'Obscene': Mugabe's arrival at food summit provokes outrage

Lunyungu

JF-Expert Member
Aug 7, 2006
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He inflicted starvation on his nation. Now Mugabe has arrived in Europe for a UN summit to tackle the global food crisis
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...l-at-food-summit-provokes-outrage-838867.html
By Peter Popham in Rome, Anne Penketh and Colin Brown
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
He's turned up again like a bad penny. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is back in Rome, staying in five-star accommodation for the duration of a United Nations food summit while his people starve as a result of his disastrous farm policies.
The unexpected arrival of President Mugabe and his shopaholic wife, Grace, prompted a flood of international protests yesterday after he joined more than 60 world leaders flying in for the three-day conference. Although the Zimbabwean leader and his wife are targeted by an European Union travel ban, the sanctions do not apply to UN meetings conducted on UN premises.
The grotesque irony of the situation was lost on no one. "Robert Mugabe going to Rome for the food summit is like Pol Pot going to a human rights convention," said Lord Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Office minister for Africa, referring to the mastermind of the Cambodian genocide.
The British representative to the meeting, Douglas Alexander, the International Development Secretary, said Mr Mugabe's appearance was "obscene".
"This meeting is supposed to be about increasing the supply of food," Mr Alexander told BBC Radio, "while his policies have exactly the reverse effect in Zimbabwe." His presence in Rome was "an affront to all Zimbabweans who are suffering hunger, destitution and poverty as a direct result of his rule". That view was echoed by representatives from the United States, Australia and the Netherlands.
After last month's disputed elections, Zimbabwe's crisis is more desperate than ever. Death squads haunt the land: as reported on The Independent's front page yesterday, the tortured and broken body of one of Mr Mugabe's most courageous opponents, Tonderai Ndira, was found weeks after he had been dragged from his home in his underwear. In recent months, tens of thousands of Zimbabweans have fled abroad to escape the hunger, violence and desperate poverty of their homeland, where inflation is running at 165,000 per cent.
Today the Mugabes can get away from all that. They are staying in the reassuringly luxurious surroundings of the Via Veneto, this time at the Ambasciatori Palace Hotel Rome, which describes itself as "deep inside 'La Dolce Vita'", and where the room rates range from €210 (£170) to €900 per night. Grace Mugabe will not have to go far to indulge in one of her shopping sprees: the world's most refined and expensive bags and shoes are all a short trundle from the hotel.
In 2002, he was here with his wife and an entourage of 10, staying at the five-star Hotel Excelsior. In 2005, he flew in for the funeral of Pope John Paul II, and trapped the Prince of Wales into a handshake. Now he is here again, for the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation's (FAO) summit on world food security, climate change and bioenergy, to the embarrassment of the organisers and many participants, thumbing his nose at the rest of the world less than a month before the 84-year old faces his first ever run-off presidential election.
An FAO spokesman said the UN can exercise no influence over who a given member state chooses to represent it at the meeting, "nor should it". He said that 185 of the UN's 191 members will be represented, "and who they choose to represent them is entirely their business". The Mugabes will not even have to put their hands in their pockets: the UN has set up a trust fund to pay an allowance for the delegations from poorer countries.
Mr Alexander said he condemned Mr Mugabe's presence at the summit and would neither meet him nor shake his hand. However, there are calls for the cabinet minister to boycott the meeting altogether, after Gordon Brown refused to attend December's EU-Africa summit over Mr Mugabe's presence in Lisbon.
Some Labour MPs tabled a Commons protest motion calling for Mr Alexander to stay away and criticised ministers for double standards on Zimbabwe. Harry Cohen said: "It's unbelievable that Douglas Alexander should turn up at the same conference as Robert Mugabe after the boycott by Gordon Brown. There is a total lack of consistency and double standards by the Government." He warned: "Mugabe is facing elections and is going to play this for all it is worth ... Douglas Alexander is playing into his hands. And it will do no favours for the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai."
The calls for a boycott were supported by Ian Gibson, the former Labour chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, who said it was "shocking" that Mr Mugabe should be attending a conference on food shortages when he had wrecked the food economy of his own country.
"I don't think Mugabe will listen to a word a British minister says," said Mr Gibson. "Douglas Alexander should take his lead from Gordon Brown and stay away." But Mr Brown's official spokesman insisted last night that the minister would attend the UN meeting as planned.
The Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ensured that he will receive an equally frosty welcome from Western leaders when he arrives tonight. He told foreign guests in Tehran yesterday marking the 19th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that "the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime [Israel]... will soon disappear off the geographical scene".
But last night it was Mr Mugabe's moment in the limelight. If anything, he will have been amused to learn that – as reported on Channel 4 News last night – Britain has taken the first step towards stripping him of the honorary knighthood awarded in 1994.
The First Shopper
Forget First Lady. Grace Mugabe is known as the First Shopper of Zimbabwe. The former secretary and mistress of Robert Mugabe, she laid bare her appetite for all things luxurious when the pair finally married in 1996, inviting 12,000 people to the wedding, the most lavish event the country had ever seen.
Forty years her senior, President Mugabe bowed to his young bride's request for a grand family mansion in Harare, and no expense was spared on the decor. He also commandeered the national airline to whisk her around the world on elaborate shopping sprees.
The latest destination for the Imelda Marcos of Africa is the Eternal City, where she is ensconced on the Via Veneto, a stone's throw from Rome's many designer shops. Confronted with her opulent tastes while her homeland teeters on the brink, she goes on the defensive, telling one reporter who tailed her on a previous trip around the boutiques of Paris: "Is it a crime to go shopping? These shops are here for people to shop in."
 
