Nieuws over Zimbabwe

Macht in Zimbabwe
Begin 2009 was Zimbabwe volledig failliet en geïsoleerd en moest ook de Zanu-pf van Robert Mugabe erkennen dat het zo niet meer verder kon. Er kwam een regering van nationale eenheid waarin beide vleugels van de oppositiepartij MDC in zijn opgenomen.

Met het aantreden van de nieuwe regering werd de, inmiddels waardeloos geworden, zimdollar afgeschaft en begon het werk aan een voorzichtig herstel van de economie van Zimbabwe. De MDC werd vooral verantwoordelijk voor de ministeries die de economische en sociale taken uitvoeren en voor het ministerie van financiën. De Zanu-pf bleef verantwoordelijk voor alle ministeries die gaan over veiligheidsdiensten, politie en leger.

Financiën
Kort voor het aantreden van de nieuwe regering werd Gideon Gono herbenoemd door Mugabe als president van de Centrale Bank van Zimbabwe. Het beleid van Gono in de afgelopen was desastreus voor de economie van Zimbabwe, het leidde tot hyperinflatie krimp van het Bruto Nationaal Product en grootschalige corruptie en zwarthandel. Gono is echter van groot belang voor de Zanu-pf omdat hij de afgelopen jaren heeft gezorgd voor de financiering van de partij en haar (geweld)campagnes.

De internationale gemeenschap weigerde dan ook prompt om Zimbabwe weer op te nemen in de internationale financiële systemen en financiële steun te verlenen aan de Zimbabwaanse overheid. Inmiddels is wel een soort parallel systeem opgezet waarbij steun wordt verleend via NGO’s en waarbij mondjesmaat geld via het Zimbabwaanse ministerie van financiën wordt doorgesluisd.
Het IMF heeft recent een nieuwe lening toegezegd voor Zimbabwe onder de voorwaarde dat achterstanden worden betaald. Dat is tot nu toe niet gebeurd.

Recht, media en vrijheid van meningsuiting
Zimbabwe is nooit een toonbeeld van vrijheid van meningsuiting en persvrijheid geweest. Er zijn enkele onafhankelijk kranten, radio en televisie zijn echter nog altijd een staatsmonopolie. Lange tijd was er echter wel sprake van een redelijk onafhankelijk rechtsspraak – hoewel machtshebbers vaak wel wegkwamen met kwade zaakjes – in Zimbabwe. Sinds 2000 is de onafhankelijk rechtsspraak echter systematisch om zeep geholpen, onafhankelijk rechters werden ontslagen en Zanu-pf partijgetrouwen benoemd.

In december 2008 werd Johannes Tomana benoemd tot procureur-generaal. Tomona is een Zanu-pf functionaris en trouw aan Mugabe. Tijdens de verkiezingen in 2008 heeft hij veel MDC leden, mensenrechtenactivisten en anderen laten oppakken en opsluiten zonder enige vorm van proces. Veel van deze mensen zijn zwaar gemarteld tijdens hun gevangenschap. Tegelijkertijd werden geen vervolgingen ingesteld tegen Zanu-pf leden die zich schuldig hebben gemaakt aan moorden, martelingen en verkrachtingen.

Met het aantreden van de regering van nationale eenheid zijn geen afspraken gemaakt over het herstellen van de vrijheid van meningsuiting en over de onafhankelijke media. Terwijl op de tv, radio en de regeringskranten de propaganda voor de Zanu-pf ongehinderd doorgaat worden onafhankelijke media op alle mogelijke wijze dwars gezeten. Een mediacommissie die over toelating van kranten en andere media op de markt gaat, is al meer dan een half jaar in ontwikkeling en nog steeds niet benoemd. De staatsveiligheidswetten waarmee de media zijn gemuilkorfd, bestaan echter nog steeds en wijziging van die wetten lijkt ook bij de MDC geen echte prioriteit te hebben.
Weliswaar is afgesproken dat onafhankelijke media weer kunnen opereren en kunnen worden geregistreerd onder de Broadcasting Services Act, maar deze wet en de Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act blijven bestaan en daarmee de bedreiging van vervolging en gevangenisstraf voor journalisten die dingen schrijven die de regering onwelgevallig zijn.

