressive and restrictive Political parties are still not all able to organise campaigns freely, without undue interference. Several CCC rallies were banned by the police while intimidation and violence remained. Although the environment was described as peaceful by observers, the reality is that a life lost is one too many. It still speaks to bloodshed. In the election, there was bloodshed. Tinashe Chitsunge was killed in Glen View, Harare. The election happened while some political players were in detention, including CCC senior official Job Sikhala. One of the CCC candidates, Godwin Hakata, won the National Assembly elections whilst in prison. Media reforms are also needed, given that the public media was partisan and did not give political players equal opportunities despite using public resources. The deportations of civil society members and academics, among them Chris Maroleng of Good Governance Africa and University of London Professor Stephen Chan, also confirmed the restrictive environment. 10. Zec is beyond redemption Zec showed it was compromised and doing everything it could to ensure Mnangagwa and Zanu PF win the elections, throughout the electoral cycle. The rot was evident during the delimitation exercise amid gerrymandering allegations. Zec also allowed Faz to play a critical role in the polls, particularly during the voter registration and inspection exercises, where it collected voter information as part of an intimidation drive. On voting day, Zec failed to deliver voting material on time to several polling stations in the opposition strongholds, especially Harare and Bulawayo, resulting in massive voter suppression. At some polling stations such as in Harare's Warren Park, voting started at 8.30pm, one hour 30 minutes after polling was supposed to have ended. Some Zec commissioners are related to Zanu PF officials, among them Abigail Mohadi, daughter of Vice-President Kembo Mohadi. Commissioner Jasper Mangwana is also related to Paul and Nick Mangwana. Zec and its commissioners are not supposed to be independent in fact and in appearance only. They must be seen to be so. They however completely failed the independence test. 11. Judicial capture is real The judiciary, like Zec, also failed the independence test. Their ruling were contentious. The mere fact that Chief Justice Malaba was retained for the election speaks volumes about the independence of the judiciary. The judiciary was a key player in the polls, blocking Saviour Kasukuwere’s candidature, ruling against the opposition party’s bid to access the voters’ roll, dismising an application challenging the delimitation exercise, ensuring Sikhala remains in jail so that he does not play a role in elections and allowing the Electoral Act to be amended using Statutory Instruments during the election period, among other things. The judiciary was not seen to be independent whereas justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done. 12. There is hope in Sadc Sadc is beginning to be assertive in relations to its Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections. The emergence of a new generation of leaders not connected to the much-abused liberation struggle memory has also contributed. 13. Zimbabwe’s pariah status set to continue Following the controversial 2023 elections, Zimbabwe is set to continue being seen as a pariah state. Mnangagwa will struggle for legitimacy, compromising the country’s re-engagement drive. The polls were condemned by observer missions countrywide including nations which Harare has been re-engaging, including United States and Britain. The European Union also condemned the polls joining Sadc and AU, which have previously supported Zimbabwe. 14. Money doesn’t always buy votes The case of Finance minister Mthuli Ncube who lost the Cowdray Park seat in Bulawayo and Pedzai "Scott" Sakupwanya who lost the Mabvuku seat despite flexing their financial muscle during the polls highlighted that money does not always buy the hearts and minds. 15. Zimbabweans were determined to vote Although Zec delayed the opening of some polling stations by more than 12 hours, a large number of Zimbabweans stuck it out and patiently waited for their turn to vote. Many voters in Harare voted at night, showing their resilience and willingness to vote. 15 lessons from 23 August elections

NewsHawks #ZimElection2023 News Page 19 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 NATHAN GUMA HUMAN rights watchdogs in Zimbabwe have raised a red flag over abuses during the post-election period, including abductions, arbitrary arrests and torture of opposition activists. This has been exacerbated by the lack of laws on forced disappearances. The abductions come after Zimbabwe held disputed elections condemned by local and international election observers as neitherfree, fairnorcredible. The sham elections have been rejected by the Southern African Development Community (Sadc), which has for many years maintained a soft stance towards Zimbabwe’s shambolic polls. This week, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (The Forum) expressed outrage over the abduction and torture of members of the main opposition Citizens' Coalition for Change (CCC), Womberaishe Nhende and Sanele Mkhuhlane on 2 September 2023. Reports say three off-road vehicles stormed Nhende’s home and forced him and Mkhuhlane into one of the vehicles. It is further alleged that the duo was assaulted and tortured before being injected with an unknown substance and later dumped in Mapinga (about 73km from Harare). Human rights lawyers Douglas Coltart and Tapiwa Muchineripi of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), and legal representatives of Nhende and Mkhuhlane were arrested in the aftermath of the abductions. The human rights lawyers were then charged with obstructing and defeating the course of justice as defined by section 184 (1) (e) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act. This has been criticised by human rights watchdogs under the banner of The Forum. “It is the position of The Forum that lawyers have the right to protect the dignity of their clients, as guaranteed under section 51 of the constitution,” read the statement by The Forum titled Post-Election Attacks Against Civilians and Human Rights Defenders. “In particular, the interviewing of victims of abduction and torture whilst in hospital has become somewhat the modus operandi of Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) as this is reminiscent of the case of the honourable member of Parliament for Harare West Joana Mamombe who was abducted but was subsequently arrested and faced trial with the duo of Cecilia Chimbiri and Netsai Marova.” Added The Forum: “Furthermore, it is not a criminal offence to provide legal representation to anyone who needs it as the right to legal representation is guaranteed in section 69 (1) of the constitution. The Forum reiterates that the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers Article 18 espouse that a lawyer should not be identified with their clients or their clients’ causes as they discharge their functions.” The abductions have added to cases received by The Forum during the electoral period involving Givemore Chari in Maramba-Pfungwe constituency in Mashonaland East and Nelson Mukwenha in Highfield, Harare. Legal grouping Veritas said the forced disappearances have been worsened by lack of laws criminalising enforced disappearances. “Enforced disappearance is a violent act that demonstrates a blatant disregard of the constitution. There is no single Zimbabwean law that criminalises enforced disappearance as such, but it violates a number of constitutional rights in our constitution’s Declaration of Rights; indeed, no other crime cuts across the Declaration of Rights as much as this one,” Veritas said in an analysis. “The fundamental rights that are affected by enforced disappearances include the rights to personal liberty, human dignity, personal security and, depending on the facts of the particular case, life, freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and the right to a fair hearing.” Veritas added: “In the absence of a specific crime of enforced disappearance, prosecutions could be brought for existing crimes such as kidnapping, assault etc. — were it not for the problems posed by the anonymity and impunity enjoyed by most perpetrators.” The legal grouping said the situation has also been worsened by failure by the country to ratify international conventions on enforced disappearance. “Zimbabwe has neither signed nor acceded to the Convention — despite recommendations that it should do so from member States of the United Nations during successive reviews of the country’s human rights record at the UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Reviews,” said Veritas. “The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance came into force in 2010. It treats as victims not only those that have been ‘disappeared’ but also their families and communities because they have to deal with the after-effects of losing someone and not having closure. The convention further makes enforced disappearance an international crime. Under certain circumstances, enforced disappearance also qualifies as a crime against humanity, and falls under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.” Govt jittery, post-poll torture rises

Page 20 #ZimElection2023 News NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 RUVIMBO MUCHENJE ON a warm Thursday morning, a festive atmosphere enveloped the old Parliament Building as newly elected lawmakers queued to get into the bus that would take them to the Chinese-built magnificent Parliament Building perched on a hill at Mt Hampden, 25 kilometres northeast of Harare. At first glance, one would be forgiven for thinking that the honourable members who were in queues to board buses to Mt Hampden were from the ruling Zanu PF only. Some onlookers could not reconcile the CCC's loud complaints of electoral theft with the animated excitement which engulfed the opposition MPs at the swearing-in ceremony. There was no sense of discontent among all of those who threatened to boycott the ceremony in solidarity with their leader, Nelson Chamisa, who lost the just-ended general elections that were marred by illegalities and condemned by many observer missions. The newcomers exuded enthusiasm, but CCC legislators who pitched up in their yellow neckties were told they must remove the accessories if they harboured any hopes of taking the oath of office. They probably did not follow parliamentary proceedings in the aftermath of the 2022 by-elections when Murisi Zwizwai and nine other opposition MPs unsuccessfully took Parliament and Speaker Jacob Mudenda to court over the ban on yellow ties. Willard Madzimbamuto, Darlington Chigumbu and Donald Mavhudzi were among the MPs that walked into the house after taking off their yellow ties while youth quota MP Evidence Sibanda was initially told she could not enter Parliament with her yellow handbag. The new crop of MPs was excited this week. They were granting interviews, before senior party officials whispered in their ears to tone it down. Of note was Sunningdale MP Maureen Kademaunga who was either in front of cameras or had journalists pestering her for interviews. Munyaradzi Kufahakutizwi, the man who defeated President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s ally Pedzai "Scott" Sakupwanya, could have been the rockstar MP, but he declined all requests to entertain media interviews. The instruction to decline media interviews was issued strategically to avoid further confusion in the CCC camp. Before 7 September 2023, the predominant position was that the CCC was rejecting the election in toto, meaning even the local authority and National Assembly results were flawed. A week later they called for fresh elections to correct the mistakes of the 23-24 August polls. A week later, MPs and councillors were sworn-in across the country. Such inconsistencies would have cost them if an MP without media acumen had entertained interviews from journalists. After taking the oath of office, the MPs were took turns to take pictures in the magnificent new building. Social media was teeming with updates posted by the newly sworn in MPs. Harare West MP Joana Mamombe tweeted a picture taken by the ministry of Information with the caption: “So help me GOD”. CCC youth quota MP for Harare, Takudzwa Ngadziore, at 24 probably the youngest legislator in Zimbabwe today, could barely hide his joy, posting on Facebook: "And when the time is right, the Lord will make it happen. My wish is to see a better Zimbabwe for everyone.” Onlookers pondered whether it was a continuation of the party's strategic ambiguity, or perhaps just collecting their just rewards for working hard in the recent polls. One of the reasons raised for the opposition party for not filing a Constitutional Court challenge of the election results was that the "captured" courts would find a glorious opportunity to validate the flawed poll. But there is no greater validation of an electoral process than the voluntary taking of an oath of office. Hopefully, the new faces will live up to their big promises and fill the shoes of workhorses like Tendai Biti, Settlement Chikwinya, Dexter Nduna, Innocent Gonese and Joseph Chinotimba. New MPs in parliament. — Pictures Aaron Ufumeli Pomp and ceremony as new MPs occupy Parly

NewsHawks #ZimElection2023 News Page 21 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 IRENE KALULU FORMER Health and Child Care minister Dr Henry Madzorera was sworn in as ward 10 councillor on a Citizens' Coalition for Change (CCC) ticket in Kwekwe on Thursday and is now posed to be elected the city’s mayor. Speaking to The NewsHawks after the ceremony, Madzorera says the problems plaguing local councils, including Kwekwe, are largely caused by central government which is failing to stabilise the economy whilst grabbing all the money from local government. Madzorera was minister of Health and Child Welfare in the inclusive government for five years and also served as senator for Kwekwe. “This time around my party asked me to be in local government and that is a lot of trust that they invested in me. As you know, local authorities are the service providers and we need people at local authority level that can give the real tangible service to the citizens,” he said. He added that serving in local government will be an uphill struggle as central government is taking a lot of the money that is supposed to be channeled to road maintenance, for instance. “There is too much interference from central government, which I think has got some corrupt interference in it. Let the cities collect taxes and manage the roads like how it was done in the '70s and '80s. Our cities should look at the profitability of certain businesses that they used to run like the abattoir and the brewery and other businesses in that category,” he said. “Those businesses used to generate a lot of income, but they have privatised. People still drink beer, so it should be profitable. Kwekwe city residents have been grappling with paying the exorbitant rates, with some high-density suburbs experiencing intermittent water outages despite the extremely high rates,” he said. During election campaigns, Zanu PF blamed opposition parties for a dip in service delivery by local authorities. Madzorera however blamed the high cost of purifying water and maintaining a sewerage reticulation system on poor governance at national level. “The problem of rates and water is because of a government that is failing to stabilise the economy when inflation hits our pockets. The top thing is to change the government at the top. Unfortunately, Zanu PF has decided to steal the election in the way that it has. I believe in zero-based budgeting, not this method of putting a percentage on what it was last year; we will never catch up with inflation. We must be efficient in our use of money, not just loading the citizens so that the little we have can go far,” Madzorera said. CCC leader Nelson Chamisa at a rally in Kwekwe just before the 23 August general elections endorsed Madzorera as the potential mayoral candidate. Madzorera pledged to improve social services through the provision of high quality water and sanitation services, refuse removal, health promotion framework in the city and high quality affordable healthcare delivery. “Every woman must deliver in a safe environment and we must make it affordable to every one, even the poorest of the poor in the city. If we make sure that water and sanitation are properly provided within the city, we won’t have any of these primitive diseases in the city like cholera and typhoid,” he said. Former minister now councillor Former Health and Child Care minister Dr Henry Madzorera Five of the students who will have their tuition at the University of Zimbabwe and upkeep paid for by the ED UNZA Scholarship Program are from Left Inomusa Sibanda, Charity Muleya, Nella Fundu, Chilongezo Muleya and Panashe Nyakura (right). The five will be studying towards a Bachelor of Science Honours degree in Mining and Geological Engineering. — Picture: Aaron Ufumeli

Page 22 #ZimElection2023 News NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 RUVIMBO MUCHENJE ARRESTED for the fifth time in the line of duty, human rights lawyer Doug Coltart says the arrest of lawyers points to a breakdown of the rule of law in Zimbabwe. Coltart was arrested with fellow lawyer Tapiwa Muchineripi at a private hospital in Harare and charged with obstruction of justice when they told police to postpone their interrogation of abducted and tortured CCC official Womberaiishe Nhende and Sanele Mukhuhlani. “The arrest of myself and Tapiwa Muchineripi is a direct attack on the legal profession and to our practise of law. Everything that we did was fully within the confines of the law and was in the discharge of our professional obligations. And for the police to arrest lawyers, particularly lawyers who are representing the interests of vulnerable people who have been the victims of torture in such a fashion, is very worrying indeed and it speaks to the breakdown of the rule of law in Zimbabwe,” said Coltart. Coltart has in the past been caught in the crossfire while representing his clients who the police would either want to interrogate or arrest. In October 2022, he was arrested for allegedly having been part of a deal between his client, Hopewell Chin’ono and a businessman while his only involvement was representing the journalist. In March 2020, he was arrested together with trade unionists for allegedly plotting to foment civil disobedience in the country after they were caught in possession of a book titled Pedagogy Of The Oppressed. “This is the fifth time that I have been arrested in the line of duty on two of those occasions. I was also assaulted by the police; thankfully I wasn’t assaulted by the police on this occasion, but it is extremely unfortunate that the police fail often to recognise that there is a difference between a lawyer and a client and that it is unlawful for the police to associate the lawyer with the cause of their client,” said Coltart. Despite the numerous arrests and detentions, Coltart has vowed to continue representing all those who would have their rights violated. He said: “I try not to let it affect me. I think in some ways it can actually enhance the work that I do, to go through experiences like this, because it enables me to empathise more with my clients to know what they are going through. To know how important it is to fight for their liberty when they are behind bars because it is something that I have experienced.” Coltart has done a sterling job representing journalists, trade unionists and human rights defenders. His work earned him a nomination by the Law Society of Ireland and the bar of Ireland for the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe’s 2023 Human Rights Award. His lawyer Jeremiah Bamu concurred with Coltart’s sentiment that the arrest was an attack on the legal profession. “We basically placed before the court complaints that their arrest amounts to criminalisation of the exercise of their profession. They were in the course of carrying out their duties and all they did was to convey the advice that had been received from medical personnel about the medical condition of their clients,” said Bamu on the day that the duo appeared before the courts and were granted US$100 bail each after spending a night in the cells. As a follow-up to the uproar by law bodies and civil society, police issued a warning to all lawyers. “The Zimbabwe Republic Police reports that Douglas James Coltart (32) and Tapiwa Muchineripi (49) were arrested on 4th September 2023 for contravening section 184(1) (e) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act Chapter 9:23, defeating or obstructing course of justice. This is in relation to an ongoing investigation where a report was filed at ZRP Milton Park and the suspect stopped police officers from interviewing potential state witnesses. The police urges lawyers to assist and cooperate with investigations for the maintenance of law and order in the country to be done smoothly without any hindrance,” read the police statement released on 5 September 2023. In January, a human rights lawyer was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after he allegedly jumped off a police truck when he had gone to represent his clients who had been arrested at a party meeting in Budiriro. In March 2020, lawyer Patrick Tererai was arrested and detained overnight in Beitbridge for disorderly conduct after he had gone to represent his client. In June 2020, constitutional lawyer Thabani Mpofu was arrested for allegedly drafting an affidavit for a non-existent person, which was widely dismissed as persecution for his alignment to opposition politics. Coltart and Muchineripi arrest is a direct violation of article 16 of the United Nations basic principles on the role of lawyers which states that governments should ensure that lawyers are able to perform all of their professional functions without intimidation, hindrance, harassment or improper interference. Arrest bad day in office: Coltart . . . to continue human rights fight Lawyer Doug Coltart

NewsHawks #ZimElection2023 News Page 23 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 NATHAN GUMA THE removal of Chief Fortune Charumbira from his position as president of the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) has raised the ire of the Zimbabwean government with information permanent secretary Nick Mangwana describing it as a “coup”. In a letter dated 8 September 2023 addressed to Clerk of Parliament Lindiwe Khumalo, PAP director Emmanuel Afedor said the legislative institution would meet between 16 and 18 of October to fill the vacant post of president, first vice-president and fourth vice-president. “Following the meeting held today, and chaired by the Acting President Hon. Dr. Ashebiri W. Gayo with participation by the Clerk of Parliament, Ms Lindiwe Khumalo, the Deputy Clerk-LBC, Mr. Gali Harou, the Acting Deputy Clerk-FAHR, Mr. Kenneth Akibate, and the director of the Bureau, Mr. Emmanuek K. Afedor, it was agreed that the Third Ordinary Session of the Sixth Parliament should take place on 16-18 October 2023,” read the letter copied to acting president Dr Ashebir Gayo, Miles Sampa, chairperson of CAPA. “The main agenda would be elections to fill the vacant posts within the PAP Bureau for, President, First Vice President and 4th Vice President, per articles 11, 12 and 13 of the Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community Relating to the Pan African Parliament. This is therefore to ask you, per the instruction of the Acting President, to implement the collective decision taken during the meeting and based on the Protocol prepare for the holding of the Session on the dates above.” Mangwana has not taken Charumbira’s removal lightly, describing his ouster as a “coup”. “There have been a number of coups d'état on African soil in the last three years but nobody expected the African Union Parliament (PAP) to experience a disgraceful seizure of power. We all saw Chief Charumbira winning the presidency of PAP but he now finds someone in his office claiming to have taken over that presidency. We need order in the continental body,” Mangwana said on his X social media handle. While the PAP did not specify reasons for Charumbira’s removal, its rules of procedure outlines that a president can be removed from office on several grounds. It reads: “The Office of the President or Vice-President shall become vacant if he or she: (a) dies; (b) resigns in writing; (c) is unable to perform his or her functions for reasons of physical or mental incapacity; (d) is removed on grounds of misconduct; (e) ceases to be a Member of the National Parliament or other deliberative organ; (f) is recalled by the National Parliament or other deliberative organ; (g) or ceases to be a Pan-African Parliamentarian in terms of Article 19 of Protocol. “Removal on the grounds stipulated in 8 (c) or (d) above shall be on a motion to be decided on by secret ballot and supported at the end of debate by two-thirds majority of all the Pan-African Parliamentarians. “In the case of removal under the ground stipulated in 8 (c), the motion shall, in addition, be supported by a medical report. (10) Until such time that a vacancy in the Office of the President is filled, the Vice-Presidents shall act as President according to the order of their ranking. (11) A vacancy in the office of the President or Vice-President shall be filled at the sitting of Parliament immediately following its occurrence.” Under the procedure, Charumbira would not qualify to be president of PAP as his term expired on 23 August when Zimbabwe's Parliament was dissolved to pave way for the general election. In July, Chief Charumbira was under fire for breaching African Union procedure in making appointments to the PAP. The sincerity of AU leaders and institutions in fighting corruption came under scrutiny after the appointment of controversial Zimbabwean self-styled prophet Uebert Angel as PAP ambassador for interfaith dialogue and humanitarian affairs. This was despite the fact that Angel had emerged as a leading role actor in Al-Jazeera’s documentary revealing Gold Mafia investigation scandal, which implicated President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his cronies in rampant gold smuggling, money laundering, corruption, as well as conspiracy to commit financial crimes. In the first episode, Angel also exposed the role played by Zimbabwe Miners’ Federation (ZMF) president Henrietta Rushwaya in the gold smuggling syndicate, through a phone call in which she reveals that they use private jets to pick up gold as part of smuggling and money laundering activities. Rushwaya is Mnangagwa’s niece. However, his appointment was revoked on August 28 by PAP acting president Dr Gayo Ashebir, who said the process was not tabled before any bureau. Zim fumes over Charumbira ‘coup’ Chief Fortune Charumbira

