Student suspended for hugging, ZLHR to the rescue – The Zimbabwean

According to a suspension letter, which was served to Musithu on 22 March by Harare Polytechnic authorities, she was seen by the college Principal Tafadzwa Mudondo hugging a fellow student Blessing Pasipanodya, conduct which the institution said was in violation of World Health Organisation, government of Zimbabwe and Harare Polytechnic regulations.“You, Yolanda Musithu, a student at Harare Polytechnic doing National Diploma in Office Management violated WHO, government and Harare Polytechnic COVID-19 regulations. You were caught by the Principal on 22 March 2021 hugging Blessing Pasipanodya, an NC DDT student. This was in direct violation of WHO, government and institutional standing against COVID-19 regulations,” reads part of Musithu’s suspension letter.“The institution conducted health education on COVID-19 through posters on notice boards and at entrances but you opted to ignore these regulations,” further reads the letter.

But Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights moved with speed to rescue Musithu by dispatching its lawyer Godfrey Mupanga who filed an urgent chamber application at Harare High Court seeking an order to compel Harare Polytechnic to allow Musithu access to the college, attend classes and be granted all rights and privileges enjoyed by all students for the National Diploma in Office Management.

In response to the filing of the urgent chamber application, authorities at the institution served Mupanga with a letter lifting Musithu’s suspension. Musithu’s urgent application had been set down for hearing before Justice Davison Foroma.

However, Mudondo in his letter said the institution had resolved to lift Musithu’s suspension after consultations with Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education. The move by Mudondo resulted in lawyers representing Musithu and Harare Polytechnic agreeing to a settlement and the withdrawal of the urgent chamber application.

Musithu is one of several female human rights defenders who in recent months have challenged Zimbabwean authorities on their flagrant use of COVID-19 regulations to suppress citizen’s fundamental rights and freedoms.

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Mnangagwa surrounded himself with prominent hustlers and dealers – The Zimbabwean

This is happening through the rejuvenation of the Affirmative Action Group (AAG), an organisation formed in 1994 to bring change to the economic environment in favour of indigenous black business people aligned to the ruling Zanu-PF party.

Last week, AAG’s founding father, Philip Chiyangwa, told a gathering of young entrepreneurs in Bulawayo that “if you don’t support Zanu-PF, you will not make money in Zimbabwe”.

Chiyangwa, 62, handed over the reins to socialite Mike Chimombe, 38, a prominent player in Zimbabwe’s social circles led by “mbingas” — young, rich, supercar-driving and expensive liquor-drinking men.

The women in these circles are known as the “rich cousins”.

“Most teenagers in the ghetto run wild when they see cars like Lamborghinis cruising in their streets. More so, these cars belong to local entrepreneurs. In their minds they want to be like them. Then you will have the local heroes telling them it’s possible, with Zanu-PF in power,” said Mathew Ncube, a university student.

Chimombe’s deputy is prosperity gospel preacher Panganai Java, popularly known as Passion Java and the head of Passion Java Ministries, a church in which he says he performs miracles.

Before his involvement with AAG he had become a social media sensation, flaunting his apparent wealth in the form of supercars and luxurious mansion in the US. In April, he went to Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, Bulawayo, with the AAG, where he threw wads of US dollars into a crowd of mostly young people who were following his motorcade of Range Rovers and Mercedes-Benzes.

The Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) warned him for violating Covid-19 restrictions by blocking traffic.

Lately, Passion Java has featured Mnangagwa in selfie videos on his social media pages, telling people to vote for him in 2023.

“Passion Java endorses Mnangagwa’s 2023 Re-Election Trump Card particularly for youths, to venture into value chains in sectors such as agriculture, mining, industry and commerce, and others,” he told a youth seminar at Chinhoyi University of Technology last week.

Last month, prosperity preacher Uebert Angel, who also claims to perform miracles, was roped into Mnangagwa’s charm offensive. He was made presidential envoy and ambassador-at-large to the Americas and Europe to seek trade and investment opportunities and convince members of the Zimbabwean diaspora that they should vote for Zanu-PF.

