Johannesburg | Thursday
RESERVE Bank Governor Tito Mboweni has blamed PAC secretary-general Thami ka Plaatjie and the Zimbabwean government for the slump in the rand, SABC radio news reports.
In an off-the-cuff comment at an African investment seminar in Stellenbosch in the Western Cape, Mboweni said “the wheels had come off” in Zimbabwe.
In a globalised world no country could behave as if it was an island, Mboweni said.
It was untenable for the highest offices in Zimbabwe to be seen supporting illegal means of land distribution – land redistribution had to be resolved according to the law.
Saying he wished to call a spade a spade, Mboweni said developments in Zimbabwe were distressing the southern African region unnecessarily.
Mboweni said developments in Zimbabwe were distressing the southern African region unnecessarily. The support expressed for the Zimbabwe land grabs by ka Plaatjie had damaged the rand, Mboweni said.
In other developments in the increasingly anarchic country, a provincial governor in Zimbabwe on Wednesday implicitly accused the British ambassador of being involved in a plot to loot white-owned farms, in a new allegation that Britain is trying to tarnish Zimbabwe’s image.
British ambassador accused of looting plot
Zimbabwe, through its official media, has accused Britain of backing white farmers in engineering a wide scale looting spree on their own properties two weeks ago in a bid to trigger international condemnation of the government’s land reforms.
On Wednesday Mashonaland West governor Peter Chanetsa suggested that western-backed aircraft had been used to record the looting in a highly organised media event, and that the British High Commissioner Brian Donnelly insisted on heading to the area at the time.
“Investigations into the forces behind the mass looting have established that the farmers instructed their farm workers to randomly loot their properties whilst two fixed wing aircraft and a helicopter equipped with powerful photographic and transmitting gadgets hovered above recording all the activities,” Chanetsa said in a statement distributed to journalists during a government-organised trip to the area.
The governor also said the activities were “in turn were beamed on BBC, CNN and other western TV and radio networks.”
“That the said aircraft were transmitting to those on the ground coincided with an approach to Governor Chanetsa by the British High Commissioner Brian Donnelly who insisted on proceeding to the Doma/Mhanfura area to assess the situation,” the statement said.
The looting, which lasted several days, was centred in the Doma and Mhanfura districts in Chinhoyi, in Zimbabwe’s northern Mashonaland West province.
Donnelly, who was part of Wednesday’s media trip, was visibly furious at the allegation.
“I reject completely that I was in any way involved,” he said.
Independent man ‘tops govt hit list’
In the meantime, the Zimbabwe correspondent of a British daily newspaper claimed in an article that his name was at the top of a hit list allegedly drawn up by the government of President Robert Mugabe.
Basildon Peta, in a front page article for The Independent, said he made the discovery while investigating rumours of a black list. However, despite fearing that police would come and arrest him, Peta vowed he would stay in the troubled former British colony to “tell the truth”.
“Is it better to be a living coward than a dead hero? This is the macabre question I am asking myself today after discovering that my name is at the top of a hit list of those to be targeted by President Robert Mugabe’s thugs,” Peta wrote in the centre-left newspaper.
He continued: “I now have to make the choice that others have made: either to stay put or quit my job and possibly my country. Hero or coward?”
The so-called hit list has been published by the privately owned Zimbabwean newspaper The Standard. The newspaper said those on the list would be “killed or harmed” before presidential elections expected next year.
According to the report, Peta was top of the list because of his work as an investigative journalist for which he has won three international awards for the foreign media.
The hit list includes Geoff Nyarota, editor of the Zimbabwe Daily News; Iden Wetherell, editor of the Zimbabwe Independent; and two Standard journalists, editor Mark Chavunduka and news editor Cornelius Nduna.
The Zimbabwean government has dismissed reports of the hit list as “rubbish, written by lunatics writing rubbish”. – Sapa, AFP
ZA*NOW:
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FEATURES:
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