EU to extend sanctions on Zimbabwe - diplomats

By Ingrid Melander

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is set to extend sanctions on
Zimbabwe for another year including an arms embargo, travel ban and asset
freeze on President Robert Mugabe and other top officials, EU diplomats said
on Friday.

The 27-member bloc, which accuses Harare of widespread human rights
violations, plans to go ahead with the move despite the risk that the travel
ban on Mugabe could again scupper longstanding plans for an EU-Africa
summit, they added.

The list of visa bans and freezing of assets includes more than a hundred
ministers and officials. The EU accuses them of human rights violations, and
violations of freedom of speech and assembly in Zimbabwe.

"They will be prolonged for another year," an EU diplomat said of existing
sanctions due to expire on February 20.

"Every year the European Commission does a report on the situation in
Zimbabwe, it has not changed so the conclusions are the same," said an
official at the EU executive.

The sanctions were initially triggered by the controversial distribution of
white-owned commercial farms to mainly landless blacks and Mugabe's disputed
re-election in 2002.

Critics say the seizures have destroyed Zimbabwe's economy, turning the
country from a regional agricultural leader to a nation barely able to feed
itself amid a deepening crisis marked by food and fuel shortages and
inflation above 1,200 percent.

Mugabe says the sanctions are responsible for Zimbabwe's economic crisis and
he says his land policy was necessary because former colonial power Britain
did not make good on promises at the time of Zimbabwe's independence in
1980.

Eldred Masunungure, chairman at University of Zimbabwe's Political Science
Department, said the EU sanctions have failed to reach their objective and
have if anything hit the population of Zimbabwe.

"I think the sanctions by their very nature are a blunt instrument and their
impact tends to spread beyond the target persons," Masunungure said.

"On the government's side they have been felt but as you can see Mugabe has
not changed his policies."

Plans for an EU-Africa Summit have been on hold since 2003 because Britain
and several other EU countries refused to attend if Mugabe was invited,
while African states refused to attend if he was not invited, diplomats
noted on Friday.

"The big issue of course is how to organise this summit," one said, adding
that the EU may try to convince Zimbabwe and other African countries that
Zimbabwe be represented at that summit by a senior official who is not on
the embargo list.

"We will need good political will and some imagination," another said,
noting that Britain and possibly other countries would oppose to a temporary
lift of the visa ban to allow Mugabe to come to an EU-Africa Summit.

Untreated sewage polluting Harare water supply

Zimbabwe's biggest sewage plant has broken down, sending
tonnes of raw effluent into a major river and polluting the water supply of
the capital Harare, city authorities said on Monday.

Harare's Firle sewage plant has been down since last week and requires at
least 20 billion Zimbabwean dollars (U.S.$80 million) to fix, a huge burden
for a country already in the grip of its worst economic crisis in decades.

Officials from the national water authority said half of the raw sewage from
Harare -- a city of some 1.5 million -- was now discharged into a river that
flows into the capital's main water reservoir, the state-owned Herald
newspaper reported.

The Zimbabwe National Water Authority declined to comment further on the
issue on Monday. But the Herald said the discharge of the untreated sewage
was "posing a serious health hazard downstream."

Harare's sewage crisis is the latest symptom of an economic crisis which has
left the country close to collapse and many key infrastructure facilities
from roads to power plants badly in need of upgrade or repair.

Zimbabwe has the world's highest inflation rate of 1,281 percent and
unemployment has surged to about 80 percent under an economic crisis many
critics blame on President Robert Mugabe's government.

The Herald said the Firle plant was completely inoperable.

"Biological nutrient removal plants, inlet works, primary settling tanks,
biofilters and effluent pumps as well as clarifiers, digesters and boilers
at the plant are all down," the newspaper said.

Mugabe, 82, and the southern African country's sole ruler since independence
from Britain in 1980, denies he has ruined one the continent's most
promising economies, saying it is a victim of sabotage by opponents of his
black nationalist policies.

Farmers' union says only few whites offered land

Tuesday 09 January 2007

HARARE - The Zimbabwe government has again promised to return land to former
white farmers but the dispossessed farmers on Monday told ZimOnline that
only a handful of them had been offered new farms out of hundreds that had
applied.

State Security and also Lands Minister Didymus Mutasa earlier on Sunday said
his department would offer farms to "former (white) farm owners who are
genuine farmers who desire to continue farming in this country" and help
resuscitate the mainstay agricultural sector that has collapsed since farm
seizures began in 2000.

The government, which had vowed never to return land it seized from whites,
first backtracked on that position last November when it gave 99-year leases
to about half a dozen whites who were part of a group of about 100 black
farmers to receive the life-long leases.

But the white-representative Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said in total
only a handful of former white farmers have been given land out of 700 that
had applied to Mutasa's department following earlier pronouncements by the
government that it would also allocate farms to whites.

CFU spokeswoman Emily Crooks said: "The situation is that a larger number of
farmers applied for land but the minister (Mutasa) has not responded. Only a
couple of farmers were recently issued with offer leases."

Mutasa was not immediately available to explain delays in allocating land to
former white farmers many with vast experience to produce food in short
supply in the country.

Zimbabwe has relied on food imports since 2001 mainly due to failure by new
black farmers to maintain production on former white farms.

Poor performance in the mainstay agricultural sector has also had far
reaching consequences as hundreds of thousands have lost jobs while the
manufacturing sector, starved of inputs from the sector, is operating below
30 percent capacity. - ZimOnline

Petrol attack on home of Zimbabwean rights activist

The raw story

dpa German Press Agency
Published: Sunday December 31, 2006

Harare- Unknown attackers poured petrol round the Harare
home of a prominent Zimbabwean rights activist and set the fuel
alight, Lovemore Madhuku claimed on Sunday.
Madhuku, the chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly
(NCA) said he and the other nine occupants of his home in the medium-
density suburb of Waterfalls woke shortly after midnight on Saturday
to find flames surrounding the house.

We were woken up by the sound of screaming, Madhuku told Deutsche
Presse-Agentur dpa in a telephone interview.

After ten minutes those inside the house broke windows, poured out
water and managed to douse the flames, he said.

"We discovered a five-litre bottle of petrol hidden next to the
wall," Madhuku said.

There was no independent confirmation of the attack.

Madhuku said he suspected state agents were behind the incident.
The NCA has mounted sustained anti-government campaigns since its
formation in 1999, and Madhuku and other members have been arrested
on several occasions.

But there have been reports of discontent within NCA this year,
mainly because of Madhuku's decision to continue as chairman. Other
NCA members were seriously opposed to prolonging his leadership.

© 2006 - dpa German Press Agency