Ondertussen worden demonstraties door de politie uiteengeslagen en worden mensenrechtenactivisten, vakbondsleden en anderen nog steeds gearresteerd, mishandeld en vervolgd. Vooral op het platteland zijn milities van de Zanu-pf en soldaten van het leger actief met intimidaties, mishandelingen en moorden. 88% van de mensenrechtenschendingen komen voor rekening van de Zanu-pf, De facties van de MDC zijn verantwoordelijk voor ieder ruim 5%. De gewelddadige overname van boerderijen gaat nog steeds door. Vooral blanke landeigenaren en hun zwarte personeel – naar schatting 60.000 mensen in de laatste twee jaar – zijn het slachtoffer.

Nieuwe grondwet
De huidige grondwet van Zimbabwe stamt uit het overleg over de onafhankelijkheid van Zimbabwe eind jaren zeventig. De grondwet is vele malen geamendeerd waarbij de macht van de president is versterkt.
Tijdens het overleg over een regering van nationale eenheid is bepaald dat in een nieuwe grondwet wordt opgesteld en dat die grondwet wordt voorgelegd aan het volk in een referendum. De Zanu-pf probeert nu een ontwerpgrondwet door te drukken waarover tussen partijen is onderhandeld in 2007 en die bekend staat onder de naam Kariba grondwet. In dit ontwerp blijft veel macht voorbehouden aan de president van Zimbabwe. Het veroveren van het presidentschap is dan voldoende voor de Zanu-pf om haar macht te behouden. De Kariba grondwet had moeten worden ingevoerd voor de verkiezingen in 2008, dat is niet gebeurd.

Wankel evenwicht
Een kleine elite gesteund door de top van het leger, politie en de veiligheidsdienst blijft vasthouden aan de macht. Het zijn deze mensen die financieel enorm hebben geprofiteerd tijdens de crisis van de afgelopen jaren en geen afstand willen doen van hun verworvenheden. De tactiek die daarbij wordt gevoerd is om alle hen onwelgevallige beslissingen eindeloos vooruit te schuiven – mediahervormingen, economische hervormingen, wetshandhaving etc.

Een probleem blijft de zwakte van de oppositiepartij MDC, zowel in structuur als leiderschap. De MDC is geen eenheid en partijleider Tsvangirai mist het tactische vernuft om veel te bereiken tegen de ervaren en gewetenloze Zanu-pf machthebbers. Veel parlementsleden van de MDC blijken ook niet vies van het incasseren van voordelen van de macht – auto’s, vergoedingen – waarmee de geloofwaardigheid van de partij niet wordt verhoogd.

De ontwikkelingen in Zimbabwe blijven traag verlopen. Dat gaat ten koste van jongeren, scholieren, mensen zonder vaste baan – 80% van de bevolking – zij worden niet uitbetaald in Amerikaanse dollars en moeten daardoor rondkomen van de opbrengst van kleine tuintjes, ruilhandel en voedselhulp.

Een Zanu-pf minister heeft in een interview laten weten dat de regering van nationale eenheid best vijf kan blijven zitten tot de volgende parlementsverkiezingen. Er is geen haast om de macht af te staan.

Er zijn steeds meer berichten over voorbereidingen aan de kant van de Zanu-pf, het leger en de milities om geweld te gaan gebruiken tegen oppositiegroepen. Het is daarom nog steeds niet uitgesloten dat Zimbabwe een nieuwe en dit keer mogelijk veel ernstiger geweldsspiraal terechtkomt.

Leen van de Polder

Onderstaand artikel is een analyse van de situatie in Zimbabwe afkomstige van de website zimonline en geeft naar onze mening een goed beeld van de situatie in Zimbabwe.