Page 24 #ZimElection2023 News NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 HAZVINEI MWANAKA MASVINGO — Martin Mureri, a human rights lawyer by profession and a member of the Citizens' Coalition for Change who was recently elected member of Parliament for Masvingo Urban, said the desire to fight for human rights led him to politics. The opposition party performed badly in Masvingo, winning just two out of 25 seats. Born 48 years ago in rural Zaka's Tongoona village under chief Bota, Mureri attended Vhudzi and Sazaume primary schools before going to Rudhanda and Mutendi high schools. He later enrolled at the University of Zimbabwe, attaining a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) degree and a Master of Business Administration with Great Zimbabwe University. Mureri has been a lawyer since 2010, having started with Matutu Kwirira and Associates until he became a partner in 2014. His political career stretches back to 2005 when he was still in college. He was a member of the Zimbabwe National Students' Union. He was a member of the MDC-T, MDC-Alliance and CCC, holding positions such as secretary for legal affairs, secretary-general district level, chairperson of the district, until he became constituency point person for the party. “The reason that motivated me to join politics is the infringement of people’s rights. At times you could find out that a client is beaten because of his/her right, exercising their political rights and this led me to win the Human Rights Lawyer of the Year in 2014, an award I was given by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights. “Apart from violation of people’s rights, I also realised that there is a need to combat corruption in the country since the perpetrators are not brought to book. The economy was not performing well, a few were benefitting whilst the majority were languishing in poverty. So I wanted to be one of the people who could bring change in our country. That is also the reason why I became part of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights,” said Mureri. Recounting his experience in politics since 2005, he laments that a lot of human rights abuses were witnessed, particularly affecting opposition parties, so the terrain was not very conducive as compared to this era. “I actually contested in 2018 in ward 8 as councillor before delimitation in Masvingo urban and I lost, but this did not deter me from contesting for a National Assembly post this year. The experience has been challenging, I do not want to lie. For council level, it's much better because you will be concentrating on one ward as compared to member of Parliament where you have to concentrate on around seven wards. “This year, again, the experience has been different with other political parties. There was a lot of infiltration, vote buying, intimidation and participation of Faz [Forever Associates Zimbabwe]. I can say this, because I was concentrating on more wards as compared to 2018,” he said. However, Mureri said he did not face challengers within his party because of his years of experience in politics which provide him with wisdom on how to handle various situations. “Yes, at times we had challenges within the party such as vote buying, but people still chose me. People knew the person they wanted,” added Mureri. According to Mureri door-to-door campaigns and car rallies were some of the strategies they used when drumming up support from voters. “At my party, the playing field was fair, starting with the nomination and vetting as those people who were chosen are loyal to the party. However, with other parties it was different; what we were not allowed to do, other parties were permitted to do, like having PA [public address] systems. We won without money,” he said. He added that he contested for a bigger post this time around because people urged him to do so. All wards nominated him and during internal verification by the party he was successful. “I also wanted the post, but I had the advantage of being backed by a lot of people,” he said. One of the challenges Mureri said he will address is the issue of water shortages in Masvingo Urban which needs the installation of solar panels at the plant since electricity supplies are not always available. He also wants to refurbish the Mucheke hostels. “Another issue I suggest that needs to be reconsidered is the issue of gender equality in all fields. This does not just apply to Masvingo only but the whole country. For example, there is a need for a law that says any political party that does not consider the 50-50 gender representation should not contest.” “There is a need to establish an office of the MP. Yes, I was selected under CCC but now I represent everyone. We need everyone to be free to come and raise their complaints and we will help each other. We also want to unite the people of Masvingo by coming up with a development committee that has representatives from every sphere such as churches, people with disabilities and others so that when we come up with Constituency Development Fund those people can help on where we can channel the money to,” he added. Mureri also said there is a need to explore partnerships for the development of the city. “So far, I do not have any challenges, but my fear is that people expect a lot from me,” said Mureri. Fighting for people’s rights drove me into politics: MP Masvingo Urban MP Martin Mureri

#ZimElection2023 Page 25 HAZVINEI MWANAKA MASVINGO - “As a young woman in politics, the ground is not fair, there is a lot of intimidation, hate speech, stress that comes with it be it financially or emotionally and they try as much to bring you down. It’s easy to bring a woman down than it is for a man,” said Shantel Chiwara who recently won as the ward 2 councillor for Masvingo Municipality under the Citizens' Coalition for Change (CCC). Having joined politics at a tender age (16) and also growing up with a political background, Chiwara, who is now 25 years, said she joined politics first just for the sake of it, but as she continued doing political activities, she developed passion and the desire to bring change. “I started facing challenges when I assumed positions in my party. Fairly speaking, it is not a fair ground compared to men. When I was finally chosen to represent my party I was excited and the same time scared because it’s a road that I had never passed through. “However, as you go through the processes you might as well overcome these challenges. I cannot say it is easy but you just have to overcome anything that comes your way. If you are not strong you can go into depression,” she said. According to her, although the journey was hard, she learnt a lot from the experiences shaped her to what she is today. “For someone like me who was running for that post for the first time, I faced a lot of hardships in my party, I later understood that it’s a competition, and in a competition you have to face some people who will not approve what you do. I faced a lot of intimidation. At one point I thought of quitting, but I just said let me soldier on,” she added. Chiwara added that she overcame some of the challenges she faced through prayer rather than answering back at people who said bad things about her. She however felt honoured to be elected among a large number of men and to her the goal is to inspire other young women to join politics and to show them that women can actually do better than what men do as far as politics is concerned. “I will not be able to work alone, I need the help of council and residents and others surrounding me who have better ideas than myself,” she added. Only two women won as ward councillors in Masvingo urban and the other one who is also a CCC member Sabina Chikwangwani said politics for women needs someone who is not fainthearted. She joined politics since the formation of MDC-T in 1999 when it was led by the late Morgan Tsvangirai at the age of 26. “I started contesting in 2018 as ward councillor for the then ward 2 before the delimitation process. I did not have money as my male counterpart so he used that to gain power and he won. “I was a single mother and vendor and you know the perception that people have on us it’s really challenging. My other fellow women looked down upon me and they can go as far as pulling you down,” she said. During this year’s nomination process at the party level, Chikwangwani said most men did not want her name to be sent for approval because she was one of the party’s longest-serving member. “I was the last to send my name and fortunately my name was chosen. It’s the confidence that my party leaders had in me, I have been loyal to the party, that is why I was chose. “During my campaign to the elections, frankly speaking I did not have money. Mind you, I am a single mother and vendor and there is nothing much that we get from the sales, so I relied on sponsors who provided for fliers, transport and even food,” she said. According to Chikwangwani, other opposition parties took advantage of her weaknesses, especially the lack of money, and lured some of her party members to work against her. “During election day, some women in my party were used to de-campaign me. They were given food hampers and money, but this did not work; I came out victorious,” she said. She however promised to change the face of ward 1 by introducing different projects to all age groups. “Our ward is the first to be built, especially kwavaMuzenda, there is overpopulation and some of the toilets are dilapidated. We will look for helpers to help us,” she added. “Politics not for the fainthearted”: women in politics. Shantel Chiwara NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023

Page 26 Obituary NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 GERHARD MARÉ MANGOSUTHU Gatsha Buthelezi,  who has died, was a history maker. He was born on 27 August 1928 into a tumultuous global century, and into the local conditions of racist rule. A man of singular political talent, Buthelezi was among the country’s most influential black leaders for the majority of his long and remarkable life. Yet he occupied an anomalous position within the politics of the anti-apartheid struggle. He brokered Zulu ethnic nationalism, feeding a measure of credibility into apartheid ideals of  “separate development”. This, against growing calls for unity under a democratic, South Africanist banner. But he claimed his position to be a realistic strategy, as opposed to armed struggle. He will be remembered as the founder and stalwart campaigner of the Inkatha Zulu movement. He will also be remembered for the violent civil strife between his followers and the  United Democratic Front  and African National Congress (ANC). The violence  claimed nearly 20 000 lives  during the last decade of racist National Party rule. Buthelezi’s mother was  Princess Magogo, granddaughter of King Cetshwayo  and sister of  King Solomon. She was an important person in her own right. His great-grandfather was said to be “prime minister of the Zulu nation during King Cetshwayo’s reign”. He took up this role himself in relation to the monarchy of King Goodwill Zwelithini. A complex figure, Buthelezi (or Shenge, as he was known to many) enjoyed traditional titles of chief and prince. He was also rooted in Christian and modernist ideals. Buthelezi lived his personal life as a dedicated Anglican, with a close connection to  Alpheus Zulu, Bishop of Zululand. He enjoyed a long marriage to Irene, who died aged 89 in 2019. He tragically endured the deaths of five children, two of them of AIDS, a fact he declared publicly. He was taking a brave stand against stigma at a time when most political elites fostered  a climate of denial around the disease. Political career His political career began early. He joined the ANC Youth League and was expelled for student political protest while studying at the University of Fort Hare in 1950. Set to become a lawyer, and due to do articles with South African Communist Party lawyer  Rowley Arenstein, he changed route to take up politics full time. This was a crucial turning point, which he attributed to  Chief Albert Luthuli. Luthuli, a father figure whom Buthelezi claimed as a mentor, bridged Zulu traditions and modern liberal ones in his role as both a chief and as ANC president. Yet South Africa was changing. When Buthelezi chose to engage with the politics of apartheid’s “homeland” policy from 1970, he initially did so with widespread support. Homelands or “bantustans”  were the 10 impoverished rural areas reserved for black people, where, as ethnic entities, they exercised nominal self-rule separate from the developed rest of the country ruled exclusively and in the interests of all white people. He was occupying a platform from which he also kept the internal flame of political opposition alive. He did this first linked to the name and direction of the banned ANC, which had reconstituted itself in exile. Buthelezi could legitimately claim to have blocked the National Party’s vision of ultimate complete ethnic “homeland” separatism, by  refusing “independence” for the KwaZulu territory. Had he not opposed the apartheid state’s plans for the then fledgling King Goodwill, modelled on the monarchy of Swaziland (now Eswatini) – an executive monarch with total political and economic power – the region’s history would have unfolded very differently. In KwaZulu this would have meant a single person in control (the young Goodwill Zwelithini), beholden to the purse-string holders in Pretoria. Because of Buthelezi’s stand on “independence”, and in the climate of the Cold War, he was considered by many western leaders the most likely and desirable black leader to bring about a  democratic, and capitalist, South Africa. Buthelezi consistently called for the  release of political prisoners. He formed a political movement, Inkatha, in 1975, and ensured its growth and survival – and thus his own – within the KwaZulu base. In 1979, he fell out of grace with the ANC  in what he continued to consider both a misinterpretation of his objectives and a manipulative power play, leaving a sore point that endured. Buthelezi increasingly worked his own base, using media masterfully in a pre-internet world. He distributed every speech on a mailing list, nationally and internationally, drawing in supportive journalists and political analysts. In the 1980s, he drew finances for innovative and convincing research, inaugurating the  Buthelezi Commission Report, which investigated the entwined economies of Natal and KwaZulu. This was followed by the  KwaZulu-Natal Indaba of 1986, where the potential of a post-apartheid federal system was explored. Coming just before the political manoeuvres in the late 1980s and the transition in the early 1990s, and from such a strong source, it would have confirmed to negotiators on all sides that ethnic “homelands” would continue to feature in a democratic South Africa. Attempts to initiate national linkages such as the South African Black Alliance  failed to take off. Likewise efforts to present himself as a national politician, for example through annual mass meetings in Soweto, the massive black urban settlement outside Johannesburg. Buthelezi never managed to escape the political damage of “participation” and working “within the apartheid system”. His association with Zulu ethnic authority both served and undermined him. When the ambiguity of his affiliation to the ANC came to a head in 1979, he was increasingly dependent on the apartheid state. He became, inescapably, part of the civil war waged from 1985, sharing the ANC as enemy with his apartheid state supporters. For its part, the ANC could not accept another internal political position from internal structures not already committed to it. This especially once trade unions grew and civil unrest took on organisational forms under the United Democratic Front, which fully supported the exiled ANC movement. During the complex negotiations for a democratic country – which he argued made him a bit player – Buthelezi withdrew from participation, against the background of the raging civil war. He returned after the KwaZulu government had passed legislation that ensured the clear continuation of ethnic rule in the region. It also guaranteed that all “homeland” land would continue directly under King Goodwill, as  the Ingonyama Trust Land. Other promises were made to Buthelezi, the non-fulfilment of which rankled him thereafter. While a member of the  Government of National Unity  (1994-1996), he even served as acting president. He continued to lead what was now the Inkatha Freedom Party for most of his remaining years. He was centrally involved in the disputatious unfolding of selecting a successor to King Goodwill after his death in 2021. The continuing complexities of Zulu ethnic politics, including the installation of King Misuzulu kaZwelithini in 2022, bedevilled Buthelezi’s political roles into his 90s. Talent and contradictions Buthelezi left traces of his life firmly in South Africa’s history over the past momentous 80 years or so. It is therefore not surprising that there will remain very different assessments of his roles and legacies. Some of the titles that were and can be attributed to him would include, at various moments: Zulu chief and prince, bantustan prime minister and ethnic prime minister to the Zulu king, and acting president of a democratic South Africa. Others are warlord, stooge and collaborator,  internationally recognised statesman, ANC stalwart, Zulu, Christian, family man. Just before his death king-maker could be added. A man of immense talent, and contradictions, Buthelezi anticipated in his politics the variegated allegiances of power and interest that would reveal themselves, with new bids for authority and wealth, into a new era. — The Conversation. *About the writer: Gerhard Maré is emeritus professor of political sociology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Buthelezi was a man of immense political talent and contradictions Soon to be 95 year old Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi in a one on one interview with Itumeleng Mafisa from the Star at the Edward Hotel in Durban. Picture: Shelley Kjonstad/African News Agency (ANA)

NewsHawks News Page 27 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 MONDLI MAKHANYA MODERN South African history has seen its fair share of evil men and women, many of them linked in one way or another with the apartheid system and the security apparatus that upheld it. There were people such as DF Malan and Hendrik Verwoerd, the architects and foundation-layers of the apartheid system. In later years, there were the likes of BJ Vorster and PW Botha, who took apartheid to another level and designed dark security that formed the shield for apartheid. There were hard men such as Louis le Grange, Adriaan Vlok and Magnus Malan, who built and nurtured the killing squads that acted with absolute impunity and with the sanction of the highest levels of government. Then there were the generals in the army, police and intelligence, who hired the men and women who carried out dastardly deeds that you could not believe were executed by human beings. Lower down, there were the foot soldiers such as Eugene de Kock, who carried out the orders with glee. Most of the people acted out of conviction that they were serving the interests of the volk and the God that Afrikaners worship. They were the custodians of Western civilisation on this dark continent. But, as in the slave trade days, there were the black enablers who sold out their people for personal gain and individual power. You could find them in the Bantustan governments, the puppet township councils, the Security Branch and among the askari turncoats. And as is always the case, the collaborators often went much further than the master could ever have expected. Undoubtedly, the most enthusiastic and most effective of these apartheid collaborators was one Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, who died yesterday, aged 95. If those who put up Buthelezi’s tombstone were to be honest it would read:  Chief apartheid collaborator and mass murderer. Those who write the obituary to be read at his funeral would acknowledge the tens of thousands of people who were killed, maimed, displaced and had their properties destroyed by his impis and hit squads. Those who stand up to pay tribute at his memorial service would mention the names Boipatong, KwaMakhutha, Swanieville, Shobashobane, Thokoza and so many other scenes of mass murders that were committed in his name. In the coming days of the so-called mourning period, they should remember those who were mercilessly slaughtered on train coaches from where they could not escape. Rewriting history Yesterday, following his death, there was a torrent of lies about the legacy of a man who must count as one of the most evil people to have trod the soul of our nation. Buthelezi was being lauded as a great man, nation-builder and contributor to the democratic republic that we live in. President Cyril Ramaphosa described him as “a formidable leader in the political and cultural life of our nation” and pledged that the country would “reflect more extensively on his extraordinary life and diverse contribution to the development of our nation”. National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula called Buthelezi “a towering figure in our nation’s history”. She praised Buthelezi for his “legislative and political leadership experience, having led a political party both during the apartheid era and in post-apartheid South Africa”. There were many more dishonest tributes from the ANC, other political parties and even some organs of civil society and faith-based organisations. In the past 24 hours, we have witnessed the culmination of the greatest whitewashing of history that South Africa has seen, a process that began some years ago. Truth about Gatsha Buthelezi So who is this Buthelezi and why is everybody so afraid to tell the truth about him? The facts are that Buthelezi used the role that he built for himself as the traditional prime minister to the Zulu kingdom to cultivate a personality cult around himself and amass massive power. He tightly controlled a young and dimwit King Goodwill Zwelithini to build what was initially a cultural movement called Inkatha, which then evolved into a political force. The driver behind this was the assertion of Zulu nationalism and the evoking of the nostalgia for the kingdom that fought heroic battles against colonialists before succumbing in 1879. This is a nostalgia that runs deep among many Zulu people and Buthelezi was able to commodify it and turn it into a political weapon. READ: Buthelezi remembered as a 'giant', 'sharp thinker' and 'statesman' Everyone knows how potent and dangerous a weapon nationalist jingoism can be. Buthelezi tapped into this. In KwaZulu schools, children were subjected to Inkatha lessons in which Buthelezi was placed at the centre of the restoration of the Zulu kingdom. Young people would be sent to the Mandleni-Matleng camp outside Ulundi for further indoctrination and turned into IFP zombies. Traditional structures such as chiefdoms and the induna system in the hostels were purposed as Inkatha conveyor belts. The youthful zombies, together with regiments in the traditional areas and hostels, would later become the fighting forces that Inkatha used to crush anti-apartheid forces on behalf of the apartheid government. Inkatha’s violent war against the people began in the 1970s and 1980s when Buthelezi dispatched his warriors to help the apartheid government crush student protests. When the nationwide uprising against apartheid intensified in the mid-1980s, the regime leant on its trusted surrogate to help it contain them or put them down. Inkatha gladly complied and regiments conducted terror campaigns against members and supporters of the United Democratic Front and its allies. The apartheid government even helped Inkatha to form the United Workers Union of SA to counter the growing power of Cosatu. Fast-forward to the unbanning of the organisations and release of political prisoners such as Nelson Mandela. With negotiations for a democratic South Africa in full force, right-wing elements in FW De Klerk’s government and security forces unleashed more bloodshed on South Africans, working hand in hand with Buthelezi’s now rebranded Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) as well as state-backed criminal gangs that had been turned into the government’s killing machines. The carnage of those times was raw: people butchered in broad daylight, babies stabbed with spears while in bed with their mothers because “a baby snake will eventually grow up into a big snake” and weddings attacked by marauding impis. As a young reporter at the time, this lowly newspaperman would more than once weekly be on the scene of yet another killing field as we journalists became accustomed to those middle of the night calls and pager alerts telling of yet another mass killing by Inkatha warriors. The Inkatha warriors would be marching around the hostel yard or on the perimeter, triumphantly singing traditional songs, celebrating their killing spree. They would tell us that they were killing the enemies of the Zulus because Inkatha had told them the ANC wanted to destroy the Zulu kingdom and strip the king of his powers. The sight of severed limbs, heads separated from the torsos and congealed blood thick on the floors of homes and streets still haunts to this day. The images of the blood that would be splattered on train windows after a train attack and bodies of those who jumped out and died still lingers. As does the wailing of family members, including orphaned children, at the numerous funerals of innocents who were killed by Inkatha impis simply because the apartheid regime and Buthelezi wanted to sow terror. Today, if you go to communities in the Vaal, the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, Ekurhuleni, Soweto, Kagiso, Clermont, Magabheni and many rural villages, the residents will have vivid memories of what Buthelezi did to them, their loved ones and their communities. Democracy spoiler At the democracy talks commenced, Buthelezi was playing spoiler, aligning himself with far-right Afrikaner groups and other stubborn Bantustan parties to derail the negotiations. Because his party and the Afrikaans conservatives had the capacity to cause chaos, the main negotiation had to sit up and take them seriously. For all the talk that Buthelezi helped the country’s transition to democracy, it cannot be forgotten that the IFP held the nation to ransom in the run-up to the 1994 elections and entered the polls at the absolutely last minute. He was to continue his obstinate ways even after democracy when he was a serving minister in the Government of National Unity (GNU). Many a time he would throw tantrums and threaten to pull the IFP out of the GNU and the Constitutional Assembly that was drafting the final Constitution. Carefully couched in his threats was that he could not predict what his supporters would do if the IFP was excluded. Yesterday, ANC national spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri told the nation that Buthelezi had a “multifaceted relationship with the ANC and the nation, and his legacy will be subjected to intense debate”. Well, that “intense debate” should have been settled by the unequivocal findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which made damning findings against the IFP and Buthelezi. One of these related to Buthelezi’s request for the SA Defence Force (SADF) to bolster him with training offensive units (basically hit squads), in his capacity as KwaZulu chief minister who was also in charge of the Bantustan police, to deal with his opponents. These resulted in the training of hit squads in the Caprivi Strip (then part of South West Africa). Those men went on to do some deadly killings. According to a document of the SADF’s directorate of special tasks that the TRC obtained, his right-hand man MZ Khumalo said Buthelezi wanted help to train “cells that could take out undesirable members”. “The training of the offensive group of Inkatha’s para-military unit in the Caprivi Strip during 1986 accords fully with the meaning of offensive action … According to former military intelligence officer, Lieutenant-Colonel J A Nieuwoudt, who was involved in the training of the para-military unit, the aim of the offensive group was to attack and eliminate ANC targets,” the TRC said in papers answering Buthelezi’s bid to set its findings aside. It was a comprehensive answering document that laid out the IFP’s handin-glove relationship with the apartheid security establishment. Buthelezi promptly walked away and the case that would have proved his complicity was never heard. There is nothing “formidable” about a cold-blooded killer who created orphans, destroyed communities and did the utmost to delay our democracy. There is no ambiguity about Buthelezi’s role in aiding and abetting the apartheid regime. There is nothing “towering” about a man who is responsible for more than 20 000 deaths in a war that only benefited the regime. Buthelezi never acknowledged his role in propping up apartheid through violent means and his role in the slaughter of innocents. He spent his last years trying to convince the world that he had always been a man of peace, right up there with Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. In the next few days, Ramaphosa will announce how the mass killer will be honoured by the democratic republic he spilt blood to prevent the birth of. There will be the usual bells and whistles that come with such occasions. Lies will be told about a man who was one of the midwives of the new South Africa. But it is okay. It is in the nature of politicians to tell bare-faced lies. But we will owe it to ourselves as South Africans not to forget that Buthelezi was a thoroughly evil man to the end, and history must record that. *About the writer: Mondli Makhanya  is a South African journalist who has been editor-in-chief of  City Press since 2016. He was formerly the editor of the  Mail & Guardian  from 2002 to 2003, the editor of the  Sunday Times  from 2004 to 2010, and the editor-in-chief at the Times Media Group from 2010 to 2013. Buthelezi: The unadulterated truth of a murderous legacy Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi

