Zimbabwe

In yesterday’s presentation of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award to the women of WOZA, President Obama offered some sharp words for Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, as reported by the New York Times. In his remarks, President Obama said:

In the end, history has a clear direction and it is not the way of those who arrest women and babies for singing in the streets. It is not the way of those who starve and silence their own people, who cling to power by the threat of force.

Excerpts below, full New York Times account here

Mr. Obama’s decision to publicly recognize Women of Zimbabwe Arise, or Woza, whose members have taken to the streets for years to demand democracy, will probably confirm Mr. Mugabe’s belief that the United States and the West are out to topple him, already a recurrent theme in the state-run media he controls.

Though engaged in a power-sharing government since February, Mr. Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party have deployed state security forces to arrest and jail rival politicians and party workers, human rights lawyers and civic leaders.

Regional heads of state, worried that the government led by Mr. Mugabe and his nemesis, Morgan Tsvangirai, will crumble, have insisted the men settle their differences in coming weeks, but so far Mr. Mugabe has shown no inclination to bend.

The United States has limited political leverage in southern Africa, but Mr. Obama has repeatedly spoken out about Mr. Mugabe’s misrule — notably when he welcomed Mr. Tsvangirai to the White House in June, when he addressed the Ghanaian Parliament in July and in his remarks on Monday.

Momentarily Jenni Williams and Magondonga Mahlangu of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) will receive the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award from President Obama. WOZA serves to provide women in Zimbabwe an opportunity and forum to stand up for their rights and freedoms.

Back in April, I and some other ONE staffers got a chance to meet with Jenni and Magondonga to discuss WOZA and the state of human rights in Zimbabwe. It was a remarkable experience. Many congratulations are in order for Jenni, Mogondonga, and all of Women of Zimbabwe Arise.

You can read details of the event here.

Nicholas Kristof’s latest column focuses on Tererai Trent, a remarkable woman from Zimbabwe who overcame extreme poverty and a husband who beat her and will be receiving her Ph.D. from Western Michigan University next month. As Mr. Kristof puts it: “Tererai is a reminder of the adage that talent is universal, while opportunity is not.”

Below is the beginning of her story. You can read Kristof’s full column here.

Of all the people earning university degrees this year, perhaps the most remarkable story belongs to Tererai (pronounced TEH-reh-rye), a middle-aged woman who is one of my heroes. She is celebrating a personal triumph, but she’s also a monument to the aid organizations and individuals who helped her. When you hear that foreign-aid groups just squander money or build dependency, remember that by all odds Tererai should be an illiterate, battered cattle-herd in Zimbabwe and instead — ah, but I’m getting ahead of my story.

Tererai was born in a village in rural Zimbabwe, probably sometime in 1965, and attended elementary school for less than one year. Her father married her off when she was about 11 to a man who beat her regularly. She seemed destined to be one more squandered African asset.

A dozen years passed. Jo Luck, the head of an aid group called Heifer International, passed through the village and told the women there that they should stand up, nurture dreams, change their lives.

Inspired, Tererai scribbled down four absurd goals based on accomplishments she had vaguely heard of among famous Africans. She wrote that she wanted to study abroad, and to earn a B.A., a master’s and a doctorate….

Keep reading here.

At the start of the year, Nora Coghlan from our policy team wrote about the education crisis in Zimbabwe. After a heated conflict between school teachers and the Zimbabwean government, it was feared that “2009 will be another lost year for education in Zimbabwe.”

Today, CNN.com has an article examining the state of education in Zimbabwe. While they note signs of the education system fighting back to normalcy, the price of education and continued lack of funding still make it incredibly difficult for families to send their children to school.

Watch this corresponding video that CNN ran a few weeks back:

Excerpts below, full piece here:

The country’s education minister in the year-old power-sharing administration believes it could be decade before standards are back up to Zimbabwe’s good past record.

According to the education department, 20,000 teachers have left the country in the past two years and half of Zimbabwe’s children have not progressed beyond primary school.

Many parents today are too poor to send their children to school. Rural schools — where pencils, desks and books are luxuries — are hardest hit.

When CNN visited a Mathabisana primary school in Umguza, in the southwest of Zimbabwe, headmaster Nonkululeko Ndlovu said that at one point teachers used charcoal as a substitute for chalk.

“There are no textbooks to talk about at the moment because I remember the last text books were bought sometime in 2000 or so, when we were still getting government grants but now we don’t have anything.

“Those text books have reached their shelf life. An aid organization donated 32 text books which we really appreciated and we are using those text books right across the grades, trying to impart knowledge to the kids.”

The New York Times and other media outlets are reporting that Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is openly boycotting cabinet meetings as a means of protesting President Robert Mugabe’s party. NYT characterizes this as the “biggest breach yet in the new transitional government.”

More details below, read the full report here:

The catalyst for this step was the jailing Wednesday of Roy Bennett, Mr. Tsvangirai’s deputy agriculture minister-designate, a white farmer who is scheduled to stand trial Monday on three-year-old terrorism charges that his party, the Movement for Democratic Change, says are fabricated. But even after Mr. Bennett was grantedbail Friday after the news conference, officials in his party said their decision to disengage did not change.

“This is the time for us to say enough is enough,” said Thabitha Khumalo, a spokeswoman for the M.D.C.

Mr. Tsvangirai laid out a broad array of grievances. He accused Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, of selectively using the law as a weapon to punish his parliamentarians, putting 16,000 of its youth militia on the government payroll, and remilitarizing the countryside on bases used in last year’s discredited election to organize a campaign of terror against his supporters.

While he stopped short of quitting the government, Mr. Tsvangirai warned that if the crisis were not resolved and a working relationship restored he would call for United Nations-supervised elections.