Huyu Mzee hata aibu kidogo hana na nashangaa huyo Mkewe kama zimo kweli .Hivi kama kuna mchango wa mawazo Mugabe anasemea watu wake wapi ?
 
Kaondoka nchini kwake amepandisha mishahara ya wafanyakazi wa serikali kwa 2,000% walimu watakuwa wanalipwa Z$ 60 billion kwa mwezi na senior officers Z$ 100 billion kwa mwezi. Hii yote na kuwahonga wampatie kura tarehe 27 June 2008. Wananchi wake wananjaa ya kutisha, inflation sasa imefikia 1.8m% inategemewa kuwa zaidi ya 2m% mwishoni mwa mwezi. Halafu birth day yake ilikuwa sherehe ya kitaifa, na huko Italy kaenda na mke wake akiwa na ratiba ya kufanya shoping kwani hajapata muda wa kwenda Ulaya kwa kitambo sasa.
 
Wakuu hebu someni hii mjue jinsi gani huyu mzee anavyojichanganya!!!!!!!! It is ridiculous

Mugabe's Illusions Of A Conspiracy

Zim Independent


EMULATING the duplicity and deception of its masters, the
state-controlled media repeatedly claims that the price escalations which
afflict Zimbabwe are naught but a diabolical conspiracy between the country's
perceived enemies and Zimbabwe's business community.

That conspiracy is alleged to be driven by intent to alienate the
support of the populace from the ruling party, in order that that populace
will cause a regime change to occur. In stridently voicing these claims of a
Machiavellian conspiracy to use hyperinflation as a vehicle for regime
change, the media recurrently quotes President Robert Mugabe.

This occurred yet again last week, after the president addressed a
passout parade of police recruits.

The president told the recruits that spiralling inflation, shortages
of basic commodities, constant power cuts, high transport costs and
intermittent disruptions of water supplies were all part of a
well-calculated and orchestrated regime change agenda by Britain and its
allies.

In particular, he said that the wave of price increases that has hit
Zimbabwe followed the announcement of the presidential election run-off date
as June 27, evidencing that some sectors of the business community were
conspiring against the ruling Zanu PF party and the government.

Immediately following upon these presidential comments, the newspapers
controlled by the Minister of Information and Publicity trumpeted loudly
that the regime-change conspiracy was the cause of the surging upwards of
prices. In diverse editorials and articles the business community was
vigorously berated for engaging in the conspiracy and thereby oppressing the
poverty-stricken Zimbabwean.

It is, therefore, very significant to note that:

In March 2008 the cover price of the national dailies of the
state-controlled newspapers was $20 million, and that was increased to $80
million in April, 2008, and to $200 million in May, 2008, representing a
ten-fold price increase in less than two months. Clearly, therefore,
although those newspapers are state-controlled, their publisher must be
actively engaged in the regime change conspiracy!

The City of Harare, which is still not managed by a democratically
elected council but by government appointees, in the last three weeks
increased Parkade fees from $1,5 million per hour to $60 million per hour.
Founded thereon, it must be that those government appointees are actively
engaged in the regime-change conspiracy!