Page 28 NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 International Investigative Stories TWO men who secretly invested in the massive conglomerate turn out to have close ties to its majority owners, the Adani family, raising questions about violations of Indian law. It became one of the largest economic scandals in the history of modern India: The Adani Group, a massive conglomerate with interests in everything from airports to television stations, was accused of brazen stock manipulation. The allegation, leveled this January by a New York-based short seller, caused Adani stock to plummet, triggered protests, and prompted an investigation by India’s Supreme Court. But the expert committee convened by the court was unable to get to the bottom of the scandal, which has serious political implications because of the group’s widely perceived closeness to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and its central role in his plan for developing the country. The essence of the allegations was that some of the Adani Group’s key “public” investors were in fact Adani insiders, a possible violation of Indian securities law. But none of the agencies contacted by the committee were able to identify those investors, since they were hidden behind secretive offshore structures. Now, exclusive documents obtained by OCCRP and shared with The Guardian and Financial Times — including files from multiple tax havens, bank records, and internal Adani Group emails — shed light on that very matter. These documents, which have been corroborated by people with direct knowledge of the Adani Group’s business and public records from multiple countries, show how hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in publicly traded Adani stock through opaque investment funds based in the island nation of Mauritius. In at least two cases — representing Adani stock holdings that at one point reached $430 million — the mysterious investors turn out to have widely reported ties to the group’s majority shareholders, the Adani family. The two men, Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and Chang Chung-Ling, have longtime business ties to the family and have also served as directors and shareholders in Adani Group companies and companies associated with one of the family’s senior members, Vinod Adani. The documents show that, through the Mauritius funds, they spent years buying and selling Adani stock through offshore structures that obscured their involvement — and made considerable profits in the process. They also show that the management company in charge of their investments paid a Vinod Adani company to advise them in their investments. The question of whether this arrangement is a violation of the law rests on whether Ahli and Chang should be considered to be acting on International InvestigativeStories Fresh allegations of stock manipulation rocks India’s powerful Adani Group

NewsHawks International Investigative Stories Page 29 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 behalf of Adani “promoters,” a term used in India to refer to the majority owners of a business holding and its affiliated parties. If so, their stake in the Adani Group would mean that insiders altogether owned more than the 75 percent allowed by law. “When the company buys its own shares above 75 percent … it’s not just illegal, but it’s share price manipulation,” says Arun Agarwal, an Indian market specialist and transparency advocate. “This way the company [creates] artificial scarcity, and thus increases its share value — and thus its own market capitalization.” “This helps them gain an image that they are doing very well, which helps them get loans, take valuations of companies to a new high, and then float new companies,” he said. In response to requests for comment for this story, a representative of the Adani Group noted that the Mauritius funds investigated by reporters had already been named in the “Hindenburg report,” referring to the short-seller that sparked this year’s scandal. (The report did name these offshore companies, but did not reveal who was using them to make investments in Adani stock.) The Adani representative also cited the Supreme Court’s expert committee, which described a financial regulator’s efforts to get to the bottom of the matter as “not proved.” “In light of these facts,these allegations are not only baseless and unsubstantiated but are rehashed from Hindenburg’s allegations,” the representative wrote. “Further, it is categorically stated that all the Adani Group’s publicly listed entities are in compliance with all applicable laws including the regulation relating to public share holdings.” Ahli and Chang did not respond to OCCRP’s requests for comment. In an interview with a reporter from the Guardian, Chang said he knew nothing about any secret purchases of Adani stock. He did not say whether he had bought any, but asked why journalists were not interested in his other investments. “We are a simple business,” he said, before ending the interview. Vinod Adani did not respond to requests for comment. Though the Adani Group has denied that he has a role in running the conglomerate, it admitted this March that he was part of its “promoter group” — meaning he had control over the affairs of the company and was meant to be informed of all holdings in Adani Group stock. An Adani Group representative told reporters that Vinod Adani’s involvement had been “duly disclosed,” adding that he is a “foreign national … residing abroad for the last three decades,” and “does not hold any managerial position in any Adani listed entities or their subsidiaries.” ‘Brazen Stock Manipulation’ The Adani Group’s rise has been staggering, growing from under $8 billion in market capitalization in September 2013 — the year before Modi became prime minister — to $260 billion last year. The conglomerate is active in a dizzying array of fields, including transportation and logistics, natural gas distribution, coal trade and production, power generation and transmission, road construction, data centers, and real estate. It has also won many of the state’s largest tenders, including 50-year contracts to operate or redevelop a number of India’s airports. Recently, it even took a controlling stake in one of the country’s last independent television stations. But Adani’s rise has not been without controversy. Opposition politicians allege that the firm has received preferential treatment from the government to secure its lucrative state contracts. Analysts also describe its chairman, Gautam Adani, as benefiting from a cozy relationship with Modi. Adani has denied that Modi or his policies are responsible for his business empire’s success. The conglomerate suffered a major setback at the end of January when the New York-based short seller, Hindenburg Research, issued its scathing report, claiming that the group had spent decades engaged in “brazen stock manipulation” and “accounting fraud.” Gautam Adani, the headline read, was “pulling the largest con in corporate history.” The central issue, the report claimed, was that the company was in violation of Indian securities law, which requires at least 25 percent of the stock of any publicly traded company to be available to the public for purchase. Following the report’s publication, shares in the group’s companies plummeted. Gautam Adani lost more than $60 billion in just a few days, dropping from third-richest man in the world to 24th. In response, the Adani Group issued denials and wrapped itself in the Indian flag. “This is not merely an unwarranted attack on any specific company,” the Group wrote in a note to stakeholders, “but a calculated attack on India, the independence, integrity, and quality of Indian institutions, and the growth story and ambition of India.” Many investors appear to have bought this narrative, with shares of major Adani group companies recovering much of their losses. Hitting a Wall Meanwhile, in response to the Hindenburg report, India’s Supreme Court convened an expert committee to look into the allegations. The committee’s conclusions, published this May, revealed that the Adani Group had already been investigated by SEBI, the Indian financial regulator. According to the committee, SEBI had suspected for years that “some of [the Adani Group’s] public shareholders are not truly public shareholders and they could be fronts for [Adani Group] promoters.” In 2020, it launched an investigation into 13 overseas entities holding Adani stock. But the investigation “hit a wall,” the expert committee’s report reads, because SEBI investigators could not conclusively determine who was behind the money. Attempting to do so would be a “journey without a destination,” the committee concluded, because multiple layers of opaque corporate ownership could be used to disguise the ultimate owners of the stock. Documents obtained by reporters do, however, reveal the “destination” in two cases involving two of the 13 offshore entities: A pair of Mauritius-based investment funds. From the outside these funds, called Emerging India Focus Fund (EIFF) and EM Resurgent Fund (EMRF), appear to be typical offshore investment vehicles, operated on behalf of a number of wealthy investors. Documents obtained by reporters show that a large percentage of the money was placed into these funds by two foreign investors — Chang from Taiwan and Ahli from the United Arab Emirates — who used them to trade large amounts of shares in four Adani companies between 2013 and 2018. At one point in March 2017, the value of the investments in Adani Group stock was $430 million. The money followed a convoluted trail, making it exceedingly difficult to follow. It was channeled through four companies and a Bermuda-based investment fund called the Global Opportunities Fund (GOF). According to documents obtained by reporters, these investments resulted in significant profits, netting hundreds of millions over the years as EIFF and EMRF repeatedly bought Adani stock low and sold it high. Between them, at the peak of their investment in June 2016, the two funds held free-floating shares of four Adani Group companies ranging from 8 to nearly 14 percent: Adani Power, Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports, and Adani Transmissions. Chang and Ahli’s connections to the Adani family have been widely reported over the years. The men were linked to the family in two separate government investigations into alleged wrongdoing by the Adani Group. Both cases were eventually dismissed. The first case involved a 2007 investigation into an allegedly illegal diamond trading scheme by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), India’s premier investigative agency under the Ministry of Finance. A DRI report described Chang as the director of three Adani companies involved in the scheme, while Ahli represented a trading firm that was also involved. As part of the case, it was revealed that Chang shared a Singapore residential address with Vinod Adani, the low-profile older brother of the Adani Group’s chairman, Gautam Adani. The second case was an alleged over-invoicing scam revealed in a separate 2014 DRI investigation. The agency claimed that Adani Group companies were illegally funneling money out of India by overpaying their own foreign subsidiary by as much as $1 billion for imported power generation equipment. Here, too, Chang and Ahli’s names appeared. At separate times, the two men were directors of two companies later owned by Vinod Adani that handled the proceeds from the scheme, one in the UAE and one in Mauritius. According to the Hindenburg report, Chang was also either a director or shareholder in a Singapore company that was listed as a “related party” in a disclosure by an Adani company. Direct Instructions Aside from these past links to the Adanis, there is evidence that Chang and Ahli’s trading in Adani stock was coordinated with the family. According to a source familiar with the Adani Group’s business who cannot be named to ensure their safety, the fund managers in charge of Chang and Ahli’s investments in EIFF and EMRF received direct instructions on the investments from an Adani company. The company that the source named, Excel Investment and Advisory Services Limited, is based in a secretive offshore zone in the United Arab Emirates where corporate records are not available. However, documents obtained by reporters corroborate the source’s account: • An agreement for Excel to provide advisory services to EIFF and EMRF was signed for Excel by Vinod Adani himself in 2011. • As recently as 2015, Excel was owned by a company called Assent Trade & Investment Pvt Ltd., which a 2016 email stated was ultimately owned by Vinod Adani and his wife. • Though current corporate records from Mauritius, where Assent is registered, do not show who owns the company, they do show that Vinod Adani is on its board of directors. • Invoices and transaction records show that the management companies of EIFF, EMRF, and the Bermuda-based GOF paid over $1.4 million in “advisory” fees to Excel between June 2012 and August 2014. • An internal email exchange suggests that, in connection with an upcoming audit, fund managers were concerned that they didn’t have sufficient paperwork to justify following Excel’s investment advice. In one of the emails, a manager instructs several employees to produce records that would justify the reasoning behind the investments. In another, a manager makes a request to obtain a report from Excel which should recommend investing in “more than the number of securities into which the fund has [actually] invested so that it can be demonstrated that the [investment manager] used their discretion to make the selection of investments.” ‘Siphoned-off money’ There is no evidence that Chang and Ahli’s money for their Adani Group investments came from the Adani family. The source of the funds is unknown. But documents obtained by OCCRP show that Vinod Adani used one of the same Mauritius funds to make his own investments. Reporters obtained a letter SEBI, the Indian regulator, received from the DRI in 2014, in which the DRI said it had evidence that money from the alleged over-invoicing scheme it were investigating had been sent to Mauritius. “There are indications that a part of the siphoned-off money may have found its way to stock markets in India as investment and disinvestment in the Adani Group,” wrote Najib Shah, the DRI’s director general at the time, in the letter. According to the DRI case, money from the alleged scheme was sent to an Emirati company called Electrogen Infra FZE. This company then forwarded the resulting proceeds of about $1 billion to a Mauritius-based holding company ultimately owned by Vinod Adani that had a similar name, Electrogen Infra Holding Pvt. Ltd. Reporters were able to trace the onward flow of over $100 million of these funds. The Mauritius company loaned the money to another Vinod Adani company, Assent Trade & Investment Pvt Ltd, “to invest in [the] Asian equity market.” As the beneficial owner of both Electrogen Infra Holding and Assent, Vinod Adani signed the loan document as both the lender and as the borrower. Finally, the money was placed into the GOF, the same intermediary used by Chang and Ahli, and then invested in both EIFF and Asia Vision Fund, another Mauritius-based investment vehicle. SEBI did not respond to reporters’ requests for comment about the letter it received in 2014. In the wake of the Hindenburg allegations this year, in addition to appointing its expert committee, India’s Supreme Court directed SEBI to investigate. Its report is due next month. — Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani

Page 30 NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 A coup in Gabon has marked the end of over half a century of unbroken dynastic rule during which the Bongo family accumulated enormous wealth both at home and offshore, as revealed by the Pandora Papers and several other investigations. Soldiers seized power in the Central African nation last Wednesday, just hours after ailing president Ali Bongo was declared the winner of a disputed election. It was the third in which Bongo claimed victory — the previous two, in 2016 and 2009, were marred by violence and accusations of vote rigging. Bongo was placed under house arrest and several of his close associates, including his son, Eton-educated Noureddin Bongo Valentin, were arrested for treason, embezzlement and corruption. The details of those charges remain unclear, but the Bongo regime has been labeled a kleptocracy by experts and advocacy groups throughout its existence. A one-time musician, Ali Bongo came to power in 2009 after the death of his father Omar Bongo, whose nearly 42-year authoritarian rule was aided by his closeness to the former colonizer, France, and his use of Gabon’s petrodollars to build a network of patronage. Choice appointments such as cabinet positions went to trusted family members, and the father and son amassed vast wealth while presiding over a small population of 2.3 million. Though Gabon is rich in oil and defined as a middle-income country, at least a third of the population is impoverished and unemployment is rife. Attempts to grow the middle class and diversify the economy had limited success, with oil accounting for around 70% of the country’s exports in 2020, according to the World Bank. Amid a flagging economy, rising costs of living and growing inequality, a tiny elite connected to Bongo and his inner circle thrived as the growing wealth gap fueled popular resentment. The Bongos flaunted their status as one of Africa’s richest first families, maintaining fleets of luxury cars in a country with fewer miles of paved roads than of oil pipelines, and buying mansions in the United States and France. The popular term “Bongo system” came to describe this unbridled accumulation of wealth. The family also funneled substantial wealth into offshore tax havens. ICIJ’s 2021 Pandora Papers investigation provided a glimpse into Ali Bongo’s offshore interests, revealing that he was the director of one shell company in the British Virgin Islands and that he held a stake in another BVI company alongside two political associates. An email from 2008, when Bongo was Gabon’s minister of defense, noted that he was the major shareholder of Gazeebo Investments Ltd. and described him as a “civil servant.” The two associates were Jean-Pierre Oyiba, who was head of the presidential cabinet until 2009 when he resigned following a corruption scandal (he was not charged and denied wrongdoing), and Claude Sezalory, a Gabonese politician who was married to Sylvia Bongo Ondimba before she married Ali Bongo in 1989. Bongo’s press office did not respond to ICIJ’s repeated requests for comment at the time of the investigation. Much of the Bongos’ wealth was channeled into foreign properties. In a November 2020 report, OCCRP revealed that over the prior two decades the Bongos and their inner circle “purchased at least seven properties worth over US$4.2 million in and near the U.S. capital … .” Among those involved was the long-serving head of the constitutional court who was instrumental in helping the family hang onto power and is currently being detained under the coup. The report noted that “The Bongos’ Washington, D.C.-area homes were all purchased with cash.” In the 1990s, investigators in the U.S. found that over $100 million had moved through U.S. bank accounts linked to Bongo senior. The Bongos’ wealth has not escaped scrutiny in France, where probes that began under Omar Bongo’s presidency have strained relations between the former colonial power and the family it historically viewed as a reliable ally in Africa. A 2007 French police inquiry found that the family owned 39 properties and had 70 bank accounts. Faced with official reluctance to pursue the matter, civil society organizations, including Transparency International, went to court to force the French state’s hand, winning a precedent-setting case in 2010 in which the highest French court cleared the path for investigations against the ruling families of Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of Congo. The case led to the seizure of some Bongo family properties in 2016, including luxury mansions in Nice and Paris. Last year, French authorities indicted several Bongo family members and associates, including at least nine half-brothers and sisters of Ali Bongo, for corruption, misappropriating public funds and money laundering. The 15-yearold case concerned alleged “undue commissions” paid by French energy company Elf and corrupt real estate transactions worth at least 85 million euros (about $94.6 million at the time of the indictment). The last three years have been turbulent for several African countries whose governments have been toppled by coups: Niger, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Guinea and Mali. A failed coup attempt in Gabon in 2019, when Bongo was abroad for medical treatment, was a sign of things to come. Coup leader Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, head of the Republican Guard, is now in charge of the country. His intervention ends the Bongos’ rule, but power remains within the elite and the extended family — Nguema is a distant cousin of Ali Bongo. He too was mentioned in the OCCRP report as having bought three properties in the U.S. for over $1 million, paid for in cash. Since the coup, state television in Gabon has broadcast images of bags full of cash allegedly being seized from officials’ houses. Nguema, who was sworn in as the country’s new leader on Monday, had promised the military would return power to a civilian government, but did not want to “repeat past mistakes” by rushing the transition, according to reporting by Al Jazeera. — International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The Bongo family ruled Gabon for most of its independence. While the country stagnated and poverty remained, the family amassed vast wealth — much of it hidden offshore. Gabon’s Bongo family enriched itself in over 56 years of kleptocratic rule, spreading its wealth across the world A defaced campaign billboard of ousted Gabon President Ali Bongo in Libreville on August 31, 2023. International Investigative Stories

NewsHawks Page 31 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 The NewsHawks is published on different content platforms by the NewsHawks Digital Media which is owned by Centre for Public Interest Journalism No. 100 Nelson Mandela Avenue Beverly Court, 6th floor Harare, Zimbabwe Trustees/Directors: Beatrice Mtetwa, Raphael Khumalo, Professor Wallace Chuma, Teldah Mawarire, Doug Coltart EDITORIAL STAFF: Managing Editor: Dumisani Muleya Assistant Editor: Brezh Malaba News Editor: Owen Gagare Digital Editor: Bernard Mpofu Reporters: Brenna Matendere, Ruvimbo Muchenje, Enock Muchinjo, Jonathan Mbiriyamveka, Nathan Guma Email: [email protected] SUB EDITORS: Mollen Chamisa, Gumisai Nyoni Business Development Officer: Nyasha Kahondo Cell: +263 71 937 1739 [email protected] Subscriptions & Distribution: +263 71 937 1739 Reaffirming the fundamental importance of freedom of expression and media freedom as the cornerstone of democracy and as a means of upholding human rights and liberties in the constitution; our mission is to hold power in its various forms and manifestations to account by exposing abuse of power and office, betrayals of public trust and corruption to ensure good governance and accountability in the public interest. CARTOON Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe The NewsHawks newspaper subscribes to the Code of Conduct that promotes truthful, accurate, fair and balanced news reporting. If we do not meet these standards, register your complaint with the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe at No.: 34, Colenbrander Rd, Milton Park, Harare. Telephone: 024-2778096 or 024-2778006, 24Hr Complaints Line: 0772 125 659 Email: [email protected] or [email protected] WhatsApp: 0772 125 658, Twitter: @vmcz Website: www.vmcz.co.zw, Facebook: vmcz Zimbabwe Buthelezi: Hero to villain Dumisani Muleya Hawk Eye Editorial & Opinion ANOTHER stolen election. Another vicious crackdown dissenting voices. Another headlong plunge into the shameful abyss of pariah states. Emmerson Mnangagwa’s cheerleaders often hype up his so-called talent at deft political manoeuvring, but what is happening these days in this country shows that the apologists are just desperate in advancing the agenda of hollow mythmaking. He has repeatedly proven incapable of learning. Think about it: Since being catapulted to power on the back of a military coup in November 2017, Mnangagwa has squandered every glorious opportunity to redeem his blood-soaked CV and chart a new path towards attaining the stature of a latter-day statesman. In football parlance, you could say he has missed a glut of sitters; even in situations where it is harder to miss than to score, the Zanu PF strongman defaults to his discredited methods. He is caught in a time warp: whenever he feels cornered, the primordial instincts of Gukurahundi, Murambatsvina, Wakavhotera papi, 1 August 2018 and January 2019 are re-activated, to devastating effect. After claiming victory in a 23 August election condemned by the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) Election Observer Mission as neither free, fair nor credible, Mnangagwa has unleashed the repressive state apparatus to crudely silence dissenters and cow the long-suffering masses. On 2 September, Womberaiishe Nhende, the newly elected councillor for Harare's Glen Norah ward 27, was abducted, tortured and injected with an unknown substance before being dumped on the outskirts of Harare. The dastardly act has all the hallmarks of a clumsy state operation. If Mnangagwa’s agents can perpetrate such a horrific crime on an elected councillor in Zimbabwe's capital city, we shudder to imagine the atrocities ordinary citizens are being subjected to in remote parts of the country. Another Harare councillor, Clayd Mashozhera of ward 10 in Sunnningdale, is being hunted down like vermin. Promise Mkwananzi, the national spokesperson of the main opposition CCC, says he has fled into exile after the police announced a US$1 000 reward for his capture. This is not the posture of election "winners". It is further evidence of the crippling sense of apprehension that has gripped the authorities. What exactly are they afraid of? Mnangagwa is failing to realise that the world is watching. No Sadc leader worth his salt can continue supporting such patently undemocratic actions by a government that has lost all legitimacy. The 4 September inauguration was a befitting charade for what can only be described as a shambolic election. Only three heads of state pitched up. This speaks volumes, no matter how you choose to look at it. The perilous state of democracy in Zimbabwe has been a topic of concern for decades. Zanu PF is a fully fledged authoritarian kleptocracy, now operating with utter impunity — actively supported by rogue leaders of South Africa's governing ANC. The misguided comrades at Luthuli House have forgotten that our revered liberation movement, Zapu, fought side-by with the ANC against the twin-headed monster of apartheid and colonialism. These political charlatans are desecrating our cherished memory of the Wankie and Sipolilo Campaigns. Chief Albert Luthuli himself must be turning in his grave; it will be remembered that he was born in the Solusi area of Zimbabwe. Today, the ANC, a party he led with distinction, is complicit in the Zimbabwean tragedy. Africa is paying a heavy price for tolerating the rigging of elections. One of the major factors contributing to the endless cycle of military coups in West Africa, for instance, is the tendency by corrupt leaders to subvert the will of the people by brazenly stealing elections. Votes must count for something in Zimbabwe, a country we liberated from racist colonial subjugation on the basis of two key nationalist grievances: restoration of stolen land and "one person, one vote". The Zanu PF government must stop victimising dissenters. Suppression of opposition voices through the hunting down of dissenters by Mnangagwa’s repressive state apparatus in the post-election period is unconstitutional and undemocratic. Mnangagwa lashes out at dissenting voices whenever he feels cornered. His international diplomatic re-engagement effort is now in tatters. As a direct result of this sham election, Zimbabwe’s pariah status is assured — with catastrophic consequences for the country’s long-suffering citizens. The already troubled economy is headed for tougher times. African leaders must now stand up and be counted. They have an active role to play in resolving the Zimbabwean crisis. State terror can backfire

