MONDAY, 2.30PM:
TRUCKLOADS of riot police filled downtown Harare on Monday as police clashed with more than a thousand protesters who barricaded roads in protest at steep increases in prices of basic commodities.
The stock exchange, banks and shops closed early, with youths, chanting anti-white and anti-Mugabe slogans, stoning cars. Police on the ground clubbed demonstrators, while helicoptrs fired teargas. Witnesses complained that township homes were being indiscriminately teargassed.
Authorities have blamed the price rises on Zimbabwe’s white business community, accusing its members of trying to topple the government of President Robert Mugabe by causing economic hardships. Economists, however, say the price rises follow the collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar against foreign currencies because of uncertainty over the future of agriculture and other economic problems.
Monday’s protest is just the latest in a string of recent demonstrations, including a national strike last month which forced President Robert Mugabe’s government to back down on plans to increase taxes.
Meanwhile, The Namibian reported on Monday that the National Union of Namibian Workers is putting pressure on the government of President Sam Nujoma to seize land from white farmers without compensation.
MONDAY, 8.00AM:
ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe’s controversial plans to redistribute white-owned farm lands may have ended on Friday with the signing of a bail-out deal with the World Bank and the European Union that makes the farm expropriations almost impossible.
Treasury secretary Charles Kuwaza signed an agreement on Friday with the World Bank, which will release $60-million in budget support for the ailing economy, as well as $20-million from the European Union.
But in the return, the Zimbabwe government has had to commit itself to keeping the budget deficit below 8,2% of GDP; agree that reforms are kept “transparent, within the law and under the constitution”; and agree not to cause disruption to agricultural production.
The agreement limits Mugabe to spending his currently budgeted amount of around $4-million on farm expropriation, not enough to buy more than a handful of farms.
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