Stench of Mugabe's decaying rule hangs heavy

By Peta Thornycroft., 10 mei 2009

Harare - If the state of the toilets in public and even private buildings in Harare were a measure of the inclusive government's progress, then it has failed miserably.

In the courts, in the ministries, in all public buildings and some privately owned office blocks, the putrid smell of human waste is perhaps President Robert Mugabe's most telling legacy.

Emaciated prisoners in fetid cells where water pipes have not been fixed since the days of Rhodesian rule are another legacy of Zanu-PF's staggering failure, which goes way beyond the 10 years of political turmoil since the Movement for Democratic Change emerged.

Even top government schools which used to produce some of the best education results are shells. Some of the bricks and mortar are still there, but the windows, desks, doors, blackboards and books are missing.

Despite this aversion to maintenance, Mugabe's power is slowly ebbing, mostly because he can't get hold of the cash for his power base.

The redetention on Tuesday of 18 activists accused of a repetitive plot - trying to overthrow Mugabe - was the most serious Zanu-PF breach of the political agreement to date, even if 15 were freed on bail 24 hours later.

There are so many breaches of the political agreement it is astonishing that it still there at all. But neither side has any alternative.

As one diplomat said after the rearrests: "Prime Minister (Morgan) Tsvangirai can't threaten to walk out more than once. So he has a very difficult balancing act. But we do wish he, personally, would speak out more critically."

Mugabe never gives up, even as his control - now limited to a diminishing group of thugs in the riot police and their senior officers, the hard core of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and military intelligence - is waning.

The ordinary policeman is much more interested in organising a roadblock to extract bribes from motorists than looking for the mythical weapons Mugabe claims photo-journalist Shadreck Manyere, still in detention in hospital on Friday, had stashed somewhere among his laptop and cameras.

It has begun to dawn on some Zanu-PF civil servants that the US Marines, the British Army and Rhodesians on Zimmer frames have not been massing on the border, as their CIO masters have been telling them.

Mugabe has been at this particular game - keeping Zimbabwe on a war footing for a mythical invading force - for decades.

His methods are not working as well as they used to, but he is not finished yet. Three times in the past week he put off a meeting to address his violations of the political agreement.

Will he make concessions after he has attended President Jacob Zuma's inauguration? Probably not. Then what?

Then the MDC will have to recommend that the SADC tries to resolve outstanding issues, which even some of its apologists recognise are, indeed, outstanding.

Emerging from this mish-mash unity government are insights into Zanu-PF.

It is, mostly, spectacularly incompetent and Mugabe knows it. He even makes jokes about some party officials behind their backs over lunch.

Mugabe, at 85, is in control of his petulant generals and not the other way around. He is not senile, nor is he in poor health.

He is the chief manipulator and is trying to work out how to get his hands on foreign funds to rescue Zanu-PF from obliteration. The party has run out of money and it has always needed huge resources to keep going.

The CIO needs projects to keep money flowing to its coffers, and there are fewer and fewer ways of creating new enemies to jump-start campaigns and deploy personnel.

The cancellation of the Zimbabwe dollar was the blow Mugabe hadn't counted on.

As economist John Robertson said last week, central bank governor Gideon Gono can no longer manipulate the exchange rate, allowing Zanu-PF cronies to exchange one US dollar for trillions of Zimbabwe dollars.

Mugabe also uses his other weapon, charm, to disarm his opponents.

"He is so charming we sometimes have to remind ourselves what he has done to us personally and to the country," said a top businessman after meeting Mugabe.

If Mugabe were to die or retire his departure, in practical terms, would not be noticed.

He plays no role in government operations except the arrests and violence, disruption and theft of crops from white-owned farms.

Could he stop that? Yes, he could, but he chooses not to. The white farmers were always going to be a soft target, according to one ex-CIO official.

Zanu-PF tried to manipulate a teachers' strike this week, but it was outmanoeuvred by the Progressive Teachers' Union because teachers would rather earn $100 than nothing.