Page 32 NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 New Perspectives IT is ehat it is. Controversial it may be, but President Mnangagwa remains the country’s head of state for the next five years. In his inauguration speech, he stressed his commitment to fight inflation and poverty, emphasising that the Zimbabwe dollar is here to stay. But time is running out, society can no longer go on this way. On the fight against inflation, economists around the globe recommend a low rate of inflation coupled with steady growth in personal disposable incomes. The rationale is that there should be enough purchasing power for the majority in society to consume, increase the industry revenue, create more jobs and thus complete an economic growth cycle. The other scenario, that of the ongoing stagflation, goes against the prospects of growth. In that scenario, inflation continues to rise, while the decreasing purchasing power has a cascading impact upon the entire growth cycle. The results are: fewer jobs, greater frustration and an increase in poverty as well as social unrest. Poverty is globally acknowledged as a curse because of its destructive potential for societies. It has been rightly said that islands of affluence cannot exist in oceans of poverty. It implies that if in a society the wealth is concentrated in a few hands and the rest of the people do not even have the means to ensure reasonable living, or if a system of governance is decidedly tuned to serve the interests of the elite at the expense of the poor masses, then the chances of that society surviving for a long time are very slim. Poverty provides fertile ground for social disorders and revolutions which are usually marked by violence and rebellion against the elite classes by the poor. According to the World Bank, half of Zimbabwe’s people live below the food poverty line. Roughly 74% of the population lives on less than US$5.50 a day and the average monthly wage is US$253. The latest World Bank report indicates that 40% of Zimbabweans are living on less than US$1.90 a day. Is it not a shame that after more than 40 years of Independence a big chunk of society is living in abject poverty? The situation is undoubtedly a sequel to the ruling elites building their own fortunes taking advantage of the inbuilt avenues of corruption in the system of governance. As they say, there is a limit to everything. The poor may decide that they will no longer take it lying down and one can smell the coming of a revolution if the things are not set in the right direction. The people that seem harmless as they go about their business in the streets throughout Zimbabwe are surely a premonition for terrifying things to follow if the economic conditions do not improve. Their lives have become miserable due to the hydra-headed inflation. The situation confronting the country at the moment is a cumulative outcome of the anti-people policies pursued by successive governments and no one government can be singled out for being responsible in regards to the prevailing tragic situation. The reality is that all the governments the country has experienced so far have remained scandalously insensitive to the problems of the poor masses and have been making false claims about development. The fact at hand is that the masses are struggling whilst the elite have become demigods. What we lack is a clear shared vision from the onset. It is a fact that the vision of Zimbabwe’s founding fathers is not a simple or straightforward topic. There are different perspectives and interpretations of who the founding fathers were and what they wanted for the country. Countries such as India, Pakistan, Malaysia that have grown fast over the years had a clear vision from their founding fathers.   The celebrated Muhammad Ali Jinnah of Pakistan had a clear vision.  He was a visionary leader and knew that peace and progress depended on ameliorating the lot of the poor masses. While addressing the constituent assembly on 11 August 1947 he said: “Now if we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous, we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and especially of the masses and the poor. If you will work in cooperation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges, and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.” Identifying other ills afflicting the polity, he observed: “The first duty of the State is to maintain law and order so that the life, property and the beliefs of the subjects are fully protected. Bribery and corruption are really a poison and need to be put down with an iron hand. Black-marketing, nepotism and jobbery are other ills afflicting the society which have to be eliminated.” This is the kind of vision Zimbabwe needs to adopt. It is regrettable to note that as a nation we have failed as our leaders in both the public and private sectors have worked to perpetuate the archaic colonial system of governance. Their machinations have promoted an elitist culture in the country, leaving the masses in abject poverty. This has not only hindered socio-economic development of the country but has also led to the emergence of a host of social faultlines, marring national integration and unity. Our survival as a respectable and vibrant nation surely hinges on path-correction on priority basis by going back to the drawing board to rediscover our national ethos and the values we were supposed to follow in regards to consolidation of gains of Independence and economic prosperity. Our salvation and progress lie in changing the system of governance and formulation of a charter for economic transformation through the collective wisdom of all stakeholders, which besides ensuring economic progress, also guarantees fair distribution of the produced wealth. The phenomenal progress achieved by our friend China undoubtedly owes itself to the elimination of poverty. We can at least take a leaf from its history. The time will soon run out for those who have been wielding power and enjoying privileges unchallenged. *About the writer: Kaduwo is a researcher and economist. Contact [email protected], call/ WhatsApp +263773376128 Time is running out Econometrics HawksView Tinashe Kaduwo President Emmerson Mnangagwa

Page 26 NewsHawks Issue 76, 15 April 2022 Business MATTERS NewsHawks CURRENCIES LAST CHANGE %CHANGE USD/JPY 109.29 +0.38 +0.35 GBP/USD 1.38 -0.014 -0.997 USD/CAD 1.229 +0.001 +0.07 USD/CHF 0.913 +0.005 +0.53 AUD/USD 0.771 -0.006 -0.76 COMMODITIES LAST CHANGE %CHANGE *OIL 63.47 -1.54 -2.37 *GOLD 1,769.5 +1.2 +0.068 *SILVER 25.94 -0.145 -0.56 *PLATINUM 1,201.6 +4 +0.33 MARKETS *COPPER 4.458 -0.029 -0.65 BERNARD MPOFU THE Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) says while a cocktail of measures introduced by the government has strengthened the domestic currency and stabilised the macro-economic environment, the country now finds itself in a delicate position in deciding as to whether or not to fully dollarise the economy. Desperate to save the Zimbabwe dollar from collapse against the backdrop of rising inflation, the country’s monetary and fiscal authorities announced a series of interventionist measures to restore economic stability. The measures which also included the use of the United States dollar as medium of exchange alongside the local unit resulted in the increased use of the greenback as the Zimbabwe dollar became more elusive. According to a CZI research note for August, the measures have not only led to a liquidity crunch of the local dollar but have triggered tough policy questions for authorities in the short to medium term. “The local currency was given a lifeline by the measures that government implemented in June 2023. However, the acute shortage of ZWL$ in the market has also been received with mixed sentiments, with some stakeholders viewing this as a positive and welcomed development as inflation has subsided while others point at the impact of the liquidity squeeze on reducing demand from economic agents that rely on the local currency,” the CZI says in the report . “Although the measures managed to enhance stability, the economy has become more dollarised due to the liquidity squeeze on the ZWL$. The mid-term monetary policy statement highlighted that foreign currency deposits constituted 80% of total deposits. Foreign currency-denominated loans constituted 94% of the banking sector loan book as at 30 June 2023. Thus, it is now imperative for the government to determine the optimal ZWL$ liquidity that is enough to prevent the economy from full dollarisation by default. “The measures that were implemented by the government managed to tame inflation. The economy is now in a deflation and there is fragile stability on the parallel market. What is of paramount importance now is exchange rate stability rooted in convergence of the parallel market and the official rate, which would give an assurance of sustainable stability. If there is no sudden injection of liquidity into the market, the month-on-month inflation figures for September 2023 will likely continue to be in negative territory.” Official figures show that the blended month-on-month inflation in August 2023 remained in the negative territory despite August being an election month. It was -6.2%, having gained about 9.1 percentage points on the July 2023 rate of -15.3%. The annual blended inflation rate decreased from 101.3% in July 2023 to 77.2% in August 2023, shedding 24.1 percentage points. “The continued decline in annual blended inflation is largely a reflection of the fact that tight money supply and prudent fiscal spending are critical in taming inflation. While sentiments as well as confidence in the policymakers is often blamed for a large explanatory role in inflation trends, the recent experience shows that fundamentals also matter in managing inflation,” the CZI says. Unending liquidity squeeze undermines local currency

Page 34 NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 Companies & Markets BERNARD MPOFU GOVERNMENT has moved in to discourage the holding of mining claims for speculative purposes as the country’s investment promotion agency experiences a surge in applications for mining investment opportunities, a senior bureaucrat has said. Experts in the mining sector say the country has 40 base minerals, including some of the most-sought-after minerals such as platinum and lithium. Willard Manungo, the deputy chief secretary for policy analysis, coordination and development planning in the Office of the President and Cabinet, told The NewsHawks on the sidelines of the launch of the Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency (Zida) Mining Claims Match-making programme in Harare recently the platform is key to promoting investment in the capital-intensive mining sector. In 2021, the ministry of Mines and Mining Development introduced the “use it or lose it” policy, in terms of which the government would repossess underutilised mining concessions. In July 2022, cabinet approved the Mines and Mining Amendment Bill, which was presented by the minister of Justice and the deputy Attorney-General. The Bill will, among other stipulations, require a miner to seek permission from the owner of land that is less than 200 hectares in extent before prospecting. The mining industry welcomed the “use it or lose it” policy mentioned in question, as some miners are now fully utilising their mining concessions, thus ensuring that the country is not deprived of the opportunity to exploit its vast mineral resource base. “There have been a lot of complaints that have been made to government that we have some instances where speculators are holding on to claims and that they have had no capacity to exploit those claims,” Manungo said. “So the entry of the matchmaking platform lowers some of the constraints that have led to speculators sitting on the claims. But as government it is an area that we have been reviewing to ensure that to the extent that holders of claims have had the opportunity to exploit and sweat those claims. To the extent that they fail to that, then the use it or lose it principle kicks in.” Speaking during the launch of the new platform, Zida chief executive Tafadzwa Chinamo said the investment promotion agency will showcase this new initiative at the Australia Down Under (ADU) mining conference which roars into life this week in Perth. ADU is the leading forum for Australian-African business and government relations and was first launched to raise awareness of Australia’s interests in African mining and energy. The three-day meeting has evolved to become the largest African-focused mining event held outside the continent itself which is reflected by the number of high-profile participants who attend each year. Since the inaugural conference in 2003, ADU has showcased many success stories about Australian companies and organisations working across Africa. ADU is a must-attend event for those with projects in Africa and for people and companies interested in investing or doing business in Africa. “The Zida Mining Claims Investors Match-making Platform is a valuable resource for investors looking for opportunities to invest in the mining industry in Zimbabwe,” Chinamo said. “The platform provides a convenient way to view registered mining claims and contact claim holders. The platform also helps to ensure that investors can find the right investment opportunities for their needs. According to the country’s laws, the right to conduct exploration is conferred by a prospecting licence/prospector’s licence upon payment of the appropriate fee prescribed in respect of each such licence to the mining commissioner. Prospecting licences are issued to permanent residents of Zimbabwe. The holder can exercise these rights or appoint an agent to exercise them on his behalf. The prospecting licence is valid for two years, while the prospector’s licence itself is valid for five years. Both are renewable. The licence confers the right of prospecting and searching for any minerals, mineral oils and natural gases on land open to prospecting, but not of removing or disposing of any mineral discovered, save for the bona fide purpose of having it assayed or of determining the nature thereof or with the permission in writing of the Mining Commissioner and pegging. The licence entitles the holder to prospect, peg and register claims in terms of the Act. A registered claim is a mining location where mining activities can take place. BERNARD MPOFU A NEW report by the country’s telecoms regulator has shown that most Zimbabweans have migrated to communicating on internet-based platforms as mobile network operators raise alarm over rising operating costs. According to the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (Potraz), mobile voice traffic grew by 0.2% to record 2.53 billion minutes from 2.52 billion minutes recorded in the first quarter of 2023. “The growth, however marginal, is attributed to a 6.1% growth in mobile to other mobile traffic. Net-on-net and mobile-to-fixed traffic has been on a downward trend over the past quarters. This may be attributed to substitution of voice with data for communications across the globe. Substitution of traditional voice with Over-the-Top VoIP also plays a significant factor,” the Potraz report reads. Mobile internet and data traffic, according to Potraz, increased by 11.6% to record 42 058.3 terabytes in the second quarter, from 37 690.4 terabytes recorded in the first quarter of 2023. The report shows that only Econet recorded growth in mobile internet and data traffic in the quarter under review. “Conversely, NetOne and Telecel recorded declines in traffic by margins of 4.7% and 56.5 % respectively. However, total internet and data traffic for mobile network operators increased by a significant margin, owing to growth in traffic by Econet,” the report shows. Econet’s market share of internet and data traffic grew by 2.8%, whereas NetOne and Telecel lost internet and data traffic shares by 4.7% and 0.1% respectively. “Operating costs continued to spike owing to depreciation of the local currency in the second quarter of 2023. This has reduced operator profits and has had detrimental effects on the viability of the sector,” the report reads. The report further shows that a total of 363 new base stations were deployed in the second quarter of 2023, as compared to 86 base stations deployed in the first quarter. “As the world moves towards faster technologies, the sector has been moving away from deployment of 2G and 3G technologies in favour of LTE which offers high capacity, and faster download and upload speeds. This is evidenced by 243 LTE deployments made in the quarter under review by mobile network operators,” the report reads. Currently, Econet is the only mobile network operator with 5G infrastructure, hence the 100% market share. Telecel is lagging in the deployment of Next Generation Networks, with only 1% market share of LTE deployments. Voice calls less a priority as consumer preferences shift Govt to thwart speculators in mining

NewsHawks Page 35 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 BERNRAD MPOFU ZIMBABWE’S largest platinum mine by volumes, Zimplats, registered 2% growth in output during the second quarter of the year, the highest since the first quarter of 2021, after the miner entered into a power import agreement with Zambia, a new report by the World Platinum Investment Council (WPIC) has shown. Limited investment in the capital intensive energy sector, unsustainable tariffs for independent power producers and poor regulation have been cited by experts as some of the major reasons discouraging investment into the country. Before the coming of refurbished units at Hwange thermal power station, Zimbabwe had been battling persistent power outages, which industry captains warned would hamstring productivity. Local companies and domestic consumers have now resorted to alternative sources of energy such as solar and diesel-powered generators to ease the outages. According to the WPIC, demand in automobiles will help platinum producers ramp up output. The WPIC says the second quarter of 2023 saw the strengthening of demand themes across platinum markets, and South African mine production continued the quarterly yearon-year downward trend which has been ongoing since the beginning of 2022. “Zimbabwe supply edged 2% higher (+2 koz) year-on-year to 126 koz, its highest since Q4’21. This was the result of higher output from Zimplats as additional milled ore volumes from the commissioning of a concentrator were realised," reveals the report. “The operation also benefited from a Zambian power import agreement, mitigating the impact of national load shedding that effected other producers in the country.” This edition of Platinum Quarterly presents platinum supply and demand developments for the second quarter of 2023, as well as an updated outlook for 2023. It also provides the WPIC’s views on issues and trends relevant to investors considering exposure to platinum as an investment asset, plus an update on how our product partnerships continue to meet investors’ needs. “Demand in 2023 is expected to total 8,230 koz (+27% year-on-year), with automotive demand up 381 koz (year-on-year), industrial demand up 336 koz (to a record level in our series), and investment demand improving from net-negative to positive 386 koz. The outlook for jewellery remains muted, with demand effectively flat year-on-year,” the report reads. “Total supply is now forecast to be flat yearon-year at 7,224 koz, with conditions remaining challenging for both primary and secondary supply. Total supply is expected to be 7% below the average annual output since 2013. Recycling supply has been downgraded by 4% from last quarter, on a continued shortage of end-of-life vehicles.” Zimbabwe has the second-largest known platinum reserves after South Africa. Zimplats is a unit of South African-headquartered Impala Platinum. BERNRAD MPOFU ONE of the country’s leading brokerage firms says Zimbabwe is yet to fully realise economic gains despite several measures announced by the authorities to stabilise the macro-economic environment. The country held a general election last month and the outcome of the poll which has been described by regional and international observers as falling short of accepted standards has been the subject of immense debate both at home and abroad. IH Securities in its banking sector research published this week noted that President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration faces economic hurdles ahead. “The country continues to face currency headwinds evidenced by the depreciation of the ZWL by 85% year-to-date. Of note is the movement of the exchange rates, both the parallel market rate and the interbank rate, in tandem with money supply,” IH says. “The parallel market rate peaked in June at 8 100 and we believe this was in response to increased money supply in the economy. As a result, we witnessed further tightening of money supply. We also observed significant devaluation of the exchange rate on the RBZ Auction System as the apex bank tried to contain the parallel rate premium. The country’s parallel market rate premium (currently at 26%) is still significantly higher than other observable divergences in Sub-Saharan Africa ranging from 3% to 6%, although it has been on a downward trend. The central bank has made efforts to try to liberalise the foreign exchange market.” The Dutch Foreign Currency Auction System now determines the exchange rate while most trades now go through banks and other financial service providers. “With the country still experiencing a trade deficit, foreign currency shortages are forecast to persist at least in the short-term,” the report reads. “Post the introduction of the auction system, month-on-month inflation had deflated into the single digits resulting in annual inflation slowing to 50.2% in August of 2021. However, compounded effects from the Russia/Ukraine war and uptick in money supply in the first half of 2022 resulted in resurgence of a hyperinflationary environment.” Official figures show that in 2022, the Zimdollar:US dollar exchange rate increased by 342% on the parallel market while the interbank rate increased by 530%. Year to date, the official exchange rate has surged by 597% while the parallel market rate has increased by 511%. The parallel market premium peaked at 125% in May 2023 before rapid devaluations of the auction rate and the introduction of the digital gold coins alongside the current hawkish monetary policy stance by the central bank. Since then, the parallel market premium has been generally on a downward trend. As of the last week of August, it was around 26%. The economy faced a plethora of challenges in the first half of the year. Power shortages were rampant, especially in thr first quarter of 2023 although the situation improved in the second quarter as Hwange thermal power station's unit 7 came on stream. Daunting economic hurdles lie ahead Zimplats posts 20% output growth Companies & Markets

Page 36 The Big Debate NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 JONATHAN MOAKES/ GEORGE CHICHESTER/ EMILY OSBORNE AS the crowds of press-ganged supporters spilt into Zimbabwe’s National Sports Stadium for President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s inauguration ceremony on Monday 4 September 2023, one group of guests was conspicuous by its absence. Of the 16 presidents of Sadc, only three — South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Mozambique’s Filipe Nyusi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo's Félix Tshisekedi — bothered to attend. From the 51 remaining African countries, not one head of state was present, represented instead by an eclectic retinue of ambassadors and junior ministers. This snub is a damning indictment of the illegitimacy of Zimbabwe’s much-derided elections and will be harshly felt by Mnangagwa. It is one thing for his regime to have been condemned and sanctioned by the West, but entirely another to be ostracised by fellow African leaders. The president has been forced to scramble around for support: former Zambian president Edgar Lungu made a rare public appearance at the inauguration at Mnangagwa’s (last minute) invitation. But this matters little when Zambia’s current president, Hakainde Hichilema, has refused either to congratulate Mnangagwa or attend his inauguration, sending Foreign Affairs Minister Stanley Kakubo in his stead.  Sadc’s unexpected censure Hichilema’s  cold shoulder  is an important diplomatic signal. As Chair of the Sadc Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, his judgement carries great weight in the region. The refusal of most Sadc heads of state to support Mnangagwa’s inauguration — and the absence of all three presidents in the Sadc Troika — follows the unprecedented condemnation of the elections by the body’s observer mission. Dr Nevers Mumba, appointed head of mission by Hichilema, delivered the hammer blow to Zanu PF’s hopes of publicly spinning these elections as anything other than deeply fraudulent. Sadc’s preliminary report accused them of falling short of the requirements of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, the Electoral Act, and the Sadc Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections. Since then, Mumba has described the elections as “the most fraudulent in the history of Sadc”. Condemning these elections outright was a momentous — and courageous — break with tradition by Mumba. The bloc has a history of rubber-stamping Zimbabwe’s deeply contested elections. But Mumba and his team laid bare Zanu PF and the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s (Zec) long-running tactics to suppress turnout and manipulate the final vote count. These tactics included a refusal by Zec to release a finalised voters roll; changes to constituency boundaries that smacked of gerrymandering; and the intimidation of voters by a Zanu-affiliated organisation called Forever Associates Zimbabwe (Faz), who placed menacing agents outside polling stations on election day. These grave concerns were echoed by all other major observer missions, including the African Union (AU), European Union (EU), the Commonwealth, and the Carter Centre. They also condemned the arrest of around 40 observers from local non-governmental organisations on election night in a blatant attempt by the government to cover its tracks; the equipment used by these observers to conduct an independent Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) was seized in order to prevent its publication. On election day itself, what should have been 12 hours of voting turned into a marathon process spanning two days and nights. Dozens of polling stations, largely concentrated in opposition strongholds of Harare and Bulawayo, remained shut late into the night as they waited for ballot papers to arrive. Zec’s handling of the situation, according to Sadc, cast “doubts about the credibility of this electoral process”. As a blatant ploy of voter suppression, it was incredibly successful: national voter turnout fell to a meagre 69%, down from 85% in the 2018 elections. The opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) urban heartlands were the hardest hit, with turnout in Harare and Bulawayo falling by 19% and 25% respectively. Despite these exhaustive efforts, the electoral commission still struggled to secure a conclusive victory for Mnangagwa. Announcing the results late on Saturday night, Zec claimed the president had won 52.6% of the vote, while CCC candidate Nelson Chamisa had just 44%. These results have been highly contested, and Zec maintains its refusal to publish the results at a polling station level. But even if these figures are accurate, they provide a pitiful return for such lengths of coercion, intimidation, and voter suppression. They also depict Mnangagwa, known as “the Crocodile” for his ruthless reputation, as demonstrably less popular than his parliamentary party — a bad look for any autocrat looking to keep his job.  No choice but reform  Commentators in both Africa and the West predicted with glum certainty that these elections would be conducted, and concluded, in much the same way as five years ago. But 2023 has not been a complete rerun of 2018. For the first time ever, Sadc has declared an election within its bloc invalid. This is a major development for Zimbabwe and southern Africa as a whole. That is not to say the next five years will not be a brutal struggle for millions of Zimbabweans, toiling under a regime that consistently and violently disregards their basic human rights. Even since the election, opposition activists have reportedly been detained and tortured. On Monday, human rights lawyers Doug Coltart and Tapiwa Muchineripi were arrested while trying to assist two such victims and charged with obstructing the course of justice. However, the reaction of Zimbabwe’s friends and neighbours offers hope. Mnangagwa can no longer pretend it’s business as usual while his fellow presidents give him the brush off. Meanwhile, international bodies like the Commonwealth and the African Development Bank (AfDB) will feel galvanised in their condemnation. AfDB has previously indicated that any hope of renegotiating Zimbabwe’s debts is contingent on democratic reform. Likewise, Commonwealth heavyweights like the United Kingdom and Australia will feel less pressure to admit Zimbabwe while their concerns are echoed by African nations. It also reflects a broader shift towards democracy in southern Africa that has already been underway for several years. In 2019, Malawi’s Constitutional Court nullified the country’s fraudulent elections after widespread and credible reports of vote tampering. In Zambia, former president Edgar Lungu’s abortive attempt to hold onto power following the 2021 elections was de-escalated with the help of former president Rupiah Banda and the leader of the AU’s observation mission, Ernest Karoma, former president of Sierra Leone.  Outright sham elections are now increasingly rare in southern Africa and even less rarely tolerated. If Mnangagwa has any hope of re-engaging with his neighbour states — let alone rejoining the Commonwealth or negotiating Zimbabwe’s debt burden — fair elections will have to come first. By ensuring the region’s outright condemnation, Hichilema and Mumba have fanned the flames of democratic reform in Zimbabwe so high that even the Crocodile himself will struggle to take the heat. — Daily Maverick. *About the writers: Jonathan Moakes, George Chichester and Emily Osborne work for the SABI Strategy Group, a communications and campaigning firm based in London and Johannesburg. Sadc’s election report leaves Mnangagwa desperately out in the cold with only one option — reform President Emmerson Mnangagwa The refusal of most Southern African Development Community (Sadc) heads of state to support Mnangagwa’s inauguration — and the absence of all three presidents in the Sadc Troika — follows the unprecedented condemnation of the elections by the body’s observer mission.