The AAG operates outside Zanu-PF structures and some within the party do not like the way the organisation conducts itself. Information secretary Nick Mangwana publicly castigated Chimombe for the way he dressed when meeting Mnangagwa. He said Chimombe didn’t respect the office of the president.

Critics argue that the attempt by Zanu-PF to secure support from the pastors’ followers will not work because the party is using individuals who rely on patronage to earn a living. Hence, they don’t represent the masses and their aspirations.

“Passion Java and Uebert Angel were recruited to bring young followers to Zanu-PF in 2023 from their areas of influence — church and showbiz. But both are questionable pastors. Zimbabwe’s young people have agency, they reason, they are logical and can make wise decisions,” said Pedzisai Ruhanya, a human rights law fellow.

The MDC Alliance and pro-democracy civil society organisations argue that youths will only experience a prosperous Zimbabwe through a say on the ballot. As such, the opposition has launched a voter-registration campaign.

EU-Zimbabwe honorary ambassador for youth, sports and gender Tanyaradzwa Muzinda, who is also Zimbabwe’s motocross star, said in a tweet that youths are marginalised and should vote for change, not be duped.

“A few successful people in the middle of millions of poor youths is not a true success story, it’s a fraud. Youths don’t need miracle money and handouts, they need a working economy where systems work for everyone. Youths fight for your own success not for Clowns.”

— SUNDAY TIMES DAILY

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Zimbabwe’s gold deposits under-explored: official – The Zimbabwean

Chamber of Mines chief executive Isaac Kwesu told a parliamentary portfolio committee on mines and mining development that the country had not carried out any meaningful exploration on gold deposits over the past 10 years.

“We have significant, extensive gold deposits in Zimbabwe, although we have not been exploring much,” Kwesu said.

“There has been low exploration count, which has been undermining the identification of new opportunities specifically in the gold sector.”

Kwesu said the country also lacks modern exploration techniques.

“The country has remained largely under-explored and has not been using modern exploration techniques, thereby limiting the discovery of new, richer deposits and this tends to slow down development and growth of the gold industry to a larger extent,” Kwesu said.

Zimbabwe, he said, needs to replace old gold mines with new mines and this can only happen through discovery of new gold ores.

The Zimbabwean government has earmarked the mining sector to reach a 12 billion U.S. dollar market value by 2023, with gold expected to contribute about 4 billion dollars.

Zimbabwe sees the mining sector as the main driver for the economy. Gold is one of the country’s major foreign currency earners, along with platinum and tobacco.

While the country’s gold output plummeted to an all-time low of 3 tonnes in 2008, production of the precious mineral has steadily risen over the years, reaching a peak of 35 tonnes in 2018. Yet it fell to 27.66 tonnes in 2019 and further down to 19.05 tonnes last year.

Kwesu said the gold sub-sector faces a number of challenges, among them inadequate foreign currency and power cuts.

He, however, expressed confidence in the potential of the gold sector to rebound and surpass previous peak levels, driven by booming prices on the international market.

Post published in: Business

Fighting food insecurity with CRISPR at Zimbabwe’s first private research institute – The Zimbabwean

Brighton Samatanga is a molecular biophysicist and founder of the Biotech Institute in Harare. Credit: Cynthia R Matonhodze for Nature

I study the interactions between cell proteins and DNA. I want to understand how the gene-editing tool CRISPR makes unintended changes to organisms’ DNA.

I have a faculty appointment at Leipzig University in Germany. But in March 2021, I took parental leave — which will probably become permanent leave — and came home to Zimbabwe to work at the Biotech Institute, which I had set up. It is the nation’s first privately owned research institute. We opened last August and have three graduate students in our labs, plus an intern, an undergraduate student from the University of Zimbabwe, nearby in Harare. We aim to recruit five faculty members to study resistance to antimicrobial drugs in diseases such as tuberculosis (TB).

