And so, another year in Zimbabwe – and in less than three months time, another election. It is a prospect that few seem to welcome. Compare the political environment in the country now to what it was ahead of the last parliamentary poll in 2000, and the lack of voter enthusiasm is not hard to understand.

The Non-Governmental Organisations Bill, condemned by human rights organisations because it will severely restrict their activities, had its third reading and was passed by Parliament at a late night sitting on 9th December. It now requires only the signature of the President and to be gazetted before it comes into force. "Helpless against a determined regime holding all the levers of power, we watch aghast as one after another of the spaces formerly providing independent thought and action are closed down, and a fascist regime takes control of every aspect of social existence," concludes this article from the activist website Sokwanele.

The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe reports that The Standard has revealed the extent to which yet another bill will erode freedom of expression. The paper reported that the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Bill proposes a fine of $5 million or a jail sentence of up to 20 years for “anyone who publishes or communicates to another statements that are perceived to be prejudicial to the State”. The proposed law, the paper noted, “will make it extremely difficult for journalists to operate and will certainly be the most repressive piece of legislation in Zimbabwe’s Statute books”. Read in full the latest edition of the MMPZ update by clicking the link below.

The human rights environment in Zimbabwe has become increasingly complex. For the last few years political violence has dominated any discussion about health and human rights. Since 2000 there have been periods of intense violence across the whole country, especially around national elections. This punctuates a background intimidation that prevents people from engaging in open discussion, especially where it is different from the official version. Doctors are afraid to challenge the violence because they are afraid of being labeled anti-government or belonging to the opposition, or simply afraid of what 'might' happen to them if they stick their necks out.

There have been situations of doctors refusing to see or avoiding patients who are victims of organised or state violence. In one case a well-known human rights lawyer was denied treatment at a health facility because a health care worker was afraid to implicate himself if the matter went to court. Such is the atmosphere of intimidation. Violence and torture is carried out to make people support the ruling party and government, or at least make them too afraid to oppose it.

"The National Association of Non Governmental Organizations, representing over 1000 NGOs in Zimbabwe, would like to state that the NGO bill is unacceptable to the NGO community. NANGO is disappointed that many of the amendments that had been submitted by NGOs to Government and Parliament were out rightly rejected. It is therefore difficult to envisage how NGOs are expected to comply under the new law given the restrictions placed on every part of their work. Various clauses in the NGO Bill will result in the shutting down of the majority of NGOs. For example under the proposed NGO Law [Non Governmental Organisations Bill-H.B.13, 2004], NGOs will not be allowed to receive foreign funding for activities that include the promotion and protection of human rights and issues of governance. This therefore threatens the work of NGOs, given that there is no local funding. Even the recently presented 2005 Budget estimates have not shown significant contributions to welfare organisations. The work that NGOs do in the promotion and protection of human rights include:- Child Rights; Women’s Rights; Rights of people living with HIV and AIDS; Rights of people with disabilities; Freedom of expression, association and assembly, and the Right to development." Click on the link below for statements from a range of Zimbabwean human rights groups.

The railroading through Parliament in November 2004 of the NGO Bill means that the government of Zimbabwe (GOZ) has now completed its strangling of three basic freedoms. Freedom of association has now joined freedom of information (the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act - AIPPA - shut down the only independent daily newspaper) and freedom of assembly (the Public Order and Safety Act - POSA - makes any gathering subject to police permission and scrutiny) in the oxygen tent in line with the GOZ strategy of shutting down all independent voices and democratic spaces. By contrast, the government sponsored Youth Militias (Green Bombers) operate with impunity.

ZANU-PF's strategy for survival and retention of their ill-gotten assets is a holistic strategy of repression with mutually reinforcing elements. Increased militarisation sees military and security sectors immune from the law and occupying increasingly prominent positions in the intelligence, provincial administrations and electoral authorities. Secondly the regime has used its presidential powers to amend the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act allowing police to detain without formal charges opponents of the regime, supposedly to counter corruption. Thirdly the judiciary is almost completely compliant, as shown in its confirming most of the contentious legislation. The neutralising of the judiciary has important knock-on effects in areas like press and media freedom and intimidation, information starvation, freedom of the opposition to assemble and be heard, politicisation of the police, further land 'resettlement', human rights violations, show trials of the opposition, politicisation of governmental-controlled food aid, public order and the like.

