News Africa Extended

News Africa Extended

Zimbabwe’s accidental anti-Mugabe hero

Posted: 20 Jul 2016 07:30 PM PDT

With a Bible in one hand and an iPhone in the other, Evan Mawarire makes an unlikely adversary to Robert Mugabe.

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Johannesburg - With a Bible in one hand and iPhone in the other, Evan Mawarire makes an unlikely adversary to Robert Mugabe, who has seen off foes from apartheid assassins and union leaders to Tony Blair and the IMF over 36 years in power.

Zimbabwe's only ruler since independence from Britain in 1980, Mugabe led the country from the embers of civil war and repressive white-minority rule, and has held power since with a mixture of tactical cunning, obdurate African nationalism and, where necessary, the brute force of his security services.

But he has never come up against anything like the slick salesmanship and free-wheeling social media savvy of Mawarire, a 39-year-old preacher who has become a household name by wrapping himself, literally, in the Zimbabwe flag and posting critical videos on the Internet.

The stakes are high for both men. Over the years, many who have dared challenge Mugabe have been arrested and tortured. Others have disappeared or died in mysterious circumstances.

Meanwhile, all Zimbabweans, including those in the ruling Zanu-PF party, know that time is not on the side of the 92-year-old president.

Mawarire was arrested and charged with treason, a crime that carries up to 20 years in jail, having inspired a mass “stay away” by public and private sector workers this month, the biggest act of civil disobedience against Mugabe in a decade.

When he appeared in the dock, scores of lawyers pitched up to tear police procedure to shreds and argue that Internet videos attacking corruption and economic decline were free speech, not a threat to the state.

After a long delay, the magistrate threw out the charge and released Mawarire. Riot police, batons at the ready, looked on, nonplussed as hundreds of supporters danced, sang and prayed in defiance.

Mawarire portrayed it as a defining moment in the evolution of a nation and its relationship with authority.

“We've turned a corner and become a new people - more expressive, not afraid any more,” he told Reuters during a visit to Johannesburg. “We are a different force altogether. It's not a fist. It's a Bible.”

‘Regime-change darling’

Mugabe and state media have not held back in attacking Mawarire, while police have warned people of the dangers of spreading “subversive” material via social media - sure signs the administration is taking the threat seriously.

The Sunday Mail, loyal to Mugabe, described Mawarire as the “new darling of the West's regime-change agenda”, adding that he had left Zimbabwe after his release last week to “debrief his handlers” in the United States.

Mugabe himself said as much at a public funeral this week.

“Beware these men of the cloth. Not all of them are true preachers of the Bible,” he said. “The Mawarires, if they don't like to live with us, let them go to those who are sponsoring them, to the countries that are sponsoring them.”

Mawarire, however, insisted he was an accidental dissident catapulted into the limelight in April after a Facebook video clip in which he vented his frustration at bringing up two young daughters in a crumbling country hit a national nerve.

“I'm just an ordinary guy. The only distance I've ever had with the US and the UK has been when I've gone to apply for a travel visa. And that's it. I have no support from them, no communication, none whatsoever,” he said.

“I don't need anybody to come to me to tell me that I'm hungry or to tell me that the education system is not working. I see it every day. It's a life I live every day.”

Crossing the line

Mawarire's personal and online history seems to support his account of having risen to public influence by accident.

Born to a well-off family, he was educated at a Harare private school but sent to a rural backwater in his last year after failing mock exams, an experience he said opened his eyes to the widespread poverty in the former British colony.

He then trained as an auto-electrician, a vocation that explains his affinity with technology, before heading to Bible school and a career as an evangelical preacher and part-time public speaker, a not uncommon path in a deeply devout nation.

Most of his Facebook posts before April consist of semi-religious self-help snippets shot on a mobile phone urging Zimbabweans to stand up for themselves. At most they attracted a few hundred hits, he said.

That all changed on April 20, when a video in which he urged Zimbabweans to take pride in their flag and the ideals it embodied went viral among tech-savvy urban Zimbabweans.

“If I have crossed the line then I believe it was long overdue. I'm not a politician, not an activist... just a citizen,” he said in an accompanying Facebook post with the Twitter hashtag #ThisFlag.

Since then, his status as pure 'citizen' has gone, with a host of anti-Mugabe political big-hitters from ex-Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to former vice-president Joice Mujuru adding their support.

Mawarire also spoke of tilting #ThisFlag towards elections in 2018 - a sensible strategy, perhaps, for somebody just one misstep away from another treason charge.

But two years is a long time in the politics of any country and Mawarire admitted he was scared of what he had taken on. His visit to South Africa, he insisted, was pre-arranged.

“Some of the things I've said and done are things that in times past have not be allowed. But we are in a season where fear is being broken,” he said.

“It's not so much the movement that I'm prepared to go to jail for. It's the future of my children that I'm prepared to go to jail for.”

REUTERS

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Zanu PF Youth League threatens anti-Mugabe protesters

Posted: 20 Jul 2016 11:30 AM PDT

Zanu PF Youth League National Commissar Innocent Hamandishe threatened to deal with anyone who dared publicly oppose Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

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Harare - Zanu PF Youth League National Commissar Innocent Hamandishe on Wednesday threatened that the party’s youth will take the law into their own hands and deal with anyone who dared publicly oppose Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

Addressing party youths who gathered at the Zanu PF Headquarters in Harare, Hamandishe said the #Tajamuka group and #This Flag Pastor Evan Mawarire should not intimidate Mugabe as they would face the full wrath of the party youths.

“Next time we will ask the police to step aside and let us deal with them. We don’t want people who try to instill fear in our president. You tell us about #Tajamuka, we have done that a long time ago before you,” he said.