We have three departments: technical services; research and education; and public health. Technical services will support our research with commercial work, including diagnostic tests for the public, such as those for SARS-CoV-2, HIV and TB. In this image from last November, I’m on the left, showing a technician how to use polymerase chain reaction technology to test for SARS-CoV-2. I shipped the equipment from Germany.

We hope we will soon get government approval to offer degree programmes, including graduate courses in molecular biology, biotechnology and more. We will invest revenue from these into our research.

In one research strand, we aim to use CRISPR to edit genes of crops such as maize (corn) to help them become resistant to drought and to pests such as fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda). In this way, we hope to boost food security in Zimbabwe.

Setting up a private research institution in sub-Saharan Africa is very challenging in terms of finances, logistics and recruitment. We rent a building that is too small for us. And we’re spending money on building labs. Some people might think this is not a good idea. But I want to give back to Zimbabwe. It is my home, so it is my responsibility to improve it.

Zimbabwe Threatens to Seize Platinum Concession From Eurasian Resource Affiliate – The Zimbabwean

The Bokai and Kinonde concessions may be taken over under the “use-it/lose-it principle” which allows the state to repossess idle mining claims, Minister Winston Chitando said in a letter to Todal dated May 28 and seen by Bloomberg. The mines ministry confirmed the veracity of the document.

“I note with concern that over the last few years there have been several changes to the work program to make this project progress to production stage,” Chitando said in the letter.

How land reform transformed small towns in Zimbabwe – The Zimbabwean

Over a number of years, we have been monitoring changes in three small towns in Zimbabwe, situated in different parts of the country (see map below).

The results point to a major growth in population, building and business activity (see Table below). This is substantially driven by a reconfigured local economy, with production from smallholder farming land reform areas (A1 resettlements) contributing to this.

Mvurwi’s growth has been driven by the tobacco boom following land reform, while Chatsworth has benefited from the growth of maize and vegetable production, but also the presence of popular churches in the area. Maphisa has grown thanks the cattle and mining economy, which is now more locally-rooted involving many land reform farmers.

Although contingent and context dependent, the changes that have occurred in each of the small towns can be summarised across four themes. The following sections are much-abbreviated extracts from the EJDR paper.

Business opportunities

The expansion of small- and medium-scale agriculture since land reform has resulted in income from agricultural surpluses being circulated locally, especially from A1 smallholder farms. This includes cash from sales of tobacco (Mvurwi), maize/horticulture (Chatsworth) and livestock (Maphisa). In Maphisa in particular this agricultural income is complemented by money from small-scale gold mining. This is generating demand for services, as well as opportunities for the sale of produce. Compared to the pre-land reform situation, there are many more businesses of all types in all three towns. There are five times as many hardware stores, four times as many grocery stores and food outlets, three times as many butcheries, double the number of bottle stores and bars, and five times more informal vendors. Transport has become a vital business linking the town with the wider agricultural hinterland.

Demography and difference: new people in town

In the last 20 years, populations have more than tripled; and this is just the permanent population, and not those who commute back and forth from the rural areas. Today there are new people in town. In Mvurwi in particular, former workers in commercial farms no longer have jobs on farms and have had to seek alternatives. Some have left, but many have stayed and become engaged in supporting new forms of local agriculture and become involved in town based business activities. Women and young people are especially important players in the new informal economy of these small towns. Women, for example, may be married to a man who received land through the land reform and will assist at the family farm, but also will be involved in trading businesses in town. Young people are often without land, missing out on land reform in 2000, but may live at home with their parents but run a business in the nearby town. Moving small distances, seasonally or daily, is the new pattern, with multi-locational households and multiplex livelihoods the norm.