Thanks to good rainfall, Zimbabwe has been able to increase production of maize—the staple crop in the country—by 130% to 1.1 million tons. Despite this increase, however, 2.8 million people will still face food shortages this year, as the UN Food and Agriculture Orgaization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) report. Zimbabwe’s food security situation is still extremely tenuous, with basic necessities out of reach for most households. The report also warned that Zimbabwe could see the lowest-ever wheat harvest this winter due to high seed prices and electricity shortages.

“This year’s improved harvest comes after two consecutive years of poor production,” said the World Food Programme’s Jan Delbaere, who worked on the report, reports AP news agency. “Having depleted their food stocks and sold livestock and other assets to cope with the effects of the recent crises, many rural households are still struggling to survive.”

If you’re curious about the report, you can find it here.

-Beth Adler

Today President Obama hosted Zimbabwe Prime Minister Tsvangirai at the White House to discuss the countries’ affairs. According to Politico magazine, during the meeting Obama pledged $73 million in assistance and said:

There was a time when Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of Africa and continues to have enormous potential. It has gone through a very dark and difficult period politically… President Mugabe—I think I’ve made my views clear—has often times not acted in the best interests of the Zimbabwean people and has been resistant to the kinds of democratic changes that need to take place. We now have a power-sharing agreement that shows promise.

-Chris Scott

The Washington Post writes how diseases, from influenza to tuberculosis to cholera and now swine flu, are spreading ever more quickly in an increasingly globalized world. But so, too, are the tools necessary to combat outbreaks of disease: expertise, medicine, money and information.

Washington Post—Diseases Travel Fast, but So Do Tools to Fight Them

Dr. Eric Goosby, a pioneer in the fight against AIDS, is President Obama’s choice to run the American effort to combat the disease globally, the White House announced this week. “The Pepfar program has already saved millions of lives in sub-Saharan Africa and other hard-hit areas around the world,” Dr. Goosby said in a statement. “But significant challenges relating to the prevention and treatment of H.I.V. remain.”

NY Times—Obama Picks Leader for Global AIDS Effort

Zimbabwe’s leaders this week failed for the fourth time in a fortnight to resolve a series of contentious issues threatening to paralyze the country’s shaky coalition government. The crisis talks remained deadlocked after long hours of intense discussions, signaling a serious political problem besetting the new government. A fierce power struggle is raging behind the scenes as President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai intensify their battle for political control.

Business Day (South Africa) – No Aid for Zimbabwe as Leaders Struggle to Overcome Political Impasse

Growing evidence indicates battle-hardened extremists are filtering out of safe havens along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and into eastern Africa, bringing sophisticated terrorist tactics that include suicide attacks. The alarming shift, according to U.S. military and counterterrorism officials, is fueling concern that Somalia is increasingly on a path to become the next Afghanistan — a sanctuary where al-Qaida-linked groups could train and plan attacks against the West.

Associated Press – Terrorists filter into Africa

-Steve Wilson

Zimbabwean political leader, nominee to be Deputy Agriculture Secretary and activist Roy Bennett will be joining political commentator and consultant Joe Trippi for a rare television appearance on the MSNBC show 1600: Penn Ave tonight at 6:00pm.

Bennett has been a leading voice for reform and action to end the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe that has plunged this formerly proud nation into abject poverty. For his efforts, Bennett has faced harassment and arrest on trumped-up charges brought by repressive ruler Robert Mugabe’s supporters. Bennett was just recently released on bail and will be back in court next month, so make sure you’re in front of your TV or have set your TiVo, and tell your friends about this rare chance to hear one of Zimbabwe’s most important voices.

Joe Trippi has been working for weeks to help secure the release of Roy Bennett, rallying people in the United States and Zimbabwe to speak out. You can read more about that work on his blog.

Despite the new unity government that includes Bennett’s MDC party, Mugabe is still harassing and imprisoning political opponents and humanitarian and civil society leaders. An unknown number are still in the prison Bennett was just released from. Until these outrages end, rule of law is established and the unity government is pursued in earnest, it will be impossible for Zimbabwe to rebuild its shattered economy and infrastructure, take on widespread hunger, and end Africa’s worst cholera outbreak in 19 years.

But Zimbabwe can’t do it alone. That’s why we’re asking the African Union – the official guarantor of the unity government deal – to do everything in its power to support the new government when possible and put pressure on those within it who are acting in bad faith. You can add your voice by signing our petition to the AU here and follow our continuing Zimbabwe coverage right here on the ONE blog.

-Aaron Banks

Great news, more than 100,000 ONE members have signed our petition to the African Union, asking that important political body to do everything in its power to help Zimbabwe’s new unity government succeed.

After years of misrule, Zimbabwe is mired in a humanitarian crisis that is wreaking misery across this former regional economic powerhouse. What were once some of the best schools and hospitals and most productive farms in Southern Africa are closed and in ruins, victims of the mismanagement, corruption and repression perpetrated by Robert Mugabe’s dictatorial rule. Hunger is widespread and cholera has killed almost 4,000 in Africa’s worst outbreak in 19 years.

Despite all this, there are finally signs of hope. Leaders from the long-oppressed opposition are now part of the government, alongside the still obstinate Mugabe, and they are making slow progress in tackling the enormous challenges facing Zimbabwe. But Zimbabwe won’t stay on the road to recovery for long, unless outside actors like the African Union take a leading role in supporting Zimbabwe wherever possible and sidelining those whose actions are hurting this nation in its most desperate hour.

Keep reading the ONE Blog for the latest news from Zimbabwe, as we’ll be continuing to cover developments there and bring you opportunities to get involved.

-Aaron Banks