ZIMBABWEANS greeted the licensing of newspapers last week with relief after a decade of repression and being fed with a staple diet of state propaganda.

ONCE again are we are being manoeuvred to celebrate mediocrity. Brazil taught our outfit of misfits and over-the-hill players how to play soccer.

THE Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) monitor for Zimbabwe Abbey Chikane was in Harare last week to further assess if the country was making progress to comply with the minimum requirements of the international diamond trading system.
Chikane’s visit came as he was preparing an interim progress report for the KPCS inter-sessional meeting to be held this month and the Kimberley Process Review Mission which will be conducted in terms of the Joint Work Plan. The KPCS monitor was also preparing his final report on Zimbabwe ahead of the plenary scheduled for November.
KPCS participating countries and industry and civil society observers gather twice a year at inter-sessional and plenary meetings, as well as in working groups and committees that meet on a regular basis.
Although Chikane last week received full cooperation from stakeholders, including government, his visit also triggered a fresh outburst by President Robert Mugabe who threatened to “pull out if necessary” from the KPCS. Besides, government arrested officials from the diamond watchdog, Centre for Research and Development (CRD), in Mutare, for merely telling the truth to Chikane.
CRD officials spoke about the need for a transparent tendering process in issuing diamond mining contracts, rampant smuggling and the theft and human rights abuses at the Chiadzwa diamonds fields. That provoked the wrath of Mugabe’s security apparatus which has interests in Chiadzwa diamonds.
But the most unhelpful development was Mugabe’s continued threats to pull out of the KPCS. This was not the first time he has issued such threats. He did so recently and seems determined to continue doing so even at such a critical juncture for Zimbabwe in terms of the Chiadzwa diamond trade. The same threats have been echoed by Mines minister Obert Mpofu.
Mugabe’s threats once again reminded us how much of a liability he has become to the country. He is just out of touch and most of the time off message. Whenever he speaks, either he is threatening someone, spewing venom or just emitting hot air.
By stubbornly clinging to his failed policies and sterile rhetoric, Mugabe is showing that he has not adapted to the new politics of consensus in town and still remains handcuffed to the past while conveniently forgetting the damage he inflicted on the country at the zenith of his corrupt and incompetent rule.

THE contretemps last weekend in which MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai was taken to task by permanent secretary in the Media ministry George Charamba for seeking to address members of the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) is illustrative of the problems the commission faces in the fulfilment of its duties.

I HAD only been in Dakar, Senegal one day when I began to see possibilities for Zimbabweans here. 

THE call for elections seems to be growing louder by the day.

EARLIER assessments by this newspaper of Zimbabwe’s state of readiness or lack of it for next month’s Fifa 2010 World Cup painted a rather gloomy picture: bad roads, sub-standard hotels, poor communication systems, outdated banking modes and run-down cities and towns.

RESERVE Bank Governor Gideon Gono’s pronouncements in October 2006 on the ineptitude characterising the country’s parastatals may have been dismissed as the ramblings of an exchequer chief obsessed with interference in all sectors of the economy.

GOVERNMENT’S decision to compel foreign-owned companies in the country to “cede” controlling stakes to “indigenous” Zimbabweans at a time when the economy is emerging from the woods will do nothing to empower ordinary citizens or engineer national recovery.

DEPUTY Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara’s suggestion that sanctions are scaring away investors and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s dismissal of investors’ concerns smack of hypocrisy, especially coming from people who should know better.

JUST when we thought that the dust was settling — with the acquittal of MDC treasurer Roy Bennett this week — it is not over yet. The state which apparently goofed in the prosecution of the legislator has in its wisdom decided to appeal the High Court ruling.

PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Monday received the W Averell Harriman Democracy Award in Washington DC where he spoke of Africa’s need to replace the “Big Men” of the continent with “democratically elected leaders and strong democratic institutions”.

THE apparition of elections, since the fraudulent June 2008 presidential run-off, has haunted Zimbabwe, yet politicians from both the MDC-T and Zanu PF argue that another go at the polls would solve the country’s problems.

PRESIDENT Mahmoud Ahmadinejad campaigned in Uganda and Zimbabwe. Behind the scenes, his flunkies twisted arms and offered favours. For weeks, feelers were sent out to all kinds of unlikely allies. What was the diplomatic prize at stake? Nothing less than a seat on the United Nations council on human rights.

LAST weekend Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai went back to his roots, the trade unions.

IT has always been a source of concern to us that the losers of the elections two years ago continue to hold sway in the way this country is governed.

FOR a people that had endured over a century of oppressive and discriminatory imperialist colonial rule, the lowering of the Union Jack  and, in its place, the raising of the Zimbabwe flag at Rufaro Stadium on April 18 1980 was an enduring symbolic occasion for celebration.

THE failure by the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC to curb growing violence in the party is disturbing and gives credence to reports that its leaders are fanning the brutality –– negating the founding principles of the party that placed so much emphasis on a non-violent democratic struggle.

TEN years ago, at a remote rural centre called Murambinda growth point in Buhera in Manicaland, MDC activists Tichaona Chiminya and Talent Mabika were brutally slain in broad daylight.

SOUTH Africa regularly hosts major international sporting events which have boosted its economy through direct and indirect benefits. Zimbabwe should have taken advantage of its location and tourist resorts to reap benefits from this, mainly through spin-offs, but that has not been the case.