Rural-urban social relationships and networks

Land reform has created new rural-urban connections. In the past, the rural town was quite disconnected from the large-scale commercial farming operation, beyond being the source of labour and providing some inputs and services. Today such small towns are intimately linked in a much tighter, more integrated local economy. There are relations from rural to urban (marketing of produce, movement of people) and from urban to rural (supplies of labour, inputs, services and provision of transport). These linkages are fostered through social relationships, which have to be invested in. Making sure that a vending business in town thrives requires the vendor to have good relationships with suppliers in the nearby resettlement areas, with transporters to ferry goods to town, with council officials who collect rates and inspect premises and the police who invariably are looking for a bribe. Having a rural home nearby to return to is important, and today the rural areas surrounding these towns are now full of farms and people. Keeping close to ‘home’ – even if you do not have land – remains crucial, and the ability to be mobile and opportunistic is vital in the face of economic uncertainty, especially for young people.

Planning, politics and governance

While there has been a building boom across the sites, generating opportunities for brick-makers, hardware suppliers, transporters and builders, the wider public infrastructure of all three small towns is in a poor state. The state has not invested significantly in basic maintenance and expansion of roads, sewage systems or electricity supply in these fast-expanding towns. The failure of the state (local and national) to provide for basic services and infrastructure in rural and urban areas is a source of deep resentment, especially when high-profile expenditures and rampant corruption are highlighted.   The standard, divided approach to urban administration and governance makes little sense, as people straddle urban and rural areas. With new interest groups and associated power relations, the politics of the urban-rural nexus after land reform has become highly contested, with a new rural-urban politics emerging. How this translates into reformed administrative and governance arrangements for small towns and associated rural areas remains a major challenge in Zimbabwe, as elsewhere.

Rethinking rural-urban development

As with the AGRA report discussed in the last blog, our paper concludes with a focus on ‘territorial development’:

“[The] post-land reform rural-urban configuration means going beyond a separated town and countryside focus to a wider spatial, territorial perspective, looking at sites of accumulation across rural and urban spaces, and the connections between them, focusing on how social and political relations and governance arrangements are able to support these. Small towns in this sense offer a window onto a new set of economic, social and political relations at the heart of Zimbabwe’s new agrarian landscape, and must be central to territorially-focused, regionally-connected local economic development efforts into the future”.

As a consequence, development priorities must change. As we note, “feeder roads to rural areas become important, as does the provision low-cost and safe market stands and temporary accommodation for mobile traders and business people. Equally taking account of the changing demographic composition of small towns in important, “with the need to provide safety and security for young and female mobile populations, who are essential to the urban economy often without permanent homes in town.”

More broadly, assumptions of a simple linear ‘structural transformation’ in development – from rural to urban, from agriculture to industry, from small to larger scale – is challenged. A focus on the spatial relationship of local economies and food systems, and the territorial connections across rural and urban spaces, suggests that such transformations are much more complex. With a redistribution of land through the post 2000 land reform and the growth of especially smallholder agriculture that resulted, a very different, unexpected trajectory has emerged, more embedded in local territories, with integrated links between agriculture and urban enterprise.

As Zimbabwe continues to contemplate its post-land reform transition, a focus on small towns and the links to wider rural production systems must be central.  The next blog updates the story in the context of the pandemic where decentralisation of business operations to small towns has become essential.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

Post published in: Agriculture

Top 50 Biglaw Firm Will Allow Lawyers To Work From Home 50% Of The Time

Most Biglaw firms are eyeing September returns to their offices for attorneys and staff, with varying degrees of remote options. At some firms, the five-day, in-office workweek is a thing of the past, and at others, employees can expect to be in the office all day, every day. Dechert — a firm ranked No. 37 in the most recent Am Law 100, with $1,071,163,000 gross revenue in 2020 — seems to have found a happy medium.

According to a recent memo sent by policy committee chair Andy Levander and CEO Henry Nassau, the firm is expecting all attorneys to come into the office starting on September 13, on at least a part-time basis. The firm will allow for hybrid work arrangements, but requests that lawyers spend about half their time working in-person on days of their own choosing.