Mugabe has had nothing to do with the reopening of hospitals, schools, a few gold mines, or the token payment of civil servants in a currency they can use.

These are the few fruits of the unity government so far, as well as much less political violence, fewer arrests, and shops groaning with imported groceries.

Meanwhile, Mugabe has to constantly violate the political agreement of last September to push the MDC into the covers.

He needs to find a way to protect himself from the taint of gross violence during last year's elections. None of his agents who committed the violence on his orders have been prosecuted, even though their names are known and there are witnesses longing to testify.

So that is another reason he fouls the political agreement: he is looking for a deal to get them and him off the hook.

http://www.iol.co.za/

This article was originally published on page 14 of Cape Argus on May 10, 2009

The woman who took on Mugabe

Freedom campaigner Jenni Williams is a persistent thorn in the side of the Zimbabwean dictator. She tells Elizabeth Day about her shocking experiences of police brutality and jail - and how the fight for justice has meant sacrificing a normal family

Elizabeth Day, The Observer , 10 mei 2009

Of all the terrible things that have happened to Jenni Williams over the past six years - and there have been many - there is one incident that stands out from the rest.

It was October 2008. She had been arrested by Zimbabwean police after taking part in a peaceful protest outside a government complex. The marchers were asking for food aid, in a population where three-quarters of the population is starving under Robert Mugabe's oppressive regime. Bundled into a police van, Williams and a colleague were taken to prison and denied bail.

She was in jail for three weeks. On one "particularly bad day" Williams recalls being forced by the guards to sit for hours in the burning sunshine. "I am of light skin, they knew I was going to get very badly sunburnt, and we were just made to sit there for some form of punishment," she says. "And when we tried to object, they started accusing myself and my colleague of being lesbians because she had been beaten and I was rubbing her back.

"So it was a very bad day, and our lawyer had not been able to come to give us any update on our appeal process and I just thought: I don't know how we're going to get through this."

At 47, Jenni Williams has experienced more brutality than most of us will face in a lifetime. She is the founder of the underground activist movement Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza), an organisation that, since 2003, has been mobilising Zimbabwean women to demonstrate in defence of their political, economic and social rights. In a fragmented country where women are marginalised by patriarchy, downtrodden by severe financial hardship (official inflation runs at 7,000%) and weakened by the acute lack of food or clothing for themselves and their children, Williams faces an almost insurmountable daily struggle simply to keep going.

Under Mugabe's dictatorship, the threat of state-sanctioned violence is ever-present. Despite being a movement dedicated to peaceful protest, Woza's 70,000 members are routinely arrested, beaten and intimidated.

As an outspoken critic of the current Zimbabwean regime, Williams is one of the most troublesome thorns in Mugabe's side. In a region where anti-government protesters have an uncomfortable habit of disappearing or turning up dead, her day-to-day existence is hazardous: although her main residence is in Bulawayo, south-west Zimbabwe, she moves in and out of safe houses and never stays more than six months in one place. She has been arrested 33 times.

Once she was abducted by police for 24 hours and driven 45km outside the city to an unknown destination. "They were telling me they were going to murder me and bury me and no one would ever know," says Williams. "Luckily for me, we ended up in a police station and some of the police officers were very sympathetic. There was no food there but one of those police officers came and whispered into the window of our cell: 'I'm bringing you food from your house. I know you are hungry.' So sometimes in life when you suspect the absolute worst thing, God sends you an angel."

She says, when I ask her if she ever loses hope in humanity, that this is her answer: finding goodness where you least expect it. Even at her lowest point in that prison yard, forced to sit for hours in the sunshine, her skin burning and her spirits shattered, something happened to salvage her hopes and keep her going. "My colleagues came and told me that Barack Obama had won and was going to be the next president of America and it was - " She breaks off, then emits a loud squeal of delight: "YES! And that made the pain not so bad."