He said those who had ambitions of running the country should not do it through violent protests but should wait for elections and run for the presidency.

“We have been keeping quiet because we thought he [Mawarire] was a man of God but now we have realised he is bent on forming a political party. Go on and let us meet in the elections,” he said.

The utterances by Hamandishe come just a few hours after Mugabe directly attacked Mawarire, saying he should leave the country and join those who were sponsoring him.

“The Mawarires and those who believe in that way of living in our country, well, they are not part of us in thinking. If they don’t like to live with us, let them go to those who are sponsoring them, to the countries of those who are sponsoring them,” Mugabe said on Tuesday, at the burial of former Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Charles Utete. Utete collapsed and died at his Harare home last Friday.

Hamandishe also urged the youths to deal ruthlessly with anyone found invading land in urban areas, saying all the land left was now for the youths.

“Youth must be the eyes of the president and deal with land invaders. The president said that the remaining land is for the youths. Whoever invades land, we will deal with you. It is you who will go to the police,” he said, without specifying the action,” he said.

He warned leaders in party structures to desist from corruptly allocating residential stands to their friends who were not party youths.

“We will not tolerate any party chairpersons who bring people from outside the party. Only Zanu youths must benefit from these stands,” he said.

African News Agency

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Zanu PF lures Zim youth vote with land

Posted: 20 Jul 2016 11:18 AM PDT

Zanu PF party has allegedly made available a total of 1 300 hectares of land in Bulawayo and Harare for residential stands for youths in the party structures.

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Harare - In a bid to lure the elusive youth vote in Zimbabwe, the ruling Zanu PF party has allegedly made available a total of 1 300 hectares of land in Bulawayo and Harare for residential stands for youths in the party structures.

Zanu PF Youth League Deputy Secretary, Kudzai Chipanga, revealed to thousands of party supporters from across the country, who gathered at their Headquarters in Harare Wednesday for a meeting, that the Bulawayo Metropolitan province had been given 300 hectares of land while Harare Metropolitan Province received 1000 hectares.

Harare is Zimbabwe's capital city while Bulawayo is the country's second largest city. “We are happy to say that President Mugabe has started responding to our request for residential stands. We want to thank the President because he gave an order to the Minister of Local Government, Cde Kasukuwere to dish out stands and we speak, youth in Bulawayo got 300 hectares of land at Imvuchwa Farm and graders are already making roads and we expect that in six months' time the land will be ready for occupation.

In Harare President Mugabe gave us 1000 hectares of land for residential purposes,” Chipanga said.

He said the stands for Harare were in Chishawasha (300 hectares), Harare South (500 hectares), and Norton (200 hectares).

The youth leader made it categorically clear that only Zanu PF youths would benefit from the empowerment programmes, saying they would soon be moving in to allocate artisanal mining licences to party youths, who he said had the right to extract the country's minerals without harassment from law enforcement agents.

“Distribution will be done at the ward and cell levels under the supervision of cell chairpersons. If you have not been attending Zanu PF meetings in your area, beware of poverty, you will not get anything,” he said.

Chipanga said the Urban Development Corporation (UDCORP) was in the process of developing maps for the stands in Norton and Harare South while those in Chishawasha had already been pegged.

“This is responding to the needs of the people and we are expecting more land because our wish is to get to 2018 elections with every youth having keys to his own house. We can't be a ruling party of lodgers,” he said.

The Zanu PF Youth leader said they were expecting the Minister of Mines and others line ministers to give them feed-back on the regularization of artisanal mines so that the youths could also benefit.

He said some Zanu PF youths would also be employed in the Harare-Chirundu Highway dualisation project, vowing that only ruling party youths should benefit.

Chipanga said youths wishing to benefit from empowerment projects should join the former liberation war movement and not stay in opposition politics where there was “poverty”. He attacked those behind the #Tajamuka pressure group, saying they were misguided youths, adding that the church must concentrate on praying for the country and not join mainstream politics.

“Those who are saying Tajamuka are trying to deflate our ball when we are saying we should be scoring the ball. They are minnows in this game; we started in 1980 and liberated this country, we did it in 2000 and we got our land back and now we have done it again and our youths have got stands,” he said.

African News Agency

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Zambia’s Post evacuated after attack threat

Posted: 20 Jul 2016 08:15 AM PDT

Journalists from Zambia’s embattled Post newspaper evacuated their premises after hearing that Patriotic Front supporters planned to attack the paper.

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Lusaka - Journalists from Zambia's embattled Post newspaper evacuated their premises on Wednesday after hearing that supporters of the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) party planned to attack the paper.

They set up an “open-air” newsroom at the Catholic Cathedral of the Child Jesus, outside the office of the Archbishop of Lusaka.

As they were leaving the newspaper premises, busloads of PF supporters were arriving, one of the journalists said. The journalist, who did not want to be named, added that police were not interested in protecting the newspaper.

“And at midnight yesterday [Tuesday], 15 heavily armed policemen and five army officers raided the house of our IT manager, who lives near our offices, to search for 'illegal goods',” the reporter said.

“But one of the officers present there disclosed that they had been sent to look for today's [Wednesday’s] edition of The Post because they were told that Andrew's house was being used as a distribution centre. But they found nothing.

“This intimidation will continue on us, but we will not yield,” the journalist added.

The Post has angered the government of President Edgar Lungu with its sharp criticism. Recently, editor Fred M'membe was arrested and charged with tax evasion which he dismissed as being politically motivated.

When the PF supporters arrived at The Post's offices and found them deserted, they left, the journalist said.

African News Agency

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