Firm leaders came to this decision after reviewing the thoughts of 1,400 Dechert employees who were surveyed on what Dechert’s return to the office should look like. “The results confirmed what we had been hearing,” Levander and Nassau wrote, “that many of you value the flexibility to work virtually at least some of the time and supervisors trust their people to be effective, regardless of their location.” Here’s a relevent excerpt from the firm’s memo:

The future is flexible, and we trust you to choose where and how to work based on your needs, your family, your team and your clients, underpinned by our culture of exceptional client service and an understanding that each of us is responsible for contributing to the fabric and culture of the firm. …

Through this flexible hybrid model, we believe we can balance in-person and virtual working in a way that engages and empowers our community to better support our clients and meet the professional and personal needs of our people.

Dechert is a firm that “strongly encourages” vaccination against COVID-19, and hopes that attorneys will come into the office this summer on a voluntary basis to readjust and connect with colleagues.

What has your firm announced as far as a reopening plan is concerned? The more information is out there, the more likely it is that firms will be able to establish a market standard for a return to work.

As soon as you find out about the reopening plan at your firm, please email us (subject line: “[Firm Name] Office Reopening”) or text us at (646) 820-8477. We always keep our sources on stories anonymous. There’s no need to send a memo (if one exists) using your firm email account; your personal email account is fine. If a memo has been circulated, please be sure to include it as proof; we like to post complete memos as a service to our readers. You can take a photo of the memo and attach as a picture if you are worried about metadata in a PDF or Word file. Thanks.

Dechert Unveils Flexible Work Policy With Half-Remote Option [American Lawyer]
Dechert Targets Half Remote Hours After September Office Return [Bloomberg Law]


Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Layoffs Watch ’21: Deutsche Bank

You’d think that 18,000 layoffs would have turned Deutsche Bank into as tight a ship as it could be. (Which, in fairness, is not necessarily a ship you’d feel entirely comfortable sailing, but all the same.) That after slashing its U.S. investment bank and other formerly core functions to the bone and beyond, that there’d be nothing left to lose. Well, you’d then not be Deutsche CFO James von Moltke, looking for creative ways to pay some unexpected bills. And if you’re working in a back office function, you are that way.

Morning Docket: 06.01.21

* A Michigan lawyer, who allegedly gave his adversary the middle finger during a virtual court hearing, has purportedly been fined $3,000. That’s one expensive bird… [Detroit Free Press]

* Unvaccinated workers at a Houston hospital are suing over their employer’s vaccination mandate. [Washington Post]

* A Philadelphia-area attorney passed away last week hours after he was pulled from a bay in Longport, New Jersey. [Fox News]

* Johnson & Johnson is asking the Supreme Court to hear an ovarian cancer case that resulted in a $2 billion judgment against the company. [NBC News]

* A retired attorney is now the oldest person to have scaled Mount Everest. [Chicago Tribune]


Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

Government’s magical fix for economy – Zimbabwe Vigil Diary – The Zimbabwean

https://www.flickr.com/photos/zimbabwevigil/51212253780/sizes/m/

At a post-cabinet briefing Mutsvangwa acknowledged that the last plan launched by the Mnangagwa government, the Transitional Stabilisation Programme, had failed but said the new one would ensure the achievement of a prosperous upper-middle-income society by 2030.

It envisaged growth averaging 5% a year, with a sustainable fiscal deficit of 1.2% of GDP, exchange rate stability and single-digit inflation based on doing away with ‘unmitigated and unbudgeted subsidies’. (See: https://www.newsday.co.zw/2021/05/govt-admits-policy-failures/.)

Former Finance Minister Tendai Biti will not be convinced by the wave of a magic wand. Taking part in an online review of a report on private and state cartels in the region, he said ‘Zimbabwe faces the biggest existential crisis as a country because we are now run by bandits and thugs’.

He said reports of corruption in Zimbabwe only ‘scratched the surface’. It had become worse since the military coup in 2017. ‘For all intents and purposes, we have become a fully-fledged kleptocratic state’.

Biti estimated that 82 cents from every dollar collected as tax in Zimbabwe goes on corruption. ‘Corruption is cancer. It is the major cause of Zimbabwe’s fragility and instability’.