In person, Jenni Williams looks as strong as she sounds. She has a broad face, substantial shoulders and thick, powerful arms. Her hair is braided in tight plaits that snake across her skull. She is mixed race - her mechanic father, who was absent for most of her upbringing, was black. Her mother Margaret is the daughter of an IRA man who emigrated to what was then Rhodesia from County Armagh. He became a gold prospector and married a local woman from the Matabele tribe.

Williams readily admits that dissidence runs in the family: "It's an incredible mix of this Irish and this Matabelean nation, which is a fighting nation. My grandmother was once arrested during the early 80s because the Mugabe regime said she had arms caches. That's the melting pot that I come from."

At first the combination of her looks and her history can make Williams seem a slightly forbidding presence, but as soon as you talk to her you realise that she has an internal composure that gives her a tender, almost maternal quality. She comes across as a protector rather than an aggressor. When she talks, it is in a bubbling stream of flat Zimbabwean vowels spliced with laughter. She smiles a lot.

We meet on one of her infrequent visits to the UK - she is deliberately vague about her movements in case the Zimbabwean authorities attempt to stop her, but she has the backing of Amnesty International and this time has been able to move around relatively freely.

"We [Woza] get scared like anyone else," she says. "But I think what gives us the commitment to continue to do the things we do is that we speak 100% the truth, and we speak it from the moral authority that we are the mothers of the nation, and if your mother cannot speak out on your behalf then you have no one that will speak for you. So that is why we are committed to doing this: because we want a better future for our children."

The horrible irony for Williams is that being the mother of a troubled nation means she finds it increasingly difficult to be the mother of her own family. Her husband Michael, an electrician, and her three adult children - one daughter, Natalie, 28, from her first marriage, and two sons, Christopher, 24, and Richard, 22 - all live in the UK. It would be too dangerous for them to stay in Zimbabwe.

When Woza organised its first Valentine's Day march in 2003 (14 February, with its connotations of love and understanding, is a crucial date for the organisation, which promotes strategic nonviolence), Christopher, then 18, was arrested for handing out roses. Although the Zimbabwean constitution grants the right to peaceful protest, the authorities argue that it cannot be carried out in the streets without prior notification.

"I couldn't do anything," says Williams now, twisting her hands on the table in front of her. "It was just deeply frustrating for me to be a mother and see that my child had now gotten arrested for something that I was doing, and I was helpless. And so with Christopher's arrest, my mother-in-law [who lives in the UK] got a little bit worried and said: 'Look, please can we have the kids?'

"Also, because of my activism there were threats that they would be taken and put in the youth militia, where they train these kids to be violent, so I had no other option but to allow my two sons, who were still living in the house, to come and be in the UK. My daughter is much older; she had already left home.

"It's not easy for me to live apart from them. But we are very, very busy leading this organisation. I already work 14 to 15-hour days. There's no way right now I can be a mother to my children because I'm too occupied being a mother to the nation."

Does she feel guilty about the choice she has made, about placing the political over the personal? "No, I don't because I know and they know and we all understand and discuss these issues and they know why we're doing it. So it's not a matter of guilt. I miss them terribly. I miss my husband terribly. But I know it's for them I'm doing it, and they know that, too."

Much of her life has been spent taking care of other people - at the age of 16 she dropped out of school to help her single mother care for her six siblings. And, like the Woza members, 70% of whom have not completed secondary education, she has experienced at first hand the vicious hardships of a Zimbabwean upbringing: in 1994, her eldest brother died of Aids, and because of her mixed heritage she has experienced racism from both sides of the ethnic divide.

"In some ways, my blood has been too black to be beautiful," she says sadly. "In other ways, my skin has been too white to be right. And yeah, it's been a problem... My first marriage failed because, at the wedding ceremony, my ex-husband's mother and father arrived at the wedding and the reality that I was mixed race hit them when they saw my mother and they saw my brothers, who are much darker than me, and they just couldn't take it and they left the ceremony. They hounded my husband with all this stuff about the son of Ham and all this racist rhetoric, and: 'You're going to have black children' and our marriage failed as a result of that.

