Zimbabwe Update

The big news is the political fight over a bill to reform the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, which after much conflict, was finally passed by Parliament.

What likely led to this meeting of the minds was evidence that the incompetent and corrupt management of RBZ Director Gideon Gono was driving away potential donors and foreign investors.

That being said, I do not think that the RBZ bill was why China has signed an $8 billion investment deal.

In any case, Gono was last seen attempting to strong-arm banks into lending to expropriated farms, which is not surprising as the ZANU-PF is stepping up its farm seizures for corrupt bureaucrats program.

In any case, the unity government is holding cabinet meetings again, which is a good sign, I guess.

Of more significance is the fact that Botswana President Ian Khama is calling for new elections and explicitly blaming the ZANU-PF for the lack of progress.

It's nice that someone involved the SADC "Enable Mugabe Program" is pushing back.

Additionally, we are starting to see protests in Europe against the SADC's support of Mugabe: Zimbabwe Vigil has petitioned the EU to suspend all aid to members of the SADC, which is a start.

More significant, though may be the fact that PM Morgan Tsvangirai is to meet with Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, current chairman of the AU.

This is a positive development for a number of reasons:

• Gadaffi won't run like a scared kitten at Mugabe's accusations of being a "neocolonialist stooge", because, after all, Ronald Reagan tried to kill him, and he blew up Pan Am flight 103.
• As head of the AU, he words have a lot of influence.
• As an oil exporter, his dollars have a lot of influence.
• Gadaffi is very interested in getting credibility on the world stage, and by taking on Mugabe aggressively, he gets that credibility with almost no risk involved.
  

So, after massive smuggling, murders by the authorities, and forced labor, the Kimberley Process decides against suspending Zimbabwe's certification as a being not "conflict diamonds", despite a
report from their own investigators saying that they should be suspended.

This reveals the Kimberly process a complete and utter joke, and on queue, once the threat of suspension is lifted, the New Reclamation Group Ltd. mining company sweeps in with a contract.

There is a promise by the Zimbabwe government not to export diamonds until measures are in place to prevent abuse, but I don't trust this very much, if it comes from the Prime Minister's office, then it means nothing, and if it comes from Mugabe, it's a flat out lie.

Of note, The Rapaport Group and the RapNet Diamond Trading Network have announced that they are "implementing an immediate trading ban on all diamonds from Zimbabwe due to severe human rights violations in Marange," and Leber Jeweler Inc. has announced the same.

Meanwhile, outside of the diamond trade, things continue apace, with Mugabe and the ZANU-PF planning to introduce a law which would require that foreign owned companies be majority black owned. Note: not even the majority locally owned, this is determined by the pigmentation of the equity holders.

ZANU-PF has become the party of Apartheid in Zimbabwe.

We also have continued use of the state security apparatus to intimidate the opposition, with the head of the national trade union being arrested on trumped up charges, as well as the increasingly bizarre trial of deputy agriculture minister-designate Roy Bennett.

What do we have on the case of Bennett, we have a judge who made statements at the trial of the chief witness against Bennett that indicate bias. This is important because this witness, Peter Hitschmann, has recanted his testimony and alleged that it was extracted by torture.

We also have the police presenting weapons that were not seized from Bennett's house as evidence, and that the Defence is has a request to have the police log books on this matter made available to them, and the police, as well as the attorney general, are vociferously fighting this.