Reframing Issues Page 37 MALAIKA MAHLATSI LATE on a Saturday night, I was sitting in a hotel room in Guangzhou, China, streaming the announcement of the results of the presidential race in Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans went to the polls on the 23rd of August in a harmonised election that many believed would mark a turning point in the country’s politics. Towards elections, there was an expectation that the 2008 moment would be repeated – that the opposition Citizens' Coalition for Change (CCC) presidential candidate, Nelson Chamisa, would defeat the incumbent president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, of Zanu PF. Back in 2008, the president of the MDC-T, Morgan Tsvangirai, achieved an incredible feat when be obtained more votes than the late Robert Mugabe. The results, which would be announced after more than a month, sent shockwaves across the Southern African Democratic Community (Sadc) region. Tsvangirai obtained 47.87% of the vote against Mugabe’s 43.24%, with Simba Makoni of Mavambo/ Kusile/Dawn getting 8.31%. Owing to none of the parties managing to attain a majority, an elections re-run was scheduled. It was marred by state-sponsored violence unlike anything Zimbabwe had seen before. Tsvangirai, whose supporters were being subjected to unimaginable violence by the security apparatus of the State, ultimately withdrew from the re-run, resulting in Mugabe winning the second round uncontested. The disputed presidential run-off and its results was not endorsed by any of the Election Observer Missions, affirming the view of the MDC-T that it had been nothing more than a violent sham. One of the most significant outcomes of the 2008 elections was that Zanu PF lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since 1980. The MDC-T under Tsvangirai and MDC under Arthur Mutambara obtained the majority of seats, with the MDC-T having 100 seats and MDC having 10, against Zanu PF’s 99. One other seat was won by an independent candidate. This outcome resulted in negotiations for power sharing that would culminate into the Government of National Unity (GNU), with Zanu PF’s Mugabe becoming the President, MDC-T's Tsvangirai becoming the Prime Minister, and MDC-T’s Thokozani Kupe and MDC’s Mutambara the Deputy Prime Ministers. The process leading up to the GNU was characterised by contentious negotiations to create a framework for a power-sharing executive government between all the parties. From the first round of the negotiations right until the final deal was accepted in September 2008, there had been disagreements on how the executive and government would be constituted. Negotiations on how Cabinet would be constituted took up much of the discussions and ultimately, the MDC and MDC-T would have 16 ministers while the Zanu PF would have 15. The GNU lasted five years, a time where there was relative stability in Zimbabwe, with the economy marginally stabilising due to its dollarisation. However, in a Zimbabwe still under economic sanctions, isolated from the global market, dollarisation impacted on the country’s competitiveness. The cost of producing goods in such an economy was exponentially high compared to regional counterparts. Additionally, there was disequilibrium on its import-export balance sheet as Zimbabwe was importing more goods than it was able to export, impacting on the circulation of the US dollar. However, this is a discussion for another day. On 27 August, Justice Priscilla Chigumba, the chairperson of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec), announced that the Zanu PF’s Mnangagwa won 52.6% of the vote against CCC’s Chamisa’s 44%. The news was met with uproar, particularly as the Sadc Election Observer Mission and the European Union Election Observer Mission had both released observer reports in which the credibility of the elections was questioned. The pandemonium was especially pronounced within the diaspora community, a significant proportion of which support a change of government in Zimbabwe. And while the uproar is understandable, it will do nothing to change the situation in Zimbabwe. But more than this, it does nothing to provide the honest reflection that Zimbabweans need to engage about the perilous state of their main opposition party, CCC, and their own marriage to messiah politics. Zimbabweans are afflicted with messiah politics — the belief that their liberation is going to be brought by someone somewhere. It was the case with Tsvangirai, who was elevated to the status of a deity. The same thing repeated itself with pastor Evan Mawarire, a man whose video about the significance of the Zimbabwean flag was enough to catapult him to the level of a national hero who was going to part the Dead Sea and liberate Zimbabwe. Itai Dzamara was also subjected to the same fate – elevated to a messiah who would liberate Zimbabwe. He was left to be a target by the security apparatus because millions of Zimbabweans — who should have been with him at Africa Unity Square - stood on the sidelines and let him protest alone. Even Mnangagwa, the most hated man today, was celebrated as a hero following the coup that removed Mugabe, with many believing and openly stating that Zimbabwe would be better under his rule. They had elevated an individual to a liberator — completely ignoring the fact that he had always been an instrumental part of the murderous State as far back as the 1980s. Mnangagwa, who was the State Security minister and the chairperson of the Joint Operations Command, had oversight over both the Central Intelligence Organisation and the Fifth Brigade during the horrific Gukurahundi genocide where tens of thousands of Ndebele people were slaughtered. He continued to be instrumental under Mugabe’s murderous regime. And yet, this was the man whom Zimbabweans clapped for during the coup. This pattern of messiah politics continues with Chamisa – a man who is now seen as the great liberator of Zimbabwe and who, as a result, cannot be criticised even when he perpetuates dangerous cult politics that, ironically, contributed to the state of disaster that Zimbabwe finds itself in. Beyond messiah politics, Zimbabweans also need to reflect truthfully on why the State has maintained its hold on power. Part of it is its monopoly of violence, but an even greater factor is the failure by the opposition to organise and build a strong movement at grassroots level. It is also the many lost opportunities along the way — specifically, the lost opportunity to resolve the question of the diaspora vote. Following the GNU, the MDC-T and now CCC speak eloquently about the unconstitutionality of the lack of a diaspora vote, but there was an opportunity during the GNU, where the MDC factions had a majority in Parliament, to prioritise this struggle. And yet, MDC never tabled a motion or brought a bill before the Parliament (or Cabinet, where they were fully represented) regarding diaspora voting. Even during the drafting stages of the 2013 constitution, the deadlock was largely on issues around executive powers, not on the diaspora vote. It was on executive powers and cabinet composition that negotiations deadlocked twice – not on the issue of the vote. The number of Zimbabweans living in the diaspora is estimated at 5-7 million people. This is equal to the number of people who voted in the recent harmonised election. The MDC-T, at the height of its legitimacy, did not fight hard enough for the diaspora vote. But only when MDC-T was out of government did it recognise the importance of the issue; this is reflective of an opposition with misplaced priorities. Sadly, this singular miscalculation on the part of the MDC-T is going to haunt Zimbabwe for a very long time to come. It helped to consolidate Zanu PF power and it will be decades before the opposition gets another opportunity to effect changes to the constitution. The people of Zimbabwe need to be able to hold the opposition accountable if they are to ever build an effective movement that will unseat Zanu PF. They need to build a movement as a collective — one which is not formed in the image of an individual. They must internalise the words of Argentina-born Cuban revolutionary, Ernesto “Che” Guevara who so profoundly posited: “Liberators do not exist – the people liberate themselves”. — Eyewitness News. *About the writer: Malaika Mahlatsi is a geographer and researcher at the Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation in South Africa. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. Supporters's of the main opposition party Citizens' Coalition for Change. Zimbabwe’s crisis of ineffective opposition and messiah politics NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023

Page 38 Reframing Issues Book Excerpt from: In Search of the Elusive Zimbabwean Dream, Volume III (Ideas & Solutions) Author: Professor Arthur G.O. Mutambara ON Monday morning of 17 January 2013, we have our final meeting on the national governing charter at the State House in Harare. At this plenary, we finally agree on Zimbabwe’s New Constitution. As explained earlier, we have the GNU Principals, the GPA Negotiators, the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and the three COPAC Co-Chairpersons in attendance. It is a robust and no-holdsbarred discussion. However, yes, we have achieved agreement. Zimbabwe's three main political parties, ZANU-PF and the two MDC parties, have found each other. We have been at odds for months, arguing over various provisions and texts of the new charter. A draft of the New Constitution was released in July 2012 by our parliamentary committee — COPAC — but consensus had since proven elusive. Now we have arrived. “We are glad to say that we have now come to the conclusion of the exercise, and all parties are generally agreed. The finalisation of the draft is now being made,” President Robert Mugabe says to the media after our indoor meeting. He continues: “We have at last come to the end of this marathon exercise.” The drafting of our country’s prospective New Constitution has been a work in progress since February 2009, when we consummated the power-sharing GNU following the violent and fraudulent elections of 2008, whose outcomes we viciously challenged. The draft charter, whose completion, many doubted, is more than two years behind schedule. Its drafting is delayed by partisan disagreements over numerous issues, including the extent of presidential powers, term limits and the matter of running mates. Tsvangirai describes the breakthrough as particularly important:   “We have reached a defining moment for the country … I am sure our people’s patience has been tested severely. This concludes a long journey we have travelled trying to reach this national process.” In my remarks, I am brief, philosophical, but emphatic: “I appeal to all of us, ordinary citizens and leaders, across the political divide to reflect on, and embrace, the three key enablers that allowed us to find each other leading to this agreement on the New Constitution, namely (1) political will, (2) shared national interest, and (3) compromise. Where there is political will rooted in servant leadership, common ground can always be established. With a shared national interest among compatriots, an understanding and meeting of the minds are always possible. Compromise is not a dirty word. As citizens, when we have competing interests and ambitions, we must accommodate each other by compromising our extreme positions in pursuit of the national interest. Agreement on the new charter is ample evidence and a dramatic manifestation of the fact that, as Zimbabweans, there is more that unites us than that which divides us. Going forward, let us understand and internalise the drivers of the accommodation process that produced this document – our own Magna Carta. Let us use the lessons learnt – the importance of political will, shared national interest and compromise – in the resolution of any future challenges that may confront this nation.” Those are my few words as Zimbabweans of all political persuasions and affiliations bask in the glory of our collective and national achievement on that sunny Thursday morning of 17 January 2013. When the media inquire about the sticking points in developing the new draft constitution, Mugabe emphasises the need to focus ahead and not dwell on prior areas of contention. He says: “Let us not look at what the difficulties were. Those are now part of our history. We want them forgotten.” He is right. We need to move on. This very day — 17 January 2013 — on which we agree on a new national charter, is the same day we lose Vice President John Nkomo. His demise occurs after a long illness, and it takes place in South Africa, where he had gone for cancer treatment. John Nkomo, 78, was Vice President of Zimbabwe alongside Joice Mujuru. He had assumed the role two years following the death of Vice President Joseph Msika. “We have lost our Vice President John Landa Nkomo. He was suffering for a long time with cancer. Suddenly, we heard his situation had become worse ... deteriorated from yesterday,” Mugabe announces at the end of our press conference on the New Constitution. After our agreement as political leaders on 17 January 2013, the next step is the final stage in the constitution-making process — the Fifth Phase — Formal Adoption of the New Constitution. This involves a general vote on the charter by the citizenry, the document’s passage in both Houses of the Parliament of Zimbabwe, and its signing into law by the country’s President. It is important to note that this Fifth Phase is less contentious. The (outreach) consultative processes, all-stakeholder meetings, brutal negotiations and hard Adoption of 2013 national constitution of Zimbabwe NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023

Reframing Issues Page 39 compromises are over. As presented earlier in the book, we have successfully navigated through the preceding four phases of the constitution-making process: (1) Preparatory, (2) Consultation, (3) Drafting, and (4) All stakeholder endorsement. The Fourth Phase is completed by the agreement of 17 January 2013, discussed above. As we embark on the Fifth Phase, there is a minor disagreement among us about the timing of the referendum. We from the MDC parties would prefer a delay to allow time to implement political and electoral reforms before the next polls. We know that soon after the adoption of the new charter, ZANU-PF will push for elections without the necessary reforms to enable a free, fair and credible contest. After much disputation and wrangling, Robert Mugabe unilaterally sets the dates for the National Referendum on the New Constitution as 16 and 17 March 2013. He insists that, as President of Zimbabwe, it is his constitutional right to do so. We relent and let it slide. It is instructive to note that ZANU-PF also takes the referendum as an opportunity to mobilise their people for the upcoming general elections. While they campaign for a “Yes Vote” in favour of the New Constitution, they are also psychologically and logistically preparing the citizenry to vote for them in the next 2013 polls. This National Referendum on the new charter is in keeping with the constitution-making process outlined in Article VI of the GPA. During this exercise, the people of Zimbabwe vote on whether they accept or reject the draft charter. It has been a long journey in pursuit of a new national charter, where the referendum is shifted from September 2011 to 30 June 2012, and then further postponed to an unknown date. Nevertheless, we have finally arrived. The referendum is on. There is a large turnout — 3 326 082 people cast their votes. Of these participants, 94.49 per cent (3 079 966) support the charter, while 5.51 per cent (179 489) vote against it. The 1.71 per cent balance (56 627) constitutes invalid or blank entries. An overwhelming majority thus approves the new national law. The people have endorsed a constitution curbing presidential powers after 33 years of Robert Mugabe's rule. This puts the nation closer to harmonised national elections, but not that fast. Major electoral and political reforms must still be implemented to level the playing field. Of the massive turnout during the referendum, most voters are in the rural areas that traditionally support Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party. This signals clear and present peril to the opposition. The ZANU-PF strategy of using the vote on the constitution as a political mobilisation opportunity is bearing fruit. However, we are naively too busy with government chores to comprehend the implications fully. Time the magician will tell. The New Constitution sets a maximum of two five-year terms for the presidency. Presidential decrees will now require majority backing in the Cabinet while declaring emergency rule and dissolving Parliament will need the sanctioning by two-thirds of lawmakers. Indeed, we have delivered a blow to the imperial presidency in Zimbabwe. These changes will take effect after the next election later this year (2013). Slowly but surely, we are achieving our GNU agenda. Drafting the New Constitution and the referendum to adopt it were conditions of our 2008 power-sharing deal — the GPA. Thursday, 9 May 2013, is a glorious day in the Parliament of Zimbabwe. The Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 20) Bill — which brings into effect our New Constitution — is unanimously endorsed amid pomp and ceremony across the political divide. It has taken three days of amicable and non-contentious deliberations. Honourable Lovemore Moyo, Speaker of the House of Assembly, announces that 156 MPs (way above the 144 required for a quorum) have voted in favour of the proposed new governance charter. What a proud moment for our country and collective political leadership! Members of Parliament from the ZANU-PF and MDC parties break into song and dance, trying to outdo each other in a celebratory atmosphere, throwing up their party symbols in jest. Well, well, well. It is a victory for all political parties — a triumph for Zimbabwe. After the House of Assembly, the Bill will be tabled in the Senate next Tuesday, where it is expected to pass without much drama or contestation. On Tuesday, 14 May 2013, everything flows smoothly in the Senate. Deliberations on the charter go meticulously according to plan. Zimbabwe’s Upper House of Parliament approves the draft constitution with minor amendments. In a lively chamber, Senate President Edna Madzongwe applauds the Senators for coming out in their numbers to support the Bill. All the Senators — among them traditional leaders — who debate on the bill hail Zimbabwe for producing its own homegrown charter after years of being governed under the Lancaster House Constitution adopted in London in December 1979. It is a festive and celebratory affair. However, Minster Matinenga reminds the exuberant Senators that the New Constitution, once in effect, can only make a difference in the lives of Zimbabwean citizens if it is respected. He is on point. Beyond the document, there is a need for both constitutionality and constitutionalism in the country. After the Senate, the next day, the Constitution Bill goes back to the Lower House so that the Lawmakers can address the few issues raised by the Senate. On Wednesday, 15 May 2013, the Lower House passes the Bill after it approves three amendments made by the Senate the previous day. Speaker of Parliament, Lovemore Moyo, announces that no Lawmaker has opposed the passage of the Bill. In fact, all the 148 MPs present vote in affirmation. The parliamentary process is over! Consequently, the Constitution Bill will now be sent to President Robert Mugabe, who is expected to sign it into law, clearing the path for general elections. ZANU-PF insists the polls should be held by 29 June 2013 when the GPA Parliament’s fiveyear term draws to an end, but we in the MDC parties are emphasising the need to implement all reforms before elections. “It is not a question of when the elections can take place, but rather the calibre and quality of the elections. The outcome of the polls must not be disputed.” I keep articulating this and restating it, ad nauseam, like a broken polyvinyl record, to anyone who bothers to listen. Anyway, we are not there yet. With the referendum and parliamentary processes out of the way, on a relatively cool Wednesday mid-morning of 22 May 2013, the stage is set for the momentous signing occasion at State House in Harare. There is a huge tent filled to the rafters with senior members of the three branches of the State — the Judiciary, Legislature and Executive — together with civil society leaders and key executive members of our political parties. We are all seated and expectant when an ebullient and buoyant President Mugabe confidently strides onto the front platform reserved for the top leadership, like a colossus. I am sitting next to Vice President Joice Mujuru — who is on my left — and on my right are Prof. Welshman Ncube and Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku. Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is seated to the right of Joice Mujuru. A majestic, distinctive, imposing empty chair is between Morgan and Joice. It is reserved for President Mugabe. As Robert Mugabe joins us, we all stand up as protocol demands. A visibly excited Mugabe gives his deputy, Joice Mujuru, a clumsy kiss on the cheek and an extended embrace. Given what everyone suspects happened to General Solomon Mujuru — in that death in a suspicious fire — it all looks awkward and distasteful. Mugabe then proceeds to shake hands with the rest of us at the top table. After that, we all retake our seats. Following a few remarks from the Director of Ceremonies, Ambassador Munyaradzi Kajese, the deed is done. An exuberant and beaming Robert Mugabe — flanked by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, Vice President Joice Mujuru and me — signs multiple copies of the new charter to wild cheers and applause from the massive crowd. There we are! We now have a new supreme law of the land in Zimbabwe. What a historic moment. What a glorious day! The official title of our new governance charter is “Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 20) Act, 2013”. It is also loosely referred to as the “2013 National Constitution”. After the signature exercise, the Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs Minister – Eric Matinenga – and the three GNU Principals are given an opportunity to make a few remarks. Mugabe is in his element as he speaks after signing the New Constitution into law: “ZANU-PF versus MDC. You choose; you vote for the person of your choice. Let us not fight it. Let us do it in a peaceful way. That is what this document of today is telling us. Let us be peaceful … We are all of us still there, but tomorrow, we will be of yesterday. Gone. What shall we have left our country? Disunity? Peace?” Eric Matinenga, the Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, says: “This day is a historic day. It is about the future. I can assure you that this document before us is a good one.” In his remarks, Tsvangirai says the charter had set Zimbabwe “on a new path” after nearly a decade of economic decline and political violence that started in 2000. In my speech, I emphasise four imperatives: (1) the historic and historical significance of the event; (2) the importance of learning from the constitution-making exercise; (3) why constitutionalism and constitutionality are more critical than the mere charter itself; and (4) the need to link the New Constitution to the development of national economic solutions. I start as follows: “Zimbabwe’s New Constitution has been signed into law. This is a momentous day for our nation as we crafted this document on our own as Zimbabweans, without the supervision or interference of foreigners. It is a dramatic and emphatic improvement on the Lancaster House Constitution. Well done, Zimbabwe. We are now masters of our own destiny as this new legal dispensation defines and directs the trajectory of our nation into posterity. As we celebrate this outstanding achievement, let us reflect and pick up some lessons as a polity and as a nation …” My full remarks on this heroic day are presented elsewhere in this book. Yes, Zimbabwe has now formally adopted a New Constitution. It is a new era, indeed. There is a media frenzy over this historic event. While the new charter removes the post of Prime Minister and limits presidential terms to two 10-year stints, the constitution does not apply retroactively. This clears the way for 89-year-old President Mugabe to extend his rule by 10 more years potentially. He could finish his last term at the ripe age of 99 years! How absurd! How despicable! It is preposterous, indeed. Mugabe was adamant about including the “non-retroactive” provision in our tedious negotiations. It had to be adopted. Otherwise, there would have been no New Constitution. Nonetheless, we have made progress. Robert Mugabe has signed Zimbabwe’s New Constitution into law, thus clearing the path to crucial and game-changing elections sometime this year – 2013. The five-year coalition Parliament, formed under the GPA, expires on 29 June 2013, and harmonised parliamentary and presidential polls should follow within 90 days from that date. The actual election date is yet to be pronounced. Mugabe and his ZANU-PF want the polls (without any political or electoral reforms) as soon as possible. We insist on implementing reforms first to ensure free, fair and credible elections. There is no guessing who wins this battle of wits between the crooked but strategic ZANU-PF mandarins and the well-meaning but naïve MDC operatives. This is an excerpt from the book: In Search of the Elusive Zimbabwean Dream, Volume III (Ideas & Solutions), By Professor Arthur G.O. Mutambara. *About the author: Prof Arthur G.O. Mutambara is the director and full professor of the Institute for the Future of Knowledge (IFK) at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023