The NGO Act bans foreign funding for political governance, human rights and anti-corruption work and effectively proscribes international NGOs from carrying out such work. It makes registration of NGOs subject to arbitrary authority under a government-controlled NGO Council and provides severe penalties including shutting down NGOs and imprisoning staff for contravention of the Act. Very wide-ranging definitions leave much to ministerial dictate and arbitrary decision-making from both formal and informal government structures.

It is unclear how much the Act will affect the churches in Zimbabwe; government assurances that they will be fine if they stick to 'religious matters' contrast with the police closing down meetings held in churches to discuss the Act. The Act went through despite its running contrary not just to the Zimbabwean constitution, but also to several regional and international rights conventions that Harare has signed up to, and despite its likely economic impact given the numbers employed in the NGO sector and its effect on foreign exchange and tourism (what is left of it).

The NGO Act, the Electoral Amendment Act as well as legislation to provide payments to collaborators (non-combatant forces in the 1970s liberation war) are all in the context of the forthcoming parliamentary elections. These are set for March 2005 although the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is currently suspending participation until the conditions for a free and fair election are met, although it will be meeting in late November to review this. The combined legislation will severely limit any check on the government, make illegal non-governmental funding for civic and voter education, ensure government control of the electoral process and support from a potential opposition force of 'collaborators'.

It is widely believed that 'a dirty dozen' of NGOs already named in the newspapers and mostly operating within the human rights arena were the primary target although the bill would affect all NGOs. This would include the national Constitutional Assembly, the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum and Transparency International Zimbabwe.

For a local journalist, although the immediate target are indeed NGOs (foreign and national) the wider context is of control of black, particularly rural, Zimbabweans to ensure not just obedience but the impossibility of thinking any other way than in channels laid down by ZANU-PF and of destroying the MDC. A peace activist described the strategy as - 'the regime attempting a scorched earth policy in terms of social formations. While it wants to hold elections so as to appear democratic it wants to prevent thought, communication, information, and analysis.'

The act has been on the way since 2000 when the GOZ saw then the result of civil society lobbying in the rejection of the government's draft constitution in a referendum. It was given additional impetus by Zimbabwean civil society providing much of the evidence for the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights report on Zimbabwe finally submitted to the African Union to outrage from Harare at being criticised by fellow Africans (far harder to bear than from the West). The GOZ is convinced that NGOS are a front and money conduit for the MDC who are themselves a front for Tony Blair - a position hardly helped by the Blair statement in July 2004 in the UK parliament that he was working for regime change in Zimbabwe.

In fact the act could be said to be already in operation before its official date. A climate of fear and arbitrariness around NGO work has existed for some time with local ZANU-PF activists and youth militias feeling free to determine who is allowed into 'their' area whatever local governors might say. Work permits (TEPs) for outside NGO staff are being refused almost as a matter of course. To see how the proposed NGO Council would look, says a local human rights activist, we should examine the workings of the supine pro-government Media Information Council.

The Act has served its purpose of dividing and confusing civil society as to the best response to the legislation - pretending it is not happening, ignoring the plight of others and carrying on programmes as much as possible, seeking friendly 'godfathers' inside ZANU-PF, relocating and/ or shutting down in Zimbabwe. The use of repressive divide and rule tactics make the NGOs the latest in a series including the judiciary, the media, the churches and farmworkers and farmers.

Internationally and regionally the GOZ has divided or silenced critics with even the limited sanctions regime ineffectual, despite their renewal in Europe in February 2004 and in the USA. The GOZ control strategy appears to be to survive until the elections, despite the likely gap in food supplies and then to get an African 'free and fair' verdict which would take the heat off, challenge the international community to lose interest and give it a strong hand in post-election negotiations with the MDC. This would also give Mbeki a vindication of 'quiet diplomacy' even though Harare is in undoubted breach of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) electoral protocol it signed up to in Mauritius in August 2004.

Who is then standing up to the government on the NGO bill? Foreign embassies are not able or not willing to say much. NANGO, the Zimbabwe local NGO umbrella body presented a forceful case to the Parliamentary Portfolio committee examining the bill, but is unable to affect the strategy. Whilst rights-oriented Zimbabwean NGOs protest, the churches appear busy defending their own territory and interests, but not those of wider civil society. International development NGOs who are mostly Western do not wish to be painted like their governments as part of the plot to 'recolonise' Zimbabwe. Despite the brutal expulsion from Harare in October 2004 of a Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU) fact-finding and solidarity delegation to Zimbabwe, the South African government appeared keener on criticising their fellow Alliance members than the Mugabe regime. Some regional churches and NGOs have provided critical support for Zimbabweans but have been unable to persuade their governments or ruling parties to make much beyond the occasional muted criticism as happened in Botswana.

