Archivo etiqueta «Zimbabwe»
By Blessing-Miles Tendi, a researcher and freelance writer on contemporary Zimbabwean politics (THE GUARDIAN, 04/03/10):
Lifting sanctions against President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party “would give Zimbabwe an opportunity to move forward“, Jacob Zuma told reporters this week during his visit to Britain. South Africa’s president is right. The continued EU sanctions are seriously weakening the hand of Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, in his efforts to implement a power-sharing deal in Zimbabwe.
This is because Zanu-PF’s response to the EU sanctions has consisted of an unrelenting propaganda effort to cast Tsvangirai and the… Seguir leyendo
By Blessing-Miles Tendi, a researcher and freelance writer on contemporary Zimbabwean politics (THE GUARDIAN, 27/11/09):
Indications ahead of the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Trinidad are that Zimbabwe will be offered readmission to the Commonwealth in 2011. In return for readmission Zimbabwe will be required to implement democratic and economic reforms. Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth in 2002 on the grounds that Robert Mugabe had been fraudulently re-elected in the country’s presidential election. Zimbabwe quit the Commonwealth a year later, after the body refused to lift the country’s suspension. The lifting of Zimbabwe’s suspension had been supported by… Seguir leyendo
By Blessing-Miles Tendi, a researcher and freelance writer on contemporary Zimbabwean politics (THE GUARDIAN, 14/09/09):
At a summit last week, southern African leaders called on western states to “remove all forms of sanctions against Zimbabwe“. They contend that Zimbabwe’s power-sharing deal cannot be effectively implemented until sanctions are lifted. The EU and US say sanctions will not be lifted until the power-sharing agreement is appropriately observed.
Disagreement over the imposition of sanctions on Zimbabwe is not new. It goes back to 2002 when, at the request of Britain and some Zimbabwean civil society elements, the EU first imposed targeted sanctions… Seguir leyendo
By Lord Malloch-Brown, Minister for Africa, Asia and the UN (THE TIMES, 19/06/09):
Morgan Tsvangirai is due to arrive in London today as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe. He will be seeking UK government support and pitching for foreign investment. How should we respond to such an appeal from a Government that is led by Robert Mugabe, a man to whom we have got used to saying “no”?
We are clear that we must support the new inclusive Government, whatever our strong doubts about Mr Mugabe. Mr Tsvangirai has bravely chosen to join a government with his erstwhile rivals as the… Seguir leyendo
By Michael Gerson (THE WASHINGTON POST, 17/06/09):
Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is attempting something rare and difficult — sharing power with the man who tried to murder him.
Every Monday morning, Tsvangirai conducts public business across the table from Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president, founder and oppressor. During a recent interview in Washington, Tsvangirai told me that the 85-year-old Mugabe “is someone who can be charming when he wants. I am on guard when he becomes charming. It is when I’m most suspicious of his intentions.”
Mugabe has a long history of co-opting his political opponents — or killing them.… Seguir leyendo
By Greg Mills, the director of the Brenthurst Foundation, a research organization in Johannesburg that promotes economic growth in Africa and Jeffrey Herbst, the provost of Miami University of Ohio and the author of States and Power in Africa (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 28/05/09):
After years of rightly criticizing President Robert Mugabe’s authoritarian rule in Zimbabwe, Western countries now face a different, and difficult, set of decisions.
Since February, Zimbabwe has operated under a unity government led by Mr. Mugabe with the opposition’s leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, as prime minister. Had last year’s elections been free and fair, Mr. Tsvangirai would… Seguir leyendo
By Morgan Tsvangirai, Prime Minister of Zimbabwe (THE TIMES, 01/04/09):
On February 11, 2009, I took an oath as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe to work relentlessly to create a society where values are stronger than the threat of violence, where the future happiness of children is more important than partisan political goals and where a person is free to express an opinion, loudly, openly and publicly, without fear of reprisal or repression.
To create a country where jobs are available for those who wish to work, food is available for those who are hungry and where we are united by… Seguir leyendo
By Rowan Williams and John Sentamu, Archbishops of Canterbury and York (THE TIMES, 25/02/09):
Twenty-five years ago, people involved in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa would say wistfully: “Look at Zimbabwe. It’s come through a bitter war of liberation without wrecking its social cohesion, it’s developed a proper democratic culture and it’s feeding itself.”