Introduction  IT is almost two weeks since the end of the 23 and 24 August general elections in Zimbabwe. A lot of fluid and fast-flowing developments have happened, since the announcement of President Emmerson Mnangagwa as the winner of  the presidential elections with 52.6% of the vote against his closest rival Nelson Chamisa who garnered 44%. The tragic fallout from these highly disputed and controversial  presidential results has already provided interesting and controversial developments within the Zimbabwean body politic.Therefore, these developments have provided an eye opportunity to analyse Zimbabwe's trajectory in the next five years. Consequently, in this opinion piece I will attempt to unpack whether Zimbabwe will trudge into another five years of  chaotic, polarising and bleak existence under the stewardship of President Mnangagwa and Zanu PF, or that factors and developments within and outside Zanu PF and the strategies and actions of the Citizens' for Coalition Change and the leader Nelson Chamisa will disrupt and change the course of events in Zimbabwe. The past is not dead On 4 September 2023, Mnangagwa was sworn in as the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe. This officially marked the beginning of his second and final term as head of state. The occasion to mark the official start of Mnangagwa`s second term was without its fair share of controversy. The inauguration ceremony, which was conducted at the National Sports Stadium, will go into the record books as one of the lowest-key moments in the history of presidential inaugurations in Zimbabwe. Perhaps the only exception is Robert Mugabe`s infamous swearing-in ceremony conducted at State house in June 2008 after his bloodsoaked one-man presidential election runoff. However, during his first term President Mnangagwa never lost an opportunity to attend the inauguration ceremonies of his fellow counterparts in Africa. Accordingly, he attended the inauguration ceremonies of President William Ruto of Kenya, President Yoweri Museveni of Kenya, President Cyril Ramaphosa of  South Africa, President João Lourenço of Angola, the late president of Tanzania John Magufulu, President Lazarus Chakwera of Malawi, President Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia and many others. However, the inauguration ceremony of President Mnangagwa was characterised by a huge diplomatic snub by African leaders, especially those in the Southern African Development Community (Sadc). Among the 16 presidents from the Sadc region, it was only three who graced the inauguration ceremony in Harare on 4 September 2023, namely President Ramaphosa of South Africa, President Nyusi of Mozambique and President Félix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). President Tshisekedi also won a controversial and disputed election in the DRC in 2019. The election was also marred by vote rigging and several irregularities. However, the tragic indictment and contempt  of President Mnangagwa's "victory" was shown by the particular  absence of the leaders of Sadc troika on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, especially its chairperson President Hichilema of Zambia. This was coupled with the fact that, the current chairperson of Sadc, President Lourenço of Angola, did not also bother to attend the inauguration ceremony. This diplomatic snub by the key Sadc leaders clearly demonstrates that they endorsed the findings and the report of Sadc Election Observer Mission (SEOM) to Zimbabwe, which was led by Dr Nevers Mumba of Zambia. This was a clear diplomatic and political signal to Harare that Sadc will not endorse the fraudulent and illegitimate elections in Zimbabwe. This was a significant breakaway from the usual ostrichism and quiet diplomacy associated with Sadc of endorsing and sanitising sham elections, to a more muscular diplomacy of diplomatic oversight, truth telling and forthright communication against a rogue member state. This historical diplomatic departure from the past by Sadc was a huge political and diplomatic development within the region. Hence, there has been a huge chorus of approval towards Sadc by ordinary Zimbabweans and ordinary people within the region. However, the inauguration speech of President Mnangagwa gives us a window of opportunity to look at the likely trajectory of his next five years. The speech was neither groundbreaking nor revolutionary, it was punctuated with regurgitating the same issues and the same unfulfilled promises he advocated over the previous five years. Thus, the speech lacked magnanimity and a bridge-building approach towards the main opposition CCC and its leader Nelson Chamisa. Mnangagwa failed to extend an olive branch to the main opposition that could have acted as  a foundational brick towards possible post-election dialogue initiatives. This was quite different from the magnanimous, nation building and reconciliation speech delivered by the then late prime minister Robert Mugabe on 4 April 1980, which is famous for its “turning our swords into ploughshares” remark. Disappointedly, in his inauguration speech President Mnangagwa failed to mention how he was going to address the major economic challenges affecting Zimbabwe. He did not lay out how he was going to tackle hyperinflation,  currently officially standing at 77%, which has ravaged the socio-economic wellbeing of already economically emaciated and financially malnourished Zimbabweans. Neither did he mention how he was going to tackle the elephant in the room: that is, the African Development Bank (AFDB)-mediated debt resolution dialogue.  Zimbabwe's consolidated debt currently stands at US$18 billion. He probably knew that this had been made untenable by failing to hold a free and fair elections. Crucially, the conduct and the actions of Zanu PF and President Emmerson Mnangagwa in the past  two weeks raises serious questions and fears about how the next five years will be. Particularly with regards to respect of human rights, civil liberties and freedom of expression. On 31 August 2023, President Mnangagwa issued a chilling warning Page 40 Reframing Issues Whither Zim: Chaos or revolution? The past is not dead. /File photo Taona B. Denhere NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023

Reframing Issues Page 41 to anyone who had any intentions or plans to protest against his leadership. He declared that “our prisons are not full". This clearly shows that the exercise of the constitutionally enshrined right to protest in the next five years will be severely curtailed. Moreover, the newly elected CCC councillor for Glen Norah, Womberaiishe Nhende, was abducted and tortured on 2 September 2023 by suspected state agencies. This is coupled with the fact that the newly appointed and combative spokesperson of CCC, Promise Mkwananzi, had to flee into exile after police had issued an arrest warrant on trumped-up charges against him. It is another systematic attempt by the Zanu PF government to decapitate  and ultimately weaken the CCC by targeting some of its key personnel. In the similar fashion, the authorities  have detained and imprisoned Job Sikhala for more than 450 days without fair trial. Needless to say, the next five years under President Mnangagwa are going to be volatile and intriguing. This is due to the fact that, constitutionally, Mnangagwa is serving his final term. Therefore, he cannot legally and constitutionally extend his term beyond 2028. Consequently, this will make his final term a lame duck presidency. This then raises the spectre of vicious intra-party and fratricidal factional infighting within Zanu PF as various factions will strategically position themselves to succeed President Mnangagwa. However, historically Zanu PF has always struggled to amicably and peacefully settle its succession politics. Consequently, succession has always been settled extrajudicially, extralegally and violently. This dates back to the toppling of the late Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole as the leader of Zanu by Robert Mugabe during the liberation struggle. There is also the infamous 14 November military coup d'etat that eventually deposed Mugabe. Therefore, in the next five years Zimbabwe will be entering another polarising and dangerous period, which will have a far-reaching impact on the socio-economic and political future of the country. Consequently, nobody is certain whether President Emmerson Mnangagwa will respect the constitutional term provisions or not. This is because African presidents have the propensity of violating term limits and extending them beyond their provisions. Moreover, President Mnangagwa has not allayed any fears that he will not attempt to violate the constitution and stay beyond 2028. After all, one of his mantras is “2030 ndenge ndichipo”, that is "2030  I will still be in power". Accordingly, the extralegal and extra-constitutional extension of the term of Chief Justice Luke Malaba in  2021 could be interpreted as a dress rehearsal for a similar constitutional transgression by the Zanu PF government for a possible third-term presidential stint in 2028. The CCC conundrum Suffice it to say that President Mnangagwa's inauguration process went ahead after the main opposition CCC decided not to challenge the election results with the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe. Some of the reasons that led to the CCC not petitioning the courts over the electoral results were that the judiciary over the last five years had  been systematically biased against the CCC. The judiciary in Zimbabwe has been thoroughly corrupted and captured by Zanu PF, to the extent that the majority of cases involving the opposition, pro-democratic forces and civil society activists have often been ruled against them. The CCC has laid out a litany of court cases in which the judges been blatantly ruled against them. Notably, there is the 2018 presidential election petition, systematic pattern of denial of bail of CCC supporters, bogus electoral judgments such as cases involving Saviour Kasukuwere, double candidates case, final voters' roll case and many others. Therefore, in light of these blatant cases of travesty of justice, the CCC felt that the chance of getting a fair hearing and fair outcome at the hands of the courts was negligible. Crucially, by not filing an electoral petition with the Constitutional Court, the CCC managed to deny Mnangagwa the legal legitimacy he craves for. Therefore, it seems the CCC is going to use the diplomatic route to challenge the illegitimacy of  President Mnangagwa and Zanu PF. Accordingly, one of the key demands of the CCC is for the total nullification and invalidation of the 23 August general elections and instead have fresh elections supervised by the African Union and Sadc. The CCC has been emboldened to take this decision by the unprecedented diplomatic goodwill the people of Zimbabwe have received from the Sadc Election Observer Mission, the joint African Union-Comesa observer missions and other international observer missions, who have condemned the elections as fraudulent and illegitimate. Therefore, the CCC will need to launch an aggressive diplomatic campaign within Sadc and the African continent and strongly argue out their case for fresh elections. However, they should devise strategies and plans on how they will circumvent potential bureaucratic red tape and the filibustering with the Sadc and AU corridors of powers. This is due to the fact that Zanu PF will also likely going on a frontal diplomatic campaign within Sadc and the AU and argue that the elections were free and fair, notwithstanding the adverse reports of the election observer missions. Therefore, there is going to be a battle to win the hearts and minds of the Sadc and AU member states between the CCC and Zanu PF. As we already observed, Zanu PF has three allies in Sadc already in this electoral dispute. That is, South Africa, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose leaders attended the inauguration ceremony in Harare on 4 September. However, for the CCC to succeed in having free, fair and fresh elections in Zimbabwe, it will probably need more than the diplomatic route. The CCC will need a multipronged approach towards the fight for fresh elections. This entails the CCC fighting on all fronts: domestic, regional and continental. For instance, the CCC  has to start using its newly elected parliamentarians to use their positions in Parliament and table motions demanding fresh elections.  The CCC MPs need to embrace the combative and disruptive participatory parliamentary democracy of the Economic Freedom Fighters of South Africa who turn the South African Parliament into a theatre of radical contestation of ideas and democratic accountability. Crucially, if the CCC is really serious about its quest for fresh elections, at some point it has to organise peaceful and disciplined demonstrations in Zimbabwe, demanding fresh elections. That is, the CCC has to show the regional and international community the untenability of the illegitimate elections and the subsequent constitutional crisis engulfing Zimbabwe. These omissions and commissions on part of the CCC will provide Sadc and the AU with much-needed political and diplomatic fuel to buttress the case for fresh elections in Zimbabwe. Conclusion A week is a long time in politics and therefore five years will be a lifetime in politics. Accordingly, the next five years are going to be unpredictable, challenging and volatile for all political actors in Zimbabwe and the ordinary citizens. President Mnangagwa's Zanu PF government will be confronted by a plethora of domestic and international challenges. Chief among them is the legitimacy deficit, the comatose economy and the increasingly restless and desperate citizens. However, the CCC and its leader Chamisa, despite having unprecedented diplomatic goodwill from the regional and international community, will still face formidable obstacles and challenges in arguing and winning their case for free, fair and fresh elections. *About the writer: Taona Blessing Denhere is a human rights and international development lawyer. /File photo NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023

Page 42 Reframing Issues World News NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 BOITUMELO MPAKANYANE Comprehensive electoral reform is just one pillar of the necessary political reforms we require — it must be followed by a public service reform programme that seeks to deliver a depoliticised public service, free of patronage networks and toxic trade union dynamics. THE continent’s oldest liberation party. It is a self-glorifying phrase used by the African National Congress (ANC) to highlight to South Africans, the continent and the world that of all the liberation parties in the post-colonial world, it still remains at the political helm of the country it once sought to liberate — a living rebuke to the Fanonian notion that liberation parties have no place in governance. However, there is another liberation party that has maintained its grip on power since it facilitated its country’s transition from colonial rule to whatever system of governance you choose to describe the country in question — that is, of course, Zanu PF. The commonalities between the ANC and Zanu PF are various in number and striking in significance. Both were entrusted with the hopes and dreams of an entire nation, both secured massive political freedoms for their oppressed majorities. However, not long after stepping into the role of governance, both seemed to stop liberating. Long periods of incumbency on both sides of the Limpopo River have fuelled political arrogance, greed and the elevation of political elites above citizens and their needs and interests. As such, life in Zimbabwe is one of extreme instability and lack, with 42% of Zimbabweans living in extreme poverty in 2019 (pre-Covid). A similar picture exists in South Africa with half of its citizens living in poverty and with South African youth yet to taste the fruits of freedom, and this represents in the truest sense a fundamental failure on the part of our parents’ liberators to also serve as ours. The realities of our closed-list proportional representation are such that political parties are entrusted with the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the electorate with very little ongoing participation from it. Further to this, we almost entirely cede our civic decision-making capacities to political organisations with inaccessible leaders to make decisions on our behalf. These, we hope, will be made in at least loose accordance with our interests while no mechanism for ongoing accountability exists, particularly in the “party first” political climate in which we remain hostages. But there are positive parallels to be drawn between the two countries. Zimbabweans have in greater numbers than ever before decided to rise up against the tyranny of Zanu-PF, voting in an (albeit critically compromised) election to attempt to deliver change and a reimagined Zimbabwe. South Africans are similarly rescinding the mandate once entrusted to the political establishment, evident in sweeping calls for electoral reforms that would reduce the distance between the citizens and their representatives. South Africans are now faced with difficult decisions about how to shape and define this next season of South Africa’s political life. For many years now, and particularly among our youth, this has meant a total divestment from partisan politics and a focus on participating in politics outside of the conventional partisan frame. Youthful energies have been finding expression in a politics of resistance, or organising in civil society — the segment of South African society that notably steps in where government fails and lends an ear to those to whom the establishment refuses to listen. However, with sizeable investments flowing into voter engagement, education and registration drives, the realisation that who gets what, when they get it and how they get it is ultimately and fundamentally informed by politics is beginning to dawn on the South African electorate, and the scale of the impact of a broken system captured by federalised corruption is truly starting to show. So what comes next and what will it take to course correct? South Africans need to demand more for themselves, we need to invest in a real political alternative that possesses the skill, integrity and will to create a safe, prosperous, equal, and united South Africa in a single generation. We need to ensure that our political aspirations find expression in the actions of our public representatives. The unconstitutional Electoral Amendment Act Highlighting another harmful consistency between our ruling party and Zanu PF, South Africans more than ever before have to be vocal and active in support of institutions and movements pursuing meaningful political reforms. The Electoral Amendment Act was passed by Parliament on 23 February 2023, following the  New Nation judgment which deemed the old act unconstitutional. In an effort by represented parties and the ruling party in particular to achieve minimal compliance with the  New Nation judgment, while also systematically curtailing the political participation of independent candidates and vibrant new alternatives that threaten the political establishment, the current act was signed into law by the president. As a consequence of this act of bad faith, the Constitutional Court may be placed in the role of legislature to cure defective provisions of the act. The act is currently before the court, which will consider its constitutionality on various grounds such as the general proportionality of the outcome of the new three-ballot system; the onerous barriers to entry for independent candidates; and with the admission of new amicus curiae in the form of the Rivonia Circle, the differentiated treatment between represented and unrepresented political parties. The judgment will critically define the nature of elections as a component of South Africa’s political life into the future. But while electoral reform is heralded as the silver bullet that promises to rescue South Africa from the grips of a greedy, incompetent political elite, this doesn’t go nearly far enough to change our outcomes. South Africa is in need of a groundup political overhaul to ensure a new South African politics. Such an overhaul can only be delivered by South Africans; by voting for and investing in a political alternative with an extensive political reform programme that extends far beyond the investment in single-issue silver bullets. Real, broad political reform Comprehensive electoral reform is just one pillar of the necessary political reforms we require — it must be followed by an expansive government reform programme to rid the executive of incompetent political deployees and the general abuse of executive discretion. The reforms must ensure transparent governance is baked into the framework of public governance, a departure from the culture of secrecy that has allowed corruption to become endemic. The third and fourth pillars of any meaningful political reform programme must be public service and judicial reform respectively, a public service reform programme which seeks to deliver a depoliticised public service, free of patronage networks and toxic trade union dynamics. It is these that impede the work of sincere public professionals and lead to the kinds of service delivery failures that claim the lives of young children in our public schools, the underserved in our hospitals and women when failed by a broken public safety and judicial system. South African voters must seek out parties who demonstrate a commitment to these reforms. None of these reforms will be possible without first ensuring that the public representatives we empower to lead us are fit for purpose, provide new alternatives to the recycled figures who have defined and damaged South African politics, and submit themselves to public accountability and scrutiny at all levels. These necessary interventions cannot be systematised until we create a culture of selecting the best among us to lead, irrespective of their political affiliations. — Daily Maverick. *About the writer: Boitumelo Mpakanyane is head of internal democracy at Rise Mzansi, a civil society organisation. The Zimbabwean election — A potentially dire warning to South Africans of things to come

NewsHawks Page 43 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 DAVID B. MOORE FEW were surprised as, near midnight on 26 August, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announced incumbent President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s re-election in yet another of Zimbabwe’s tendentious contests. His inauguration on 4 September sanctified his return to power. Fewer still were shocked when South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa, attended Mnangagwa’s inauguration regardless of the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) election observation team’s  critical report and the absence of most of his peers  from the Sadc and the African Union. Mnangagwa gained 52.6% of the 4 561 221 votes cast. Nelson Chamisa, head of the main opposition Citizens' Coalition for Change (CCC), garnered 1 967 343 or 44%. Zanu PF’s 136 of Parliament’s 210 seats is just under the two-thirds needed to change the constitution. I have observed and written about all  Zimbabwe’s elections  since 2000, when Zanu PF first faced strong opposition from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) under  Morgan Tsvangirai. My  book  Mugabe’s Legacy: Coups, Conspiracies, and the Conceits of Power in Zimbabwe covers nearly 50 years of Zanu PF’s propensity to gain power by any means — even genocide. This election displayed many of these patterns. However, each election has registered variations as Zimbabwe hovers between open democracy and fully shut authoritarianism. Zanu PF’s score, with contemporary variants, ranges from pre- and post-election intimidation to electoral “management” and playing off its regional neighbours. The CCC and civil society choirs also shift their tone in response: from outright rejection and court challenges to pleas for reruns and transitional governments. Long-term, immediate and post-election intimidation The post-2017 coup period foreshadowed many of Zanu PF’s contemporary strategies. First was the soldiers killing at least six demonstrators (and bystanders) just after the  mid-2018 elections. In January 2019, a “stayaway” kicked in just after Mnangagwa announced a 150% increase in fuel prices. Planned chaos ensued as riots, looting and protests were encouraged by a multitude of unidentified forces. More than 17 people were killed. As many women were raped. Nearly 1 800 other bodily violations ensued amid mass trials and convictions. Since then, Zanu PF has reminded many people not to engage in opposition. By mid-2020 the targets moved towards  women in the MDC. The case of CCC activist  Moreblessing Ali’s murder in May 2022 indicates a new variant on “silent murder”. Ali’s brother, Washington, a long-time MDC-CCC activist in the UK, gained the help of CCC MP and lawyer Job Sikhala to publicise his sister’s murder. Sikhala has been imprisoned since his campaign on behalf of Ali. I examine this horrific assassination in the next issue of the journal Transformation. It illustrates how the move towards land-baron-led gangsterism in Harare connects with Zanu PF hierarchies of power. The August 2023 pre-election murder by stoning of  CCC activist Tinashe Chitsunge indicated this sort of politics running wild. After the election, demonstrators and soldiers did not encounter each other en masse: no shootings. However, residents visiting pubs in “high density suburbs” encountered rough treatment from unidentified people with guns and brand-new uniforms. Later, Glen Norah councillor Womberaishe Nhende and fellow activist Sonele Mukuhlani were left naked after their abduction, whipping and injection with poison on 3 September. Their lawyers, Douglas Coltart and Tapiwa Muchineripi, were arrested when visiting them in hospital. The well-funded Forever Associates of Zimbabwe (Faz) earned its keep by intimidating folks during the pre-election phases. Faz is a Zanu PF mix of semi-intellectuals and aspirant entrepreneurs. They are Mnangagwa enthusiasts needing connections to the Zanu PF state. They ran illegal  “exit polls” at the stations. Faz’s members, purportedly  paid by the Central Intelligence Organisation, kept their promise to “dominate and saturate the environment while denying the same to opponents” – including those within Zanu PF during its primary  nomination contests. Judicial and electoral ‘management’ The clouds over liberal horizons darkened further in the legal spheres of repression. The “Patriotic Act”, passed ahead of the elections, makes too much opposition-talk with foreigners treasonous. The still unsigned amendment to the Private Voluntary Organisations Bill promises to end all hints of civil society support for opposition parties. The  gerrymandered delimitation exercise remapped mostly urban constituencies so they stretch to peri-urban and nearly rural areas. Zanu-PF hoped the majority would thus support it, as in the countryside. This tactic linked well to election day’s improprieties. Up to 75 urban polling stations experienced unexpected and unprecedented shortages of ballot papers. This caused long and uncertain waits. Some stations extended voting to the next day. In Glen View, a Harare suburb, hundreds of poor voters walked kilometres to vote by 7am. They waited – peacefully, fortunately – eight hours for the ballot papers. At other stations, night-time voting added to voters’ roll problems due to the hasty delimitation exercise that left many in the wrong constituency. They were advised to find the correct one. Where voting continued to 24 August, how many returned? The V11 forms Widespread concerns about the  V11 forms  came on top of worries about the thousands of people giving up on the lost ballot papers. These sheets are posted on the outside walls of the 12 000 polling stations. They show all the votes. They are meant to enable anyone to keep score at the first polling stage. Then the official counting moves on to ward, constituency, and provincial counting centres, and finally to the national “command centre” where the presidential vote is tallied and announced. Suspicion runs rampant about what happens at the links in this chain. Election NGOs and other organisations were collecting and tabulating images of the V11 forms for digital release. Too late: Zanu-PF conducted on-the-night raids as they were at work. As the Institute for Security Studies’ southern Africa programme head Piers Pigou noted in conversation with me, if the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission was worried about the election’s legitimacy, the V11 forms would have been on its website immediately. But they are not there – or anywhere. Regional responses, CCC plans and democracy’s future As noted, the election observers’ reports do not paint a pretty picture of the election. The Citizens Coalition for Change hoped to exploit the split between the Sadc observers and their  Sadc masters. But the Sadc’s council of elders seems unable to help the CCC’s plans to arrange a rerun guided by  an international committee. South Africa’s enthusiasm for its neighbour gives little solace to northern democrats. Given Zimbabwe’s courts’ past biases on the legality of elections, the CCC did not bother taking the judicial route. Mnangagwa’s inauguration has put all those plans to rest. No reruns. No new versions of government of “national unity”, modelled after the disputed, violence-marred 2008 contest, or transitional councils. At most, the election observers’ reports portend further critique. The Zimbabwean democratic forces have to think again, and harder, about ways to a better future. In sum, if Zimbabwe’s 2023 election foreshadows future battles between authoritarianism and liberal democracy, the former has gained the upper hand. Zanu PF’S iron fist remains, with a velvet coating, albeit fraying. As a woman overheard discussing this election observed, the only hope may be Zanu PF destroying itself as it almost did in 2017. — The Conversation. *About the writer: Professor David B. Moore is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies and a fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, University of Johannesburg. Zimbabwe elections 2023: A textbook case of how Zanu PF has clung to power for 43 years File photo Reframing Issues