However it does appear that the confidence of the ruling party in its hold on power has run into a number of problems even if they are unlikely to result in any other electoral scenario but ZANU-PF maintaining its electoral hold including enough seats to change the constitution. Its propaganda is subject to massive public scepticism in relation to the supposedly improving economy -the public does not believe that inflation is going down in light of its own experience. Some of the first wave of settlers who seized land are in turn being thrown off their land so that the elite can have it (breeding a kind of sans culotte bitterness). Economically, the crisis of production and livelihood continues - a systematic process of de-professionalisation and de-capitalisation. A very significant proportion of professionals, such as doctors, engineers, educationalists and financial managers have sought employment elsewhere. Despite rumours of its demise, the parallel market is up and running again with the rate against £1 being roughly Zim $14,000. A much -vaunted accommodation with the IMF is no more likely than returning foreign investment. 99% of the population live with an income less than the poverty datum line, mitigated only by remittances from the 15 to 25 % of the population living outside.

The cabinet decision to expel COSATU showed the South African public its contempt for the neighbours and indeed for court orders against the expulsion. COSATU was mobilising itself and civic groups in the region to "seal entry points into Zimbabwe for four days" from December 4 to 8.

Internationally, parliamentarians were horrified by the treatment of MDC MP Roy Bennett - who physically attacked the Minister of Justice after endless taunting from him, and was sent to prison with a sentence of hard labour. The not guilty verdict in the trial of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai for treason showed how threadbare the case was, according to a lawyer observing the trial. The latter said that although there was no case to answer, the judge with a vestige of professional self-respect, but allegedly a recipient of a farm under the fast-track land reform process, prolonged the trail as long as possible so that the state could tie up Tsvangirai in a lengthy legal process.

The government appears to have little strategy or resources to deal with an expected food gap between January and March, although it has loudly proclaimed that it will be self-sufficient - to widespread disbelief - and does not need NGO or World Food Programme help. Nor does the refusal to allow in British media organisations to cover the cricket in late November show Harare in a good light.

The debate on whether free and fair elections can be held or not is critical, for the coming months. Some form of transitional administration, with international (UN, AU, SADC) support, will be needed. But how can such a transitional arrangement be brought about? In the end the whole system of neo-patrimonialism and endemic corruption presided over by the regime needs root and branch change. The authoritarian mindset has little ability to think alternatives other than repression and blame on outside conspirators. In the words of the Crisis in Zimbabwe NGO Coalition 'Slurs, verbal abuse, violence and intimidation may win arguments, but they can never reconstitute, heal or rehabilitate societies. NGOs may be closed, elections may be rigged, newspapers may be bombed and millions starved, but it will never kill the people's love for liberty.'

* Steve Kibble is Africa/Yemen Advocacy Coordinator for the Catholic Institute for International Relations.

* Please send comments to

Zimbabwean women activists are to petition parliament on Friday to approve a four-year-old Prevention of Domestic Violence Bill. The activists, frustrated with continued delays in the bill's approval, have chosen the last day of the worldwide campaign dubbed "16 Days of Gender Activism against Domestic Violence" to make their appeal.

Civil society organisations, Zimbabweans in the Diaspora, and other citizens in the SADC region are gathering in front of the Zimbabwean Embassies or High Commissions in their respective countries on International Human Rights Day to protest against the wave of repression which limits civic space and undermines civil liberties in Zimbabwe.

Only 14 percent of South Africans believe their country should follow Zimbabwe by seizing white-owned commercial farms for landless blacks, while 31 percent of 2,000 South Africans surveyed - including 45 percent of whites - said they felt there was a danger the chaotic scenes seen in Zimbabwe could be repeated in their country. Although many white farmers say they see the need for change, some describe the process as "Zimbabwe in a velvet glove".

Popular disc jockey Kaiboni could spend several years in prison for statutory rape and willful transmission of HIV. He is accused of having sex with a 15-year-old on several occasions, and consciously infecting her with the AIDS virus. Kaiboni denies the charges, claiming he was unaware of his HIV status at the time. For AIDS activists, the court proceedings focus attention on the effectiveness of a law that bans HIV-positive persons from knowingly engaging in sexual behaviour that might lead to their partners becoming infected.