Granted, this was, even then, a slightly too rosy picture, but it wasn’t nonsense. It represented a conviction that Zimbabwe was showing what was possible to its neighbours and indeed to the whole continent.
And this means that one of the worst of the… Seguir leyendo
By Chris Beyrer, director the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Frank Donaghue, chief executive of Physicians for Human Rights (THE WASHINGTON POST, 08/01/09):
Physicians for Human Rights sent a team to Zimbabwe last month to investigate the cholera epidemic that has ravaged lives there since August. As part of that team, we found something much more disturbing even than cholera: a people facing an array of health threats in a country where the most basic functions of the state — clean water, sanitation and health-care delivery — have… Seguir leyendo
By Martin Fletcher (THE TIMES, 02/01/09):
Long after you leave Zimbabwe images linger in the mind, harrowing and ineradicable. An emaciated old woman making “soup” from weeds for her orphaned grandchildren; desperate parents foraging in the bush for a handful of desiccated berries; young men defying crocodiles to catch a handful of tiny fish in the Zambezi; the corpses of cholera victims trussed up in black plastic sheeting; the ubiquitous and debilitated Aids victims; perfunctory funerals in Harare’s cemetery while, all around, fresh graves are dug.
The pathetic attempts to grow vegetables on scraps of common land; the queues desperate… Seguir leyendo
By David Coltart, a senator and member of Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change (THE WASHINGTON POST, 24/12/08):
There is a perfect humanitarian storm in my country. The threats of AIDS, poverty, hyperinflation and malnutrition, and now cholera, combined with a regime that has given up on its people, add up to an all-but-untenable state of affairs. It is difficult to know where to turn, but it is clear that under such a barrage, a haven must be found. At the moment, that haven — perhaps the only port in this storm — is the transitional agreement inked in September by… Seguir leyendo
By Yeukai Taruvinga, who is not allowed to work; the fee for this article has been donated to Women Asylum Seekers Together in London, which she chairs refugeewomen.com (THE GUARDIAN, 20/12/08):
When I tell ordinary British people that I came to this country from Zimbabwe to seek asylum because of Robert Mugabe’s government, they are always sympathetic. They see the humanitarian crisis, the old people and children dying of cholera – the UN reported yesterday that there were more than a thousand dead and another 20,000 sufferers. They see on the news night after night what Mugabe is doing to… Seguir leyendo
By Jonathan Steele (THE GUARDIAN, 15/12/08):
The substance of Zimbabwe’s horror stays the same. Only its miserable form keeps changing. Alongside hyperinflation, shanty-town evictions, mass unemployment, police-sponsored election violence and murder, badly-administered farm takeovers, rampant food shortages and the abduction of human rights activists, there now comes the latest manmade disaster – cholera. Close to 800 lives have already been lost. Thousands have fled to South Africa to try to avoid it or, if already afflicted, at least to get treatment.
As the horror mounts, calls for action grow. A few verge on the risible. “Bush steps up pressure on… Seguir leyendo
By Ben Macintyre (THE TIMES, 11/12/08):
The horror story that is cholera-wracked Zimbabwe begins with a hand-pump in a Soho street and a British doctor who came up with a very simple, very brilliant idea one and a half centuries ago.
Cholera is more than just a dreadful disease: it thrives on ignorance and the most abject poverty; it breaks out when a state breaks down; and it is ultimately curable not by medicine alone but by organising society itself on rational, scientific principles. The only antidote to cholera, in the end, is political action.
Today, Robert Mugabe’s most powerful… Seguir leyendo
By Richard Cohen (THE WASHINGTON POST, 09/12/08):
What I would like to do — not that you’ve asked — is have a Predator drone circle over Robert Mugabe’s luxurious villa until this monster of a dictator who has brought such misery to Zimbabwe runs screaming from his home and into the arms of his own people. What happens after that is none of my business.
I do not mean to sound harsh or cruel, but when I say that what happens to Mugabe is none of my business, it is because it already appears to be almost no one’s business.… Seguir leyendo