"And now under Mugabe, quite often police officers who do not know me, who do not know my background, will make all sorts of racist [anti-white] comments to me and so I've also had that... So it hasn't been easy."

But perhaps it was this sense of never quite belonging, of having to prove herself in the face of adversity, that gave Williams the sheer single-mindedness she has needed to pursue what she believes is right in a land where the idea of justice is, at best, illusory. "Seeing my mother want something better for me and seeing her sacrifices [as] a single mother raising seven children - it motivated me a lot... It was her as a role model and the fact I had seen so much discrimination that made me want to become a human rights defender."

In what she refers to as "my previous life", Williams ran her own public relations company. From 1994 to 2002 the business was so successful that it won a sizeable contract to do all the communications for the Zimbabwean Farmers' Union. This brought Williams directly into conflict with the government - Mugabe's controversial policy of land reform enables white farmers to be forced off their properties in order to "redistribute" wealth. "It was very hot and heavy and I was under threat," says Williams. "The police kept visiting the offices. It was just impossible. It ended up losing me my company." Enraged by the injustice of what happened, Williams became politically active. A year later, Woza was formed.

Its grassroots members, many of whom come to the organisation from church groups, are the ordinary women of Zimbabwe who would otherwise remain voiceless - the seamstresses, the vegetable sellers and hairdressers. Williams leads regular street demonstrations, during which the protesters sing gospel songs and carry brooms, embodying their desire to sweep the government clean. It is a terrifying process: "Sometimes when we are singing, we are extremely discordant because, you know, your mouth is dry, you're scared and you're watching out the whole time for the police."

Dispiritingly, Williams says that there has been no noticeable improvement in conditions since the power-sharing agreement brokered in September between Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition. "We had huge expectations that it would have... but we have not noticed any change. In fact, in some ways we can say the pressure on us has increased because post the signing of this deal, I then found myself back in prison. And after having made bail - and it was a huge legal battle - we then found that we were restricted to a 40km radius, and that has never happened before.

"Since Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in, there is more food on the shelves, but our members certainly cannot afford to buy that food. There's 94% unemployment, and the 6% that's left over probably cannot even afford to pay for their bus transport into work.

"Our members, what are they going to do? They can't afford the school fees. They're desperate for their children to get educated. The decision is: do I feed this child right now or do I buy chalk so they can go to school? And that's a horrible choice that parents are being forced to make in Zimbabwe. So daily life is just horrific."

In prison, conditions are even worse. "It's a living nightmare," says Williams. "It's a death sentence." At mealtimes food is so scarce that the portions are measured out in teaspoons. After Williams's three-week incarceration last October, a female prisoner begged her to leave behind her underwear. "They said: 'We have not seen a pair of panties for two or three years while we've been in prison.' And, I mean, someone can be stripped of their dignity, but if you're a woman you really want to be able to have a pair of panties - it's something basic."

She has a vivid memory of being taken to a men's prison and seeing hundreds of skeletal inmates in the courtyard. "These were men who were - what's the word - you can't say crouching because that implies a bigger body space - people were so thin that they looked like spiders, when they close themselves up and you can't see any limbs. They were like ghosts: rows and rows of ghosts."

Although she would never admit to it, it is clear that the prospect of being sent back there fills Williams with dread. The trial relating to her October arrest on charges of disturbing the peace is still ongoing - at the time of going to press, Williams and her co-leader Magodonga Mahlangu were due to appear in front of the Bulawayo magistrate's court on 30 April.

Meanwhile, the daily struggle continues. Williams refuses to dwell on the negative, and perhaps this is a necessary technique of self-preservation: how else would she be able to carry on fighting, with such good-humoured courage and tenacity, in the face of such intimidation and danger?