Page 44 NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 Obituary CHRIS MALLEY THE dumping of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and other  greenhouse gases  into the atmosphere yearly is already having a devastating impact around the world. This includes widespread flooding and droughts, raging wildfires, heatwaves and record temperatures. Africa  is particularly hard hit, with temperatures and sea levels rising faster across the continent than the global average. In Zimbabwe, unreliable rainfalls and extended droughts are affecting  hydro electricity generation, resulting in rolling blackouts. Food production is also affected. A  large fraction of Zimbabwe’s population is at risk of severe hunger. In 2015, almost all countries signed the  Paris Agreement, a commitment to tackle climate change. The intention was to limit global temperature increase to below 2°C, or ideally 1.5°C. To achieve this, countries submitted individual plans, called Nationally Determined Contributions, to reduce their contribution to climate change. They agreed to update them every five years. The continent of Africa  contributes 2%-3%  of the global greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Zimbabwe  contributes less than 0.1%. Despite this small contribution, all African countries submitted their plans to reduce emissions. In 2015, Zimbabwe committed to  reducing its emissions  by 33% by 2030. In 2021, it updated the target to a 40% reduction by 2030 across all sectors. This significant improvement increases the fraction of emissions that Zimbabwe will reduce from all emitting sectors. The energy sector is responsible for about 34% of Zimbabwe’s total emissions. Including other sectors, like agriculture and forestry (58% of total emissions), waste (5%) and industrial processes (3%) will substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions if Zimbabwe achieves its target. How Zimbabwe can meet its emission reduction target The updated target was informed by an assessment of how greenhouse gas emission could be reduced. The assessment was done by a team of researchers from Zimbabwe and the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York (including myself). It provided a clear plan to achieve the targets through the implementation of  28 specific policies and measures. We assessed the benefits of these actions to mitigate climate change. We also reviewed other implications of taking each action locally in Zimbabwe. Our research  showed that by implementing its climate change plan, Zimbabwe would not only meet its international obligations, but achieve a broad set of health, social and development benefits. The study assessed and quantified how the 28 actions to achieve Zimbabwe’s climate change plan would contribute to specific  Sustainable Development Goals. The top three benefits identified were improved public health, enhanced biodiversity, and greater access to reliable energy supplies. Each of these benefits is a priority within  Zimbabwe’s National Development Strategy 1 2021-2025. Good health is a constitutional right in Zimbabwe. Air pollution and unsafe sanitation are among the top 10 risk factors for health in Zimbabwe, and can be reduced by carrying out Zimbabwe’s climate change plan. Reducing biodiversity losses will not only address an environmental challenge in Zimbabwe’s National Development Strategy, but preserve and enhance the tourism industry. After years of unreliable energy supplies due to drought, and reliance on biomass fuels for cooking for much of the population, providing  regular and reliable energy supplies  is critical for alleviating poverty and economic growth. Counting the benefits Public health:  Currently, almost 6 000 infants and over 8 000 adults die yearly from air pollution in Zimbabwe. Almost 1 600 people die from road traffic accidents, and 337 people  die  from unsafe sanitation. The study estimates that actions reducing greenhouse gases would also reduce air pollutant emissions by between 35% and 45% by 2030. This would lead to lower air pollution exposure, especially indoors where women and girls are most exposed while cooking. Cleaner energy for cooking, improved transport systems and improved waste management all reduce air pollution. Increasing the use of public transport, or walking and cycling, rather than using cars can reduce road accidents and greenhouse gas emissions from transport. Expanding access to sanitation systems would reduce the number of people dying from diarrhoeal diseases, and reduce methane emissions if the correct systems were installed. Improved biodiversity:  Zimbabwe’s climate change actions also include changes to how land is used. It aims to  reduce burned areas of forest by 500,000 hectares and add 100 000 hectares of natural forest every year to 2025. The plan would also manage 250 000 more hectares of cropland using sustainable “conservation agriculture” techniques. These actions were estimated to achieve multiple benefits, including improving soil health and protecting biodiversity, with possible reduction in the losses of both animals and plants. Access to reliable energy: Achieving Zimbabwe’s climate change plan is built on extending electricity access to 95% of urban households and 75% of rural households. Actions in the plan include the expansion of renewable electricity generation, energy efficiency improvements, and reducing losses from electricity transmission and distribution. These steps can help ensure that access to energy is quick and effective, thereby reducing blackouts and reliance on fossil fuels. In addition, the study shows that Zimbabwe could increase recycling rates while reducing emissions from waste. The country can equally reduce the time people – predominantly women and girls – spend cooking by switching to cleaner cooking fuels. More than a sacrifice Tackling climate change is often viewed as a necessary sacrifice, rather than an opportunity to improve lives. Climate change targets are often focused solely on how they contribute to global, long-term aspirations, rather than the benefits that countries can achieve in the short term. Our study shows the social, health and development benefits that Zimbabwe could enjoy by tackling its (small) contribution to climate change. This is not unique to Zimbabwe, nor a full list of all possible  benefits  from climate change action. What is notable about the Zimbabwe study is that these local benefits were evaluated and quantified, alongside greenhouse gas emission reductions. They provide a positive case of what countries can gain from taking climate action. Integrating quantitative assessment of local benefits when countries develop their climate change plans, following Zimbabwe’s example, could help boost national climate plans. This would in turn help the world meet necessary emission reduction timelines and avoid the worst impacts. — The Conversation. *About the writer: Chris Malley is a research fellow at Stockholm Environment Institute York Centre, University of York, Britain. Zimbabwe’s climate action plan: A win for the environment, health and energy A farmer in Harare about to start tilling his land in preparation for the rainy season, November 8, 2021. Columbus Mavhunga / VOA

NewsHawks Page 45 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 Reframing Issues MMUSI MAIMANE TWO events occurred on 23 August: one showed how effective South Africa can be on the global stage; the second showed how careless South Africa can be on the regional stage. I am talking here of the Brics Summit and the Zimbabwean elections. At the Brics Summit, South Africa displayed our excellence in hospitality and our capacity to hold our own in conversations about geopolitics and the global financial system. Ignoring for a moment that the minister of finance was implicated in a corruption scandal of more than R100 million and the President himself could not account for millions stolen from his sofas, we looked good and strong when talking about derisking global trade, de-dollarisation and other topics. Many global leaders praised President Cyril Ramaphosa for his performances at the Brics Summit and many acknowledged that South Africa remains a critical gateway to Africa and a critical market itself. We took a win at Brics, contradictions notwithstanding. We immediately moved to erasing our victory with local losses. The Zimbabwean elections  have been declared by numerous observer missions to have been mired in issues that effectively rendered them not free and fair. Some of the most significant issues were the banning of opposition party rallies on spurious grounds, the conduct of a state intelligence affiliate organisation known as Forever Associates Zimbabwe (Faz) which collected voter identity information and cajoled people into voting for Zanu PF,and finally the delay in delivering ballots to major cities such as Bulawayo, Harare and Chitungwiza. For the first time the Sadc observer mission declared these elections to not be free and fair. Bewildering everyone, the secretary-general of the ANC decided to take a different position to the Sadc. Fikile Mbalula posted messages of support for Zanu PF, not long after the President of South Africa posted his own message of congratulations to Emmerson Mnangagwa, the disputed president-elect of Zimbabwe. These messages contradicted and undermined the Sadc bloc which we are meant to be leading in terms of size and influence. I say this was bewildering because the ANC government has told the world that they care about resolving conflicts and they care about human rights. The South African diplomatic mission to Russia and Ukraine was premised on the desire for South Africa to mediate and provide peaceful solutions to Russia and Ukraine. South Africa is very vocal against Morocco and advocates for the people of the Sahrawi Arab Republic. In fact Morocco did not attend the Brics Summit because of this dispute. The South African Department of International Relations has recalled the South African ambassador from Israel, ostensibly because they were concerned about human rights abuses. However, while they have taken these stands and have been very vocal about them, they have displayed no concern whatsoever about human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, Uganda and many other African nations. Can South Africa truly claim to be a leader with gravitas and impact at the Brics level and at the G20 while simultaneously providing no leadership on issues within the Sadc and the African Union? One would be forgiven for thinking that our courage and convictions are stronger the further the problems are from our borders. Fleeing to South Africa It is common knowledge that the number of people not born in South Africa has increased from under one million people in the 1996 census and the 2001 census to more than 2.2 million people in the 2011 census and to more than four million in the mid-year national population estimates. It is also reported by Statistics South Africa that 40% of immigrants living in South Africa are from Zimbabwe. These numbers increased dramatically from 2001 due to the democratic collapse that the world witnessed. The elections in 2002 were contested and the elections following that in 2008 were contested. As a result of these democratic failures many Zimbabweans fled the country and came specifically to South Africa. The result of the mass migration of Zimbabweans has been an increased cost of service delivery for South Africa, as we have had to serve two nations. We have seen that South African hospitals have a large population of Zimbabwean patients, we have seen social unrest in communities as a result of Afrophobic attacks on Zimbabweans, and we have this week witnessed one of the greatest tragedies on our soil as 76 people lost their lives in an overcrowded building fire in Johannesburg. The buildings in the inner city of Johannesburg have a disproportionate number of foreigners living in them. People are dying in South Africa as a result of the collapse of human rights and democracy in Zimbabwe. Furthermore, it is bewildering that our government would actively support the regime responsible for causing the collapse of democracy in Zimbabwe. Considering further that the minister of home affairs took part in litigation attempting to cancel the  Zimbabwean Exemption Permit on the grounds that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe, the actions of the President and Fikile Mbalula seem to be far removed from their moral stands when it comes to Morocco or Russia. We must challenge the ANC and its leaders on their response to the Zimbabwean elections and specifically call for them to echo the sentiments of South Africans and to advocate for outcomes in line with our values and in line with our interests. As a democratic nation with robust constitutional standards, it is not in line with our values for illiberal regimes to proliferate in the Sadc region. In addition, it is not in our interests for there to be democratic collapse in Zimbabwe, first because we pay the price of that collapse, but second because it could precipitate worsening security outcomes for the Sadc. The coup in Gabon happened ostensibly because of the loss of trust in the election there, and the Gabonese opposition raised many of the same issues that were raised in Zimbabwe. By siding with election-rigging governments we are actively increasing the likelihood that there will be coups in the region. Finally, we must think carefully about our democracy. There are already high levels of frustration in some circles with high levels of poverty and inequality. Some people place the blame on our democracy itself. If we as a nation seem to be lackadaisical about democracy, will we have legitimacy to prevent those who seek to opt out of democracy in South Africa? It is our role as South Africa to uphold democratic ideals in the Sadc and to speak up against human rights abuses in the Sadc. Fikile Mbalula and President Cyril Ramaphosa were wrong. — Daily Maverick. *About the writer: Mmusi Maimane is leader of Build One SA (Bosa), a South African opposition party, and former head of the Democratic Alliance. ANC must stop supporting dictatorship in Zimbabwe Can South Africa truly claim to be a leader with gravitas and impact at the Brics level and at the G20 while simultaneously providing no leadership on issues within the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) and the African Union? South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa (left) with ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula

Reframing Issues MARK OLDEN IN June, I visited a man named Patson Muzuwa in a care home in a former mining village near Durham. The centre had spacious bedrooms, friendly staff and an activity room decorated with a lifesize King Charles cut-out and union flags. At 56, Muzuwa was the youngest resident; most were elderly and had dementia. The local council had moved him here temporarily a few weeks before, after his medical needs made it impossible for him to stay with his son. Muzuwa has lived at least 10 lives. As a young man in Zimbabwe, he became a member of the main opposition party to President Robert Mugabe’s autocratic rule and found himself hounded by security forces. After he resettled in the UK, he became a key part of the Zimbabwean community, organising resistance to Mugabe from abroad. Meanwhile, his personal life has veered between extraordinary highs and lows, and with his charm he has left a mark on almost everyone he has met. His story is a poignant reminder of the pain of political exile from your home country, and the challenges that face asylum seekers in the UK, even after they have been granted leave to stay. I first met Muzuwa in November 2000. I had grown up in Zimbabwe, my mother’s birthplace, in the 1970s and early 80s, but moved to the UK as a teenager. I used to return to Zimbabwe fairly regularly to visit family and do reporting, but this was my first trip back in a long time. At a protest against government corruption, I  watched a few dozen people wend their way through Harare city centre, with its ornate old Cape Dutch-style buildings and modern high-rises. As the police looked on, people waved banners and toyi-toyied – a rhythmic, foot-stomping protest dance – while singing defiant songs about government corruption. A slim, hollow-cheeked man moved nimbly through the crowd, galvanising people with his singing. He saw me taking photos and came over to introduce himself. His name was Patson, he said, and he handed me a T-shirt with the words “Combatting corruption collectively in the new millennium”, printed on the back. “We are the people, the ones making the economy,” he told me. “But we’re living in shacks, while the politicians are living lavishly. They’re like ticks sucking our blood.” He said he could show me the “shameful manner” in which ordinary Zimbabweans lived. We arranged to meet again so he could take me to his home in Rugare, a township on the edge of the city. The townships surrounding  the capital had been seen as cradles of revolt during the white-minority rule of Ian Smith, who was prime minister of Rhodesia, as the country was then called, from 1964 until 1979. By the turn of the millennium, the Mugabe regime, which had been in power since 1980, had come to view them in the same way. In the recent election, in June 2000, Rugare, like the country’s other populous poor urban areas, had rejected the ruling Zanu-PF party in favour of the newly formed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Mugabe called the MDC “western-sponsored stooges”, and his party directed a wave of violence against it during the election, in which 32 opposition supporters were killed. The day after we met, Muzuwa gave me a guided tour of Rugare. He instructed a group of youths to perform an impromptu gymnastics routine in my honour, and introduced me to a talented artist who proudly displayed his soapstone sculptures. We met Muzuwa’s fellow MDC members, who told me of beatings they had received from political opponents. Muzuwa also introduced me to one of Rugare’s few supporters of Zanu-PF, Mugabe’s political party. “We share the same troubles. We found common ground, even though we’ve got different thinking,” Muzuwa said. Residents spoke of their growing desperation. Many had resorted to bartering to survive: vegetables, old clothes, maputi (popcorn). Muzuwa, who was married with three children, said he had no work and was “living hand to mouth”. In the sparsely furnished home where he shared the running water in his kitchen with four other families, he introduced me to his wife, two sons and baby daughter, and told me of his political awakening. It had begun in the mid-1990s when he was working in a steel foundry. The government, under pressure from  the IMF, embarked on a series of spending cuts. “People were retrenched [made redundant] without any notice or benefits. Food prices went up. Life for workers was tough,” he told me. Meanwhile, the government was embroiled in a series of corruption scandals. Muzuwa became an active union member. “I went into the streets, started telling people we have contributed to this money [the state’s finances] but the coffers are empty,” he said. At the end of my visit, Muzuwa accompanied  me on a rickety old commuter bus back to the centre of Harare, and walked with me towards where I was staying. We exchanged addresses and I gave him my number. I didn’t know when, or if, I would see him again. In October 2001, back home in London, I received a letter from Muzuwa. It had been almost a year since we’d met, and though we had spoken a few times since, we were little more than acquaintances. His life was in danger, he wrote. He was on bail after being arrested on spurious charges and the police were still pursuing him. He was having to move between safe houses. Could I help him get to England? His timing was fortunate. Ordinarily, I would have written back saying I was sorry that I couldn’t help, but I’d just received a redundancy payment after losing my job at a magazine. So through a contact in Zimbabwe, I arranged an air ticket for Muzuwa to the UK. A few weeks later, on 18 November 2001, he left Zimbabwe for the first time in his life and landed at Gatwick, where he was interviewed by an immigration officer and claimed asylum. Along with many of the Zimbabweans on his flight, Muzuwa was put on a bus to  Oakington  immigration detention centre, a former army camp surrounded by farmland in Cambridgeshire. The Labour government had opened it the previous year to help fast-track asylum claims, in an attempt to cut a growing backlog. “I felt like a king being served by white men,” Muzuwa later told me of his time at Oakington. He had three meals a day, but he was tormented by the thought of his children back home who had little to eat. He was given a £5 phone card and called his wife in Harare. His wife didn’t have a phone in her house, so he called the neighbours. By the time she got to the phone, the card had run out. After two days, he was interviewed by a Home Office official. Muzuwa explained that he was a member of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the MDC, and gave a detailed description of the torture the Zimbabwean police had inflicted on him. He had been shackled to a table leg, he told them, and made to lie face down on the floor, while he was beaten with a rubber baton. On another occasion, he had been handcuffed, hit with a wooden plank, and whipped with a thick electrical cable. The official did not find Muzuwa’s story credible, and his asylum claim was rejected. “They thought I was an impostor,” Muzuwa said. He appealed against the decision, and after seven days in detention he was released, with instructions to attend a Home Office reporting centre near London Bridge once a week until his asylum appeal could be heard. Early on 24 November, six days after Muzuwa had landed in the UK, I got a phone call from an official at Oakington, who wanted to check if Muzuwa could stay with me, as he had ‘A huge heart’: The insatiable activism of Zimbabwean exile Patson Muzuwa After agitating against Robert Mugabe in Harare in the late '90s, Patson Muzuwa fled to the UK. He continued the fight from afar, and became a tireless torchbearer for those he had to leave behind Patson Muzuwa in his care home in County Durham, where he has lived since June. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian LONG READ Page 46 NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023