He continued: ‘the impact of corruption is more than the pauperisation of Zimbabwe. It is more than the under-development of Zimbabwe, it is also the de-democratisation of Zimbabwe.’

Mark Heywood, editor of Maverick Citizen, said: ‘The personal wealth of President Emmerson Mnangagwa is estimated at $500 million, yet the per capita income of a Zimbabwean is in the region of $900. Zimbabwe is a country rich in resources, but it is poor in terms of what it has been subjected to in terms of very sophisticated and sustained corruption’.

Maverick Citizen recently published a report on cartels contributed to by Zimbabwean academics and published in South Africa anonymously as they feared reprisals by the Zimbabwean government. The online review was hosted by the Mail and Guardian (see: https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/news/zimbabwe-faces-an-existential-crisis-like-never-before-says-former-finance-minister-tendai-biti/).

Last word goes to Zimbabwean social justice activist Farai Maguwu: ‘the greatest challenge of this generation is to fight corruption and everybody has a role to play, especially the media, as research such as the cartel report is required to fight corruption. It is time for ethical leadership to emerge.’ (See: https://mg.co.za/special-reports/2021-05-27-exploring-the-role-of-illicit-financial-flows-in-zimbabwes-political-economy/.)

 

Other Points:

  • With widespread poverty in Zimbabwe, there has been criticism of the government for spending money on a ten-foot statue of Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana, a nineteenth century spirit medium and anti-colonial figurehead. Journalist Hopewell Chin’ono said it was a disgrace to squander money on the Harare statue when hospitals were in an state of collapse. ‘Doctors and nurses at Mpilo hospital in Bulawayo are having to carry sick patients or the dead using staircases, because elevators are not working! This is why we are saying building multimillion dollar statues when hospitals are not working is illogical!’ (See: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/may/26/anger-in-zimbabwe-at-nehanda-statue-amid-collapsing-economy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other).
  • Because of the coronavirus we can no longer physically meet outside the Zimbabwe Embassy in London, so we have a virtual Vigil while the restrictions continue. We ask our activists to put on Vigil / ROHR / Zimbabwe regalia and take a photo of themselves holding an appropriate poster reflecting our protest against human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. The photos are uploaded on our Flickr site: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zimbabwevigil/albums/72157719295156338. Our virtual Vigil activists today were Margaret Munenge, Grace Munyanyi and Dudzai Mukondorongwe who all kindly contributed to Vigil funds.
  • For Vigil pictures check: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zimbabwevigil/. Please note: Vigil photos can only be downloaded from our Flickr website.

 

Notices:

  • The Restoration of Human Rights in Zimbabwe (ROHR) is the Vigil’s partner organization based in Zimbabwe. ROHR grew out of the need for the Vigil to have an organization on the ground in Zimbabwe which reflected the Vigil’s mission statement in a practical way. ROHR in the UK actively fundraises through membership subscriptions, events, sales etc to support the activities of ROHR in Zimbabwe. Please note that the official website of ROHR Zimbabwe is http://www.rohrzimbabwe.org/. Any other website claiming to be the official website of ROHR in no way represents us.
  • The Vigil’s book ‘Zimbabwe Emergency’ is based on our weekly diaries. It records how events in Zimbabwe have unfolded as seen by the diaspora in the UK. It chronicles the economic disintegration, violence, growing oppression and political manoeuvring – and the tragic human cost involved. It is available at the Vigil. All proceeds go to the Vigil and our sister organisation the Restoration of Human Rights in Zimbabwe’s work in Zimbabwe. The book is also available from Amazon.
  • Facebook pages:

Vigil: https://www.facebook.com/zimbabwevigil

ROHR: https://www.facebook.com/Restoration-of-Human-Rights-ROHR-Zimbabwe-International-370825706588551/

ZAF: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zimbabwe-Action-Forum-ZAF/490257051027515

Post published in: Featured