Before she leaves, I tell her that I know no one who possesses the necessary strength to do what she does. "I know lots!" she shrieks happily, shrugging herself into a huge padded black coat. "I know all the Woza members. We are constantly arrested, hundreds of us, and we make each other strong, defend our rights and help each other cope. So I am in extremely good company."

She zips up her coat and gives me a warm hug. Then she walks away, back to fight the battles that no one else dares to face.

http://www.guardian.co.uk
Amnesty.org.uk/woza

Goede informatie lezen over de situatie in Zimbabwe, kijk dan bij:
www.mg.co.za (Mail&Guardian - Zuid-Afrika)
www.guardian.co.uk (The Guardian - UK)
news.bbc.co.uk (BBC - UK)

A tribute to ‘Cornelius’ Cees Meijer
The perching of a swift?
Tichaona Pesenayi

Cees Meijer leaves the job of Mutare-Haarlem City Link Coordinator on 31st September 2009 after 15 years and nine months of productive and sustainable service to a community left better-off by his presence. When I visualize him, I see a big man with a warm heart and soft spot not only for his second home Mutare City in Zimbabwe, but for Africa, and his native home The Netherlands. Born in 1953 in Groningen, the Northern Netherlands, Cees Meijer grew up in a period of socio-political consciousness where issues of peace, fair trade, environmental conservation and anti-apartheid activism were rising. This led into an agriculture career which he used to assist small-scale farmers to improve their livelihoods in Latin America and southern Africa.

Shaping the Mutare-Haarlem City Link Local Sustainability Agenda
The City Link relationship between Mutare and the Dutch City of Haarlem has been aptly represented by an important ecological symbol of migratory swifts which spend their wintry Dutch periods in the warm summers of Mutare, and vice versa. If birds are able to make habitation on different continents in different hemispheres, make peaceful coexistence with other species, make choices.., work hard for their offspring and adapt to changing climatic conditions, then what can prevent the human race from pursuing sustainable development? These are some of the questions which the Mutare-Haarlem City Link Partnership was trying to answer when it was formed in 1993, and still pursues today, using sustainability principles enshrined in the Rio Declaration and Local Agenda 21. As a learning organisation, the City Link Local Action 21 forum continues to learn from and adapt to other sustainable development policies.

The shared goals of the Haarlem - Mutare City Link are to:

• bring the people of the Communities in Mutare and Haarlem together ;
• create appreciation about our ethnical and cultural diverse societies;
• improve life for the poor and otherwise disadvantaged;
• work for social economic development and preserving the environment.

The role of Cees Meijer
I first met Cees Meijer in January 2001 when I was looking for partners to network with, in the field of environmental management and environmental education, in the aftermath of the Cyclone Eline disasters which were most felt in these Eastern Districts of Zimbabwe. I quickly learnt that he was a hard worker dedicated to assist people and institutions to improve the livelihoods of the least privileged, with a delicate navigation through the political polarities and challenges prevailing in Zimbabwe. Cees has been able to work amicably with grassroots community-based organisations, Non-Governmental organisations, Government departments and Local authorities, led by both ruling and opposition parties, in search for sustainable development paths.

Among his accomplishments include the following:

• hugely contributing to the establishment of a strong Haarlem-Mutare City link relationship that has stood the test of time, socio-political  changes, and economic downturns, and is opening doors for another city link relationship with the City of Lochem, also in the Netherlands;

• the establishment of a housing cooperation for the resource poor, with its own revolving housing fund that has benefitted over 200 family units who are building houses for themselves at their own pace, through support and development of their capabilities;

• supporting environmental education, and ICT programmes among children and youths in Mutare and Haarlem for example through comparison of consumption and waste generation patterns and exchanging cultures through internet;

• promoting health through sports and community-based care-giving;

According to Cees Meijer, what appeals to him about a City Link relationship is that it is “… for the most part about cooperation between people on the same level, who have similar work, comparable goals and mutual interests.  It is about getting to know each other, making personal contacts, learning from each other, understanding each other’s values and working together to attain shared goals. The direct linking appeals to me as it is based on personal relationships, people on both sides cooperating in equity for the betterment of our communities”, C. Meijer (Personal communication, 18 September 2009, my emphasis).