Traditional practices of polygamy, virginity testing and 'kugara nhaka'(wife inheritance), inhibit women's control over their bodies and increase vulnerability to HIV infection, but activists are split on the best way to tackle the customs. The Girl Child Network (GCN) believes in empowering girls to resist virginity testing. Other advocacy groups favour tighter legislation against high-risk behaviour performed "in the name of culture". Still others believe in empowering women to make informed decisions within the context of traditional culture, given the hostility of many community leaders to attempts to tamper with custom.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has confirmed that it plans to expand its support to 1.6-million Zimbabweans during December via its targeted feeding programme. WFP spokesperson in Zimbabwe, Makena Walker, said that about 25 000-million tonnes of food aid, left over from its assistance programme last year, would be distributed next month to vulnerable groups, including the chronically ill, child-headed households and the disabled.

The Programme Director is responsible for supporting the management and development of the agency's work in Zimbabwe and for ensuring that the Fund contributes effectively to meeting the long- and short-term needs of children within the framework of agreed strategy and wider organisational aims. The Programme Director is also part of the regional management team for the agency. Please apply online at http://www.onlinejobs.redr.org
Closing Date: 5 February 2005

In a 2 December 2004 letter to President Robert Mugabe, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) expressed its outage over the government's continued clampdown on independent media in Zimbabwe, including proposed new legislation that could be used to jail journalists for up to 20 years. At a time when several other African countries are lifting criminal sanctions for press offences, bringing their laws in line with international standards, Zimbabwe's government is preparing to introduce penalties that are among the harshest on the continent. In the letter, CPJ said that this will only further impede Zimbabwe's media, which already face other restrictive laws.

The Zimbabwe government's draft law to regulate nongovernmental organizations threatens the existence of civil society groups in the country, Human Rights Watch says in a new briefing paper. Scheduled for a vote in parliament next week, the bill substantially restricts freedom of association and thus falls far short of the Southern African Development Community's principles to protect human rights during elections. "A vibrant civil society is crucial for a functioning democracy," said Georgette Gagnon, deputy director at Human Rights Watch's Africa Division. "With elections coming up in March, Zimbabwe needs to allow sufficient space for civil society groups, not pass a law that would stifle them."

The six suspended provincial chairpersons of Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu PF party were not only bent on sabotaging the imposition of a woman as co-vice-president. They wanted, for the first time ever, to have President Robert Mugabe's own position contested at the party congress. The fourth five-yearly congress of Zimbabwe's ruling party, Zanu PF, was thrown into turmoil with the suspension of six provincial chairpersons and strong censure of Information Minister Jonathan Moyo.

Civil rights activists have joined a chorus of disapproval over a decision by the English cricket team to go ahead with a controversial tour to Zimbabwe which began at the weekend. Lovemore Madhuku, chairman of the National Constitutional Commission, told IRIN on Tuesday that the visit was a "victory" for President Robert Mugabe's government, and would "embolden" the government to "continue with repressive policies" against its perceived opponents.

A collective effort is needed on behalf of all role-players in order to grasp the opportunity offered by the March 2005 elections in Zimbabwe to end the crisis currently gripping the country, according to a new International Crisis Group report. The report encouraged the African Union to maintain a watchful eye on the human rights situation before the 2005 parliamentary elections, including by sending a team of experts by 1 January 2005 to assess the electoral environment, and support implementation of the SADC principles and guidelines by the Zimbabwe government. For its part the international community should support the efforts of African states and institutions to achieve free and fair parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe in 2005. The ICG report also recommended to the Movement for Democratic Change that it decide to contest the parliamentary elections, even if it is not possible to obtain at this stage absolute guarantees that they will be conducted in a fully free and fair manner.

Incidents occurring in Zimbabwe in the month of September continue to reflect a lack of political tolerance, according to a political violence report from the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum. The report said political victimization was relatively high around the opposition MDC's 5th year anniversary celebrations on 11 and 12 September 2004. The month of September also saw a rise in the number of displacements. The cases of displacements recorded in September were the highest since the beginning of the year and are attributed to farm evictions.

An international NGO involved in a school feeding programme has had to leave Zimbabwe because the authorities refused to renew its registration and work permits for expatriate staff. International aid agencies and NGOs must register with the government and have their activities vetted and approved.