Reframing Issues given them my address as a residence. I agreed, and the next day, Muzuwa arrived in London carrying a transparent plastic bag holding a few clothes given to him by the Red Cross. I went to meet him at Ladbroke Grove tube station, where he greeted me like an old friend. He spent the next few weeks sleeping on my sofa. Muzuwa was one of many people fleeing Zimbabwe at that time. In 1980, Robert Mugabe had won the country’s first democratic election, and ended 90 years of oppressive white-minority rule. But 20 years on, Mugabe’s government had become increasingly despotic. The economy was in crisis,  inflation was rampant  and the living standards of ordinary Zimbabweans had  plummeted. In 2002, more Zimbabweans than any other nationality apart from Iraqis claimed asylum in the UK, and by 2006, the Home Office estimated that 200 000 Zimbabweans were living in Britain. Many of them worked in the care sector. Back home they were jokingly referred to as “bum technicians” or British Bottom Cleaners – BBC for short – while London became known as Harare North. Muzuwa spent his first days in Harare North trying to be as helpful as possible. He cleaned the flat. He mastered what seemed like the entire London bus network in a single day with a travel card. He stayed with me for about a month. Whenever he detected the slightest sign that I might be tiring of his presence, he would make himself as unobtrusive as possible, sitting almost motionless for hours. In March 2002, Muzuwa had his asylum  appeal hearing. The evidence was clear that, far from being an “impostor”, Muzuwa was in the vanguard of the rebellion against Robert Mugabe, and therefore faced significant danger of imprisonment and torture if he were to return. The immigration judge granted him indefinite leave to remain in the UK. “There was this joy of knowing that I’m in a land where I’m safe, where the [Zimbabwean] government cannot reach me. But being away from my immediate family and the people I grew up with was a horrible thing,” Muzuwa told me. Although he had left Zimbabwe, he was still bound to the struggle. Whatever happened to him, his greatest fear was that Zimbabwe would not be liberated. In London, at a pub opposite the Royal Courts of Justice, where exiled Zimbabweans and their supporters gathered, he met Sarah Harland, a white Zimbabwean who had helped set up a group that assisted asylum seekers, the  Zimbabwe Association. Muzuwa had been sleeping on my couch for a month, and Harland said he could live with her and her family for a while. When we spoke recently, Harland recalled the astonishing impact Muzuwa had within the exiled Zimbabwean community. She recalls an energetic man with “extraordinary spirit” and “a huge heart”, who was also very complex, and at times inscrutable. “He was an insatiable activist,” she said. Muzuwa took his message to whoever would hear it, speaking at Oxford University, the Law Society, the European parliament. After a few months living with Harland, Muzuwa, along with other Zimbabwean refugees and asylum seekers, moved into a red-brick terrace house in Bermondsey, south-east London, which the local church let to them at subsidised rent. Whenever I visited, plates of chicken and sadza – Zimbabwe’s staple dish, made from maize meal – were offered. The stream of Zimbabweans passing through the property was a microcosm of the country itself. “It was homely and accommodated everybody: Ndebele, Shona, black or white. We were all Zimbabweans who could share food and music,” Muzuwa recently recalled. He learned Ndebele, one of Zimbabwe’s main languages, from one of his housemates. The hallway was always lined with plastic bags filled with secondhand clothes, which Muzuwa and a friend gathered through donations, and sent to the needy in Harare’s townships. Muzuwa and his friends in Bermondsey, including a white Zimbabwean architect called Alan Wilkinson, started a weekly vigil to protest against human rights violations in Zimbabwe, which still takes place outside the country’s embassy on the Strand every Saturday. Wilkinson, who was openly gay at a time when homosexuality was still taboo among many Zimbabweans, died in 2016. “He was everything to us,” Muzuwa recalled. “We were brought up not to accept gays and lesbians, but [I] learned to accept them. He was a brother.” During his first few years in the UK, Muzuwa did various jobs, from cat-sitter to newspaper deliverer. He performed in plays about life in exile at the Soho theatre and Rada, and he even went undercover for the comedian and activist Mark Thomas, posing as the head of Zimbabwe’s security in order to expose the illegal sale of stun batons used in torture. By that point in the early 00s, the question of torture had become especially heated, as evidence mounted that it was unsafe to forcibly return Zimbabweans to their homeland when their asylum claims had failed. The  most visible figure  in the struggle against removal was an MDC activist named Crispen Kulinji. Despite overwhelming evidence that he had been tortured in Zimbabwe, he was held in detention centres for five months after his asylum claim was rejected. Along with 40 other Zimbabweans, Kulinji went on hunger strike to protest against the UK policy on removals. Muzuwa was constantly in touch with Kulinji while he was locked up, orchestrating his campaign from the outside. “Patson was my torchbearer,” Kulinji later remembered. Muzuwa and Harland stood bail for Kulinji when he was released, and in 2005 the Daily Mail interviewed him and Muzuwa, running their testimony in a frontpage story headlined, “For Pity’s Sake Let Them Stay”. The Mail, which had railed for decades against a supposedly soft-touch immigration system, now decried as “wretched pretence” the Home Office’s contention that Zimbabwean opposition members faced no danger if they were sent home. Muzuwa was trying to change Zimbabwe from afar, but he was also racked with guilt over leaving the country. “I’d built a family outside my own blood family. I had a political family. So that guilty conscience was in me. My friends were still on the run or in hiding,” he told me. “I felt I was a coward by not going back.” Muzuwa has long been haunted by the fate of his friend Tonderai Ndira. The pair first met in the late 90s, when they played music together at trade union meetings at Harare’s Anglican cathedral. Later, they were among the handful of young men who acted as an advance party for the MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, assessing the danger in rural areas before he visited. Around the time Muzuwa fled to the UK, Ndira slipped over the border to South Africa – but unlike Muzuwa, he returned to Zimbabwe a few months later. I first met him there in 2004. He was laid back, yet had the air of someone for whom everyday things no longer mattered; activism was his life. On another occasion when I was talking with Ndira, he looked at me, and with quiet intensity told me to tell Patson to come home and rejoin the struggle. “It’s a direct flight,” he said. (It was a message that I didn’t feel it was my place to pass on.) In 2007, Ndira was accused, along with 12 other MDC members, of petrol-bombing government installations. After more than five months on remand, Ndira was released when a judge found that the police had relied on witnesses who didn’t exist. By then, activism was taking its toll on Ndira: he caught tuberculosis while being held in police cells, and his body was scarred from torture. In March 2008, after Mugabe lost a first-round presidential election to Tsvangirai, the state  intensified its violence against the opposition. On the morning of 14 May, a gang of armed men in masks barged into Ndira’s home and pulled him from his bed. He was still in his underwear as he was dragged outside, pushed into a truck and driven off, while his children watched from the doorstep. A week later, in a Harare mortuary with failing electricity, Cosmas Ndira recognised his brother’s decomposing remains by a distinctive wrist bangle. The postmortem said Ndira had been asphyxiated. Ndira’s death drew international attention. His friends  called him  “Zimbabwe’s Steve Biko”, after South Africa’s martyred anti-apartheid  hero. He was one of  an estimated 200  opposition members and supporters killed in 2008, and one of six personal friends Muzuwa has lost to political violence in Zimbabwe since 2000. “People have already forgotten about Tonderai, forgotten about his family,” Muzuwa told me earlier this year. “Those who murdered him are still free. I will never live to see the people who killed my friends [brought to] justice. The only justice we can get is when someone’s spirit comes back and haunts them.” After living in Bermondsey, Muzuwa moved to Leicester in 2004. He felt at home in the city where waves of immigrants from around the globe had settled for generations, with Zimbabweans among the newest arrivals. “You’d get in a taxi and the driver would speak Shona. You think: ‘Hey, am I in Zimbabwe?’” Muzuwa said. His jobs in Leicester were as varied as in London: he worked in a pie factory, in the catering department at Leicester Royal Infirmary, and as a carer for disabled people. He also appeared in the Channel 4 reality series The Secret Millionaire, in which he introduced an anonymous wealthy property owner to destitute Zimbabwean asylum seekers. He chaired a drop-in centre for asylum seekers and refugees, Zimbabwe Action in Solidarity. The group received the Lord-Lieutenant’s  Diamond Jubilee award  in 2012. In the same year it sang for the Queen at Leicester Cathedral. (Muzuwa, however, arrived late and was turned away by security. “They told me everyone was seated and it was too late to go in. What an embarrassment,” he later recalled.) We remained in touch after he left London. I visited and stayed with him and a close mutual Zimbabwean friend in Leicester a few times, met him occasionally when he travelled to London on Saturdays to protest outside the Zimbabwe embassy, and drew on his knowledge when I worked on immigration or Zimbabwe-related stories. Muzuwa seemed to be settled and thriving – especially after his wife and two sons joined him in Leicester in October 2005 under the Home Office’s family reunion scheme. But other close family members he would never see again. Muzuwa’s daughter Rufaro, his  brother Thomas and mother, Mirika, all died in Zimbabwe during his time in exile. “In our culture it’s the worst taboo not to bury your mum, or just give the last respects,” he told me in June. “Seeing your mother and daughter pass away … it becomes a curse in your life. Things won’t go right until you go and see where your mum is buried. That’s the only way to solve the problem.” He could not go to his own mother when she was dying, but when my mother died in 2009, Muzuwa was there to pay his last respects. She was the granddaughter of  a Scottish pioneer  who had arrived in Rhodesia in 1896, during the first war of liberation against white settler rule, six years after Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company had invaded and colonised the country. As a child, my mother was blind to the racial injustice that Rhodesia was founded on. As an adult, she protested against it. When Mugabe came to power, she was proud to join Zanu-PF, before sadness at her homeland’s descent into tyranny set in. Her funeral in Brighton was ending when Muzuwa and about a half a dozen of his Zimbabwean comrades entered the chapel. They had driven from Leicester to be there. As the vicar fretted, glancing repeatedly at his watch, they unpacked traditional Zimbabwean instruments – ngoma drums and an mbira – before flooding the chapel with  beautiful  Shona and Ndebele songs. In the years that followed, our contact grew more sporadic – just the occasional call or text message, or news via social media. By the time Covid-19 struck, and the UK went into lockdown, Muzuwa’s life was falling apart. After splitting from his first wife, he had remarried and had three more children. But when his second marriage disintegrated, he started drinking, and went from teetotal to an alcoholic seemingly overnight. Crispen Kulinji, whose asylum claim had eventually been accepted, was shocked when he saw him. “Patson is sharp, but this was not my brother, the one that I knew,” he recalled. Muzuwa ended up sleeping in the doorway of Leicester’s old Fenwick department store, drinking himself into oblivion with cut-price booze. “I felt embarrassed, because most of the Zimbabweans in Leicester know me well,” he said later. To avoid them, he moved to Birmingham, where he continued living on the streets until a homeless organisation found him a bedsit. He started going to church and stopped drinking. By 2022, his health was failing. “It was kidney failure, heart failure,” he told me. “They said my lungs had collapsed, there was no oxygen in my blood. For sure, I missed death by a whisker. Even the doctor said that if I had not come to the hospital within four hours, I would have been dead.” After months in hospital, Muzuwa’s oldest son – who was six when I first met him in Rugare, but had now been in Britain for 18 years – took him to live with his family in a small village just outside Darlington, in the north-east. From there, Muzuwa later went to the care home where he is now staying. After almost 22 years in the UK, the village where the care home is situated was the first place Muzuwa had lived where there were apparently no other Zimbabweans. But many of his compatriots travelled from far and wide to see him there. They included his family, as well as Kulinji and other members of his “political family”, such as Shepherd Yuda, a former Harare prison officer who had fled Zimbabwe in 2008 after secretly filming evidence of Zanu-PF’s vote-rigging. Other friends also visited: one who had arrived on the same flight as him from Harare 20 years before and had been detained with him in Oakington, and an old friend from Rugare, who entertained the care home’s residents with Zimbabwean drumming. Muzuwa’s days are largely consumed by his medical regimen. Three times a week an ambulance takes him to hospital, where he has dialysis for four hours. “This is for the rest of my life,” he said. He finds comfort in the Apostolic faith, a Pentecostal church founded in what was Southern Rhodesia in the 1930s, and which had gained popularity in Zimbabwe and among the diaspora in recent years. Every other Sunday, a friend picks him up and takes him to a church in Leeds. He was still following every political twist and turn in Zimbabwe. On 23 August, the country goes to the polls for the first presidential and parliamentary elections in five years. President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s former security chief who overthrew him in a coup in 2017, will defend his presidency against  Nelson Chamisa, leader of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), a new party formed after the MDC became riven by power struggles and division. I asked Muzuwa if he thought the change he longed for might finally come. “There is no hope at all,” he replied. In recent weeks, Zimbabwe’s government has passed a new “patriotic bill”, which could punish those who criticise the government with up to 20 years in jail, while clamping down on the opposition, which observers say is in disarray. Muzuwa told me there is a new generation of activists. The old one is worn out. “When the struggle is endless, people get tired. This is 20 years. I am not the same Patson. Illnesses destroyed us. I can’t ‘toyi-toyi’ in the streets today: jumping and singing and dancing and beating the drums. I can’t do that. And so it destroys the struggle. I’m ageing. We’re ageing,” he said. In all the years since I have known him, whenever I visited Muzuwa he would invariably accompany me on part of my return journey, starting back in 2000 when I met him in Rugare. This time when I left, he said he would catch the bus to Durham with me. But after walking falteringly to the bus stop, he sat and rested briefly before heading slowly back to the care home, too weak to go further. — The Guardian. NewsHawks Page 47 Issue 147, 8 September 2023

Page 48 Africa News NewsHawks Issue 147, 8 September 2023 Gabon coup has been years in the making: What ended Bongo dynasty DOUGLAS YATES THE recent  military intervention that put an end to the Bongo family’s 56-year hold on power in Gabon has been many years in the making. Its roots can be traced back to when deposed president Ali Bongo Ondimba  suffered a stroke in 2018. The political crisis caused by Bongo’s illness and the opaque manner in which he  continued to hold the reins of power through close family members during his convalescence created tensions within the power circles. On one side were critics who  demanded  his resignation and sought to end the Bongo dynasty’s grip on power in the oil-rich Central African country. These critics were mostly responsible for the emergence of Albert Ondo Ossa as a consensus opposition presidential candidate at the 2023 elections. On the other side were loyal members of the ruling  Parti Démocratique Gabonais. The party was founded by former  president Omar Bongo, who ruled the country from 1967 to 2009. In this group were party members who continued to play an institutional charade of cabinet meetings and rubber-stamp legislation that masked the troubling absence and incapacitation of Ali Bongo. The group also includes powerful clan members inside the Bongo dynasty jockeying for position and wealth in the uncertainty surrounding Ali Bongo’s health. As a  political scientist  specialising in African politics and the politics of the oil industry in Africa, I have researched the implications of oil rent dependency and neocolonialism in Gabon. My view is that the corrupt oil-rentier dynastic regime that ruled Gabon for the past half century was brought to an end by a combination of three factors. They are Ali Bongo’s illness; the contagion effect of other recent successful coups in Africa; and the power tussle between General Brice Oligui Nguema (the coup leader, who is said to be Bongo’s distant cousin) and Sylvia Bongo Ondimba, Ali Bongo’s wife. The former first lady was believed to be preparing her son, Noureddine Bongo, to succeed his father. Factors in favour of coup Before the coup d’état there was little hope that Ali Bongo Ondimba would lose his third re-election bid. His party had over  80%  of the seats in the legislature, control of regional and municipal governments, and a hold on the courts and the security apparatus of the state. Ali Bongo was said to have won  64.27%  of votes cast in the election, which the opposition described as a sham. According to the electoral umpire, Bongo’s main challenger, Albert Ondo Ossa, came second with 30.77%. That was before the military struck. One of the factors that encouraged the military intervention in Gabon is the contagion effect of recent successful coups in Africa. A series of coups in Mali (2020), Chad (2021), Guinea (2021), Burkina Faso (2022) and Niger (2022) appear to have demonstrated to Gabon’s military that not only was a successful coup possible, it was acceptable. After the coup, crowds came out in Libreville and danced in the streets. The second factor is a power tussle between the coup leader, Nguema, and Sylvia Bongo. The deposed president’s wife is widely believed to have grown in influence after her husband suffered a stroke in 2018. Nguema was relieved of his duties as head of the president’s security. If it is true that Sylvia was preparing her son to succeed his father, Noureddine would have been the third generation of the Bongo family to rule Gabon. Ali Bongo succeeded his father in 2009. The way forward Prior to the 30 August coup, the only thing that seemed to have united the numerous opposition parties in Gabon (who barely managed to rally around a joint candidate just nine days before the 26 August poll) was the desire to remove Ali Bongo from office. Now that a coup appears to have achieved that, it will be difficult for Albert Ondo Ossa to take office. Given what appears like the  willingness  of France and the United States to accept this palace coup, the only question is whether Nguema will lead a transition to civilian rule, hold elections, refuse to present himself for office, or become the next member of the Bongo clan to rule. — The Conversation. *About the writer: Douglas Yates is professor of political science at the American Graduate School in Paris (AGS). Gabon's former president Omar Bongo (left) and his son, Gabon's current President Ali Bongo (right). © AFP/Studio Graphique FMM

World News JOSEPH SIEGLE THE  apparent assassination  of Yevgeny Prigozhin (pictured) in the crash of his private jet between Moscow and St. Petersburg represents an inflection point in Russian-African relations. Prigozhin, as leader of the notorious Wagner Group, had been the point man for Russia in Africa since Wagner first began operations on the continent in 2017. More than a single entity, the Wagner Group is an amalgamation of shell companies deploying paramilitary forces, disinformation and political interference in Ukraine, Syria and Africa. Its leaders have been  sanctioned by 30 countries for the group’s destabilising activities. Prigozhin was believed to be living on borrowed time after he led a short-lived insurrection – part of a power struggle with the Russian military leadership – in June. While he quickly backed down, the action embarrassed Russian president Vladimir Putin and triggered chatter that Putin’s perceived weakness would embolden other challengers to his authority. Prigozhin advanced Russian influence in Africa by propping up politically isolated and unpopular authoritarian leaders. As a result of Wagner’s support, these leaders were beholden to Russian interests. Wagner’s backing took a variety of irregular forms, like paramilitary forces, disinformation campaigns, election interference, intimidation of political opponents, and arms for resources deals. Prigozhin  referred  to this interlocking set of influence operations as “The Orchestra”, which he conducted. Wagner deployed forces to Libya, the entral African Republic, Mali and Sudan. It has also been interfering in domestic politics and information narratives in some  two dozen African countries. I research  the role of governance in advancing security and development as well as the influence of external actors in Africa, including Russia. Democratic transitions and institutions of democratic accountability are among my interests. The breadth of Russian political interference in Africa points to Russia’s strategic objectives for the continent. It aims to secure a foothold in North Africa and the Red Sea, undermine western influence, normalise authoritarianism and displace the UN-based international system. None of these objectives are about making Africa more prosperous or stable. Rather, the continent is primarily a theatre to advance Russia’s geostrategic interests. Attempting to maintain the lucrative and influential operations of the Wagner Group in Africa after Prigozhin’s death will make it hard for Russia to deny that it uses irregular and illegal actions to extend its influence. Maintaining Wagner without Prigozhin The Wagner model has seen Russian influence expand rapidly in Africa. That is despite Russia  investing very little on the continent. Most of Wagner’s costs have been covered through cash and mineral concessions provided by host regimes. By some accounts  revenues from mining operations  in the Central African Republic and Sudan generate billions. It is no surprise that Russia would want to keep the Wagner enterprise going. Tellingly, on the day of Prigozhin’s plane crash, deputy defence minister  Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was in Libya to reassure warlord Khalifa Haftar of Russia’s ongoing support. Yevkurov later visited the military juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso  to deliver the same message. The question will be whether the Russian military has the capacity. Russia needs soldiers in Ukraine. So, it may not have experienced fighters to spare in Africa. It is also an open question whether Wagner troops will agree to sign contracts with the Russian defence ministry, given the way their leader was dispatched. The Russian government would also need to recreate the multidimensional dealings that made Wagner’s operations effective in shoring up client regimes. For years, Russia has promoted  hybrid warfare – the fusion of conventional and subversive tools. Synchronising this across multiple African contexts will require greater dexterity than the Russian security bureaucracy is likely capable of, however. Finally, Russia has benefited from the plausible deniability that Wagner has provided while doing Putin’s bidding. In every context in which Wagner forces have been deployed, they have been credibly accused of human rights abuses including rape, torture and extrajudicial killings. In Mali, Wagner is linked to more than 320 incidents of human rights abuses and  hundreds of civilian deaths. Wagner has also been accused of driving away local communities where it has secured mining concessions, effectively annexing African territory. By directly taking over the mantle of Wagner operations in Africa, the Russian government can no longer claim ignorance or impotence to do anything about these unlawful and destabilising actions. Russia has largely escaped serious reputational costs for Wagner’s thuggish activities in Africa. But this will change when it owns the repressive tactics Wagner has deployed. Reassessments in Africa What of Wagner’s African clients? Leaders of these regimes have come to power through extraconstitutional means. They restrict opposition voices and media. They are isolated internationally. Simply put, they cannot survive without Moscow’s support. So, we should not expect a change in receptivity from the military juntas in Mali, Sudan, Burkina Faso, the co-opted leadership in the Central African Republic, or the Libyan warlord, Haftar. What will be telling is the reaction from other governments on the continent. Some will continue to see value in flirting with Russia as a way of hedging against international criticism. Russia’s reach in Africa may be exceeding its grasp, however. There is a growing awakening on the continent of how little Russia actually brings to Africa in terms of investment, trade, jobs creation or security. Its deployment of mercenaries, disinformation, political interference and arms for resources deals mean it actually amplifies instability on the continent. The symbolism of this was vividly brought home in the days before the Russia-Africa Summit at the end of July. Russia pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal  that had enabled 33 million tonnes of grain to get from Ukraine to Africa and other parts of the world. The deal had eased supply chain restrictions caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Not only did Russia scuttle the deal: it  bombed the Ukrainian ports  that were exporting the grain, wasting 180 000 tonnes in the process. The contempt Putin showed for African interests by this action was hard to ignore. This disregard, coupled with recognition that Russia offers relatively little to Africa, contributed to only 17 African heads of state attending the St. Petersburg summit. By comparison 43 African heads of state attended the Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi in 2019. The way that Prigozhin was eliminated must also give African leaders pause. Putin speaks often of his desire to create a new international order. Russia’s lawlessness at home and abroad is bringing into sharp focus what his world order would look like. And that’s not a vision many African leaders share. — The Conversation. *About the writer: Joseph Siegle is director of research at the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, University of Maryland, in the United States. Russia in Africa: Prigozhin’s death exposes Putin’s real motives on the continent NewsHawks Page 49 Issue 147, 8 September 2023

JONATHAN MBIRIYAMVEKA FOR the well-heeled in our society, getting the best beauty therapy money can buy means travelling far and wide. Such health and wellness services are not exactly at the doorstep in Zimbabwe. For others of good taste but not deep pockets, beauty spas are just a luxury. They just do not have that kind of money to spoil themselves to look good. This has inspired social icon Luminitsa Jemwa to seize the opportunity to bring that luxury to many homes for Zimbabweans. Her product range, aptly titled Priest Wellness, is where all the magic happens for those who want to have the same skin therapy and treatment in the comfort of their own homes. Added to this, Luminitsa says her products, which have gone through rigorous vetting by some of the world’s best dermatologists, suit every skin tone — black, white or Caucasian. Priest has something for everyone! When it comes to skin health and wellness, at times it is not about the price tag but quality guarantee. “Well, I am happy to say that I use the same skin products and it works well. All the products are certified authentic and quality is guaranteed. It took me years to come up with the products and each one is informed by my travels overseas,” Luminitsa explained. When asked to comment further on the name Priest, she said: “I come from a Catholic family background where the priest is the leader of the church. And without the priest there would be no service, so he is the leader and for me this better explains the brand. It is leading and highly rated.” Located at number 16 Bath Road in Belgravia, the Priest Wellness shop has some of the amazing tech tools in skin health all curated by its founder’s experience and intention. Products range from as little as US$15 for Mon Rose Repair Emulsion to Pristige firming and smoothing Cleansers and Salicylic Acid Acne treatment at US$20 each. Also in store are goat milk and rugosa, also known as eaxfoliating and moisturising foot mask which removed the dead skin cells and brightens the skin tone. In moving with technology, you can also get the face contouring device at US$100 or the Roman cavitation and body contouring device, which is essentially a fat burner as it breaks down fats in the body at deeper cellular level. Other devices are RF light therapy where instead of going long hours under the big light therapy at the spa, you can purchase one to take home and the Roman photon wand, which is known as the crown jewel of spa treatment, is in your hands. It eradicates acne and removes dark spots and blemishes, unclogs skin pores and tightens the pores. According to Luminitsa, all the products have been tried and tested and meet the standards. STYLE TRAVEL BOOKS ARTS MOTORING Porsche just got angrier Being a Fashion Model Life&Style Page 50 Issue 147, 8 September 2023 Beauty enthusiast and fashionista Luminitsa launches luxury wellness store