People and Development approaches
It is rather difficult to pay tribute to Cees Meijer without mentioning people he worked with and activities he inspired or contributed to in the Mutare-Haarlem City Link community of practice. However, the following can be singled out:

• use of a people-centred and results-based approach enabled him to work across political boundaries in Mutare and between Zimbabwe and The Netherlands,
• despite a breakdown of his vehicle, including for a year-long stretch in the height of economic depression, he still maintained touch with grassroots artists, environmental action groups, school-based initiatives, and home-based care givers using public transport and footwork,
• he balanced delivery of work outputs with a personal touch, such as moral support to many families in the forum, including Mutare-Haarlem LA 21 pioneers facing illness and/or bereavement such as the families of the late Reverend Rugayo (first Housing and Community Services Coordinator), the late Mr Ruswa (the first Culture Coordinator), Mr Mapurisa (Vice Chairman of Mutare LA 21 Board and Housing and Community Services Director) and Professor Tagwira (first LA 21 Board Chairman and now Vice Chancellor of Africa University). These people in their own right were instrumental in igniting the success stories,
• by coordinating with passionate people like Mayor Pop, Thijs de la Court and Dik Bol, to mention a few Dutch  names in the formative years; and counterparts in Mutare such as Mayor Mudehwe, Eunice Muyambuki and others mentioned above, a solid foundation for futures development was laid,
• By spending nearly sixteen years working with local communities of various status, race, class, colour, creed, and mostly the poor, he demonstrated the possibility and reality of harmonious racial and cultural integration.

Some lessons learnt
A number of lessons can be learnt from this long-standing partnership which Cees Meijer has been an ambassador of for some time:

• A partnership based on the principles of equity and reciprocity rather than patronage contributes to the spirit of ubuntu and hence will be sustained,
• Only what is done for the common good will last, and cross racial, religious and political boundaries,
• Two communities can strengthen each other, by supporting each other’s development, even if it means ‘growing together, apart’ with respect to natural north-south locations, rather than apartheid,
• An open forum of deliberative dialogue and local action can lead to sustainable development and the promotion of peace,
• An investment in quality and relevant education is imperative for any form of sustainable development that respects diverse values and ways of knowing, and promotes capabilities, health, food security and the environment,
• Sustainable development is primarily about the dual role of involving people in improving their livelihoods, while at the same time valuing and improving ecosystem services upon which all species depend.

Last word
As Mutare LA 21 forum braces itself for the coveted United Nations University status of Regional Centre of Expertise, which it deserves rather than covets, Cees Meijer leaves the City Link Coordination role while the forum is on the road to attaining an extra notch towards sustainability. While people come and go, their co-investment with the local community in time and resources for sustainable development should be perpetuated by those that remain. Such is the legacy of torch bearers who have passed on the baton bearing the eternal flame of development, which should be no exception for the Mutare-Haarlem City Link Local Action partnership. Responses to challenges that still have to be taken forward include restoration of peace among communities recovering from the effects of socio-political polarization; re-investment in education of our children and restoration of confidence among the teachers; re-investment in health service delivery; investment in alternative energy and green jobs in the aftermath of a global and domestic economic crises; mitigating and adapting to climate change; and participating in regional and global sustainable development forums more vigorously. Chief above all, perhaps, is the restoration of values marred by lives lived and compromised in the pursuit of survival. Mutare and Zimbabwe need these responses now more than ever before, and the unconditional friendship with the Dutch is valued as always. The Mutare-Haarlem City Link LA 21 has a role to play in these grand visions, and so does each individual in their own small way. Let the swifts continue to soar high and come home to work and roost.

It has been my privilege to have the opportunity to write about an unsung hero of community development.
Tot ziens to Cees Meijer and the Haarlem-Mutare City Link Partnership.

Tichaona Pesenayi