Air Zimbabwe, which is a government parastatal, has increased its
fares more than three-fold in the last three months, and more than trebled
them in the last month. That parastatal must, therefore, be an active regime
change conspirator!

TelOne and NetOne have increased charges more than five-fold in the
last three months. Thus, even though they are, as parastatals, governmental
controlled, they must be involved supporters of regime-change conspiracy!

The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) is the governmental revenue
collecting authority. Following upon the establishment of the interbank
foreign exchange market, Zimra now applies interbank exchange rates in
determining dutiable values, currently yielding about 14 000% higher import
duties and value added tax. Hence, Zimra must be an active conspirator for
regime change!

Virtually without exception, all other parastatals, and all service
ministries have similarly increased charges very markedly over the last two
to three months and inevitably, therefore, must be conspirators for regime
change, if there is any substance whatsoever to the conspiracy claims of the
state-controlled media.

It is long overdue for government, its vituperative propaganda
machine, and its media, to overcome their extreme paranoia, and to cease
resorting endlessly to fictional and mystical claims of conspiracy. So
spurious are those claims that not even the most naïve are any longer
succumbing to them.

The Zimbabwean people are no longer so gullible as to believe that
Britain wishes to recolonise the emaciated Zimbabwe, or that it is
convincing the business community to achieve an overthrow of the Zimbabwean
government, be it through the ballot box or otherwise.

And it is as ridiculous to believe that in order to achieve that
objective, the business community is willing to pursue a suicidal path of
self-destruction, by pricing itself out of existence.

Instead, it is time for government, and its media, to recognise the
realities which have caused the cataclonic inflation that is a major
contributant to the destruction of Zimbabwe, and to take the constructive
actions necessary to restore Zimbabwean wellbeing.

Although government and its sycophantic propagandists would
undoubtedly deny it, real inflation must by now be in excess of 1,500 000% per
annum, and is increasingly rising. That is due, primarily, to the
devastating insufficiency of foreign exchange, with a consequential virile
black market, thriving upon immense premiums, which transform into massive
commodity price increases.

The lack of foreign exchange is almost wholly due to government's
destruction of agriculture, its untenable polices which deter foreign
investment and international balance of payments support, lack of economic
productivity and government's own rapacious hunger for foreign exchange.

Hyperinflation is also a consequence of government's endless
profligacy, funded by appallingly excessive printing of money, unsupported
by requisite securities and resources, and to pronounced, wide-ranging
corruption in both public and private sectors, uncontained by government.
Moreover, hyperinflation spurs further inflation, and will continue to do so
until the underlying causes of the hyperinflation are effectively addressed.

Until government initiates substantive corrective measures, instead of
blaming others, hyperinflation will endure and intensify, and in the same
manner as parastatals will have no alternative but to raise their prices or
charges, if they are to survive, so too will the private sector need to do
so. That is not conspiracy for regime change, but necessity for attempted
survival.
 
Wakuu hebu someni hii mjue jinsi gani huyu mzee anavyojichanganya!!!!!!!! It is ridiculous

Mugabe's Illusions Of A Conspiracy
Zim Independent


EMULATING the duplicity and deception of its masters, the
state-controlled media repeatedly claims that the price escalations which
afflict Zimbabwe are naught but a diabolical conspiracy between the country’s
perceived enemies and Zimbabwe’s business community.

That conspiracy is alleged to be driven by intent to alienate the
support of the populace from the ruling party, in order that that populace
will cause a regime change to occur. In stridently voicing these claims of a
Machiavellian conspiracy to use hyperinflation as a vehicle for regime
change, the media recurrently quotes President Robert Mugabe.

This occurred yet again last week, after the president addressed a
passout parade of police recruits.

The president told the recruits that spiralling inflation, shortages
of basic commodities, constant power cuts, high transport costs and
intermittent disruptions of water supplies were all part of a
well-calculated and orchestrated regime change agenda by Britain and its
allies.

In particular, he said that the wave of price increases that has hit
Zimbabwe followed the announcement of the presidential election run-off date
as June 27, evidencing that some sectors of the business community were
conspiring against the ruling Zanu PF party and the government.

Immediately following upon these presidential comments, the newspapers
controlled by the Minister of Information and Publicity trumpeted loudly
that the regime-change conspiracy was the cause of the surging upwards of
prices. In diverse editorials and articles the business community was
vigorously berated for engaging in the conspiracy and thereby oppressing the
poverty-stricken Zimbabwean.

It is, therefore, very significant to note that:

In March 2008 the cover price of the national dailies of the
state-controlled newspapers was $20 million, and that was increased to $80
million in April, 2008, and to $200 million in May, 2008, representing a
ten-fold price increase in less than two months. Clearly, therefore,
although those newspapers are state-controlled, their publisher must be
actively engaged in the regime change conspiracy!

The City of Harare, which is still not managed by a democratically
elected council but by government appointees, in the last three weeks
increased Parkade fees from $1,5 million per hour to $60 million per hour.
Founded thereon, it must be that those government appointees are actively
engaged in the regime-change conspiracy!

Air Zimbabwe, which is a government parastatal, has increased its
fares more than three-fold in the last three months, and more than trebled
them in the last month. That parastatal must, therefore, be an active regime
change conspirator!

TelOne and NetOne have increased charges more than five-fold in the
last three months. Thus, even though they are, as parastatals, governmental
controlled, they must be involved supporters of regime-change conspiracy!

The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) is the governmental revenue
collecting authority. Following upon the establishment of the interbank
foreign exchange market, Zimra now applies interbank exchange rates in
determining dutiable values, currently yielding about 14 000% higher import
duties and value added tax. Hence, Zimra must be an active conspirator for
regime change!

Virtually without exception, all other parastatals, and all service
ministries have similarly increased charges very markedly over the last two
to three months and inevitably, therefore, must be conspirators for regime
change, if there is any substance whatsoever to the conspiracy claims of the
state-controlled media.

It is long overdue for government, its vituperative propaganda
machine, and its media, to overcome their extreme paranoia, and to cease
resorting endlessly to fictional and mystical claims of conspiracy. So
spurious are those claims that not even the most naïve are any longer
succumbing to them.

The Zimbabwean people are no longer so gullible as to believe that
Britain wishes to recolonise the emaciated Zimbabwe, or that it is
convincing the business community to achieve an overthrow of the Zimbabwean
government, be it through the ballot box or otherwise.

And it is as ridiculous to believe that in order to achieve that
objective, the business community is willing to pursue a suicidal path of
self-destruction, by pricing itself out of existence.

Instead, it is time for government, and its media, to recognise the
realities which have caused the cataclonic inflation that is a major
contributant to the destruction of Zimbabwe, and to take the constructive
actions necessary to restore Zimbabwean wellbeing.

Although government and its sycophantic propagandists would
undoubtedly deny it, real inflation must by now be in excess of 1,500 000% per
annum, and is increasingly rising. That is due, primarily, to the
devastating insufficiency of foreign exchange, with a consequential virile
black market, thriving upon immense premiums, which transform into massive
commodity price increases.

The lack of foreign exchange is almost wholly due to government’s
destruction of agriculture, its untenable polices which deter foreign
investment and international balance of payments support, lack of economic
productivity and government’s own rapacious hunger for foreign exchange.

Hyperinflation is also a consequence of government’s endless
profligacy, funded by appallingly excessive printing of money, unsupported
by requisite securities and resources, and to pronounced, wide-ranging
corruption in both public and private sectors, uncontained by government.
Moreover, hyperinflation spurs further inflation, and will continue to do so
until the underlying causes of the hyperinflation are effectively addressed.

Until government initiates substantive corrective measures, instead of
blaming others, hyperinflation will endure and intensify, and in the same
manner as parastatals will have no alternative but to raise their prices or
charges, if they are to survive, so too will the private sector need to do
so. That is not conspiracy for regime change, but necessity for attempted
survival.
 
African leaders, what a shame

But they say, "In democracies, people get the leaders they deserve..."

800px-Kikwete-swearingin.jpg


...like the clown in the 2nd row who gets away with saying that HIV doesn't cause AIDS!
 
No, with due respect, the clown is the man standing at the center of the front row !
 
hivi wakiwekwa darasani na kupewa mtihani wa masuala ya kawaida tu, Raisi gani atakuwa wa kwanza na yupi atakuwa wa mwisho? kuna mtu anaweza kuwapanga hawa Maraisi?
 
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