Category: News Feeds

The president says that he has total authority to reopen the country after we conquer COVID-19.

The governors disagree; they say that only governors can reopen the country, state by state.

The president retreats: He has total authority to “authorize” the governors to reopen as they like.

Which leaves me hiding over here in the weeds, asking: Don’t corporations get a say in this?

Some corporations don’t get much of a say: If you’re in the restaurant business, you need a waitstaff. Your dry cleaning business needs help on site.  Your janitorial business needs people in place.

Those businesses will probably reopen as soon as the government says it’s safe.

But other businesses, such as professional services firms, have veto power over the governors and the president: Law firms and accounting firms and management consulting firms and banks can do much of their business remotely. Those firms are under little pressure to require employees to commute to downtown offices, and those entities may well bide their time.

Most CEOs aren’t itching to sicken or kill their own employees. Most CEOs want to protect employee health and respect employees’ personal preferences in times as uncertain as these. The reopening of the economy may give those CEOs a lot of flexibility.

If your employees can do most of their work from home, how should you reopen your offices?

Whose personal presence in an office is essential? People who must be physically present in the office should be among the first to return to work.

Think about where your offices are located: Rural offices might reopen more quickly than those in densely populated urban areas.

Consider how people get to work: Folks who commute on mass transit might feel less comfortable returning to work than those who walk or drive to work.  (Should your company temporarily subsidize employees who want to avoid mass transit? How about subsidizing employees who are over 60 or who have compromised immune systems and want to avoid mass transit?)

What does the floor plan at your office look like? An open floor plan might not permit social distancing. A floor plan with individual offices might allow appropriate spacing.

How are the elevators and lobbies configured in your buildings? Will people be crowded together in public spaces?

Should people return to work slowly? Have only 25 percent of the workforce return to work in the beginning, or perhaps work alternating shifts on Monday/Wednesday/Friday or Tuesday/Thursday, to reduce the number of people in the office at any one time?

Should employees themselves get any say in the process? Should you permit people who are uncomfortable going to an office to work from home for longer?

The president and the governors can flap their lips, but corporations will have a big say in this.

I had one other thought about returning to work that makes me extremely uncomfortable: These are partisan times. The screaming heads on MSNBC and Fox despise each other. The commenters on websites loathe the “libtards” and the “Trumpkins,” depending on whose side you’re on. This is bad.

This also gives partisans funny rooting interests. Everyone wants the world to find a treatment for COVID-19. The president has repeatedly touted hydroxychloroquine as being an effective treatment. This has odd consequences. Republicans would prefer that hydroxychloroquine be the effective treatment (so Donald Trump can proclaim himself to be a hero) and Democrats want anything other than hydroxychloroquine to be effective (so the disease will be cured, but Trump will look like a fool).

Who ever thought that politics would cause people to cheer for different medicines?

Issues surrounding the reopening of the economy make this partisanship yet worse: Conservatives hope, I assume, that all portions of the country can open quickly and safely. If that happens, the economy might recover before November, and Trump might get re-elected.

Liberals are, I fear, hoping that Trump and the red-state governors miscalculate in their plan to reopen the country: If red states reopen quickly and COVID-19 resurges, then the economy (and Trump’s credibility) don’t fare nearly as well, and Biden is more likely to win the election.

Partisanship is unavoidable, I suppose, even if it’s petty and unappealing.

But we’re now talking about partisanship of a different sort: Partisanship that gives one half of the country a rooting interest in seeing the other half of the country suffer or die.

No intelligent person would really hold these views: No one wishes misery on others.

And I’m certainly not saying that Democrats are evil for wishing death on others, and Republicans are good because they’re wishing for health. I’m confident that if the partisan rooting interests were reversed, then Republicans would theoretically favor death and Democrats life.

But I sure don’t like a political dispute that encourages one half of our country to wish harm on the other half. That feels a bit too much like the Civil War for my taste.

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Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

Last week at the Rocket Aid virtual conference, someone addressed those of us on the media roundtable panel and said, “I’m tired of hearing about layoffs, is there any good news out there?” And the answer is… not much. But it’s not entirely nonexistent.

Over at Paul Weiss, the firm is tackling a number of projects related to the outbreak and placing themselves on the front lines of lawyerly efforts to bounce back. They served as an advisor and donated half-a-million dollars to NYC Healthcare Heroes, a program focused on getting food and supplies to more than 100,000 healthcare professionals throughout New York City.

The firm also set up a Coronavirus Relief Center to act as a clearinghouse for government and non-profit relief programs. It’s really a tremendous undertaking — scrolling through its pages provides a road map for anyone looking for help out there with instructions on how to apply and answers to frequently asked questions.

According to the firm, almost half of the firm’s legal staff are engaged in COVID-related pro bono work right now, exactly what socially responsible firms should be doing right now. There are no doubt other Biglaw pro bono efforts underway right now that deserve trumpeting. Even firms not currently engaged in public interest initiatives are eyeing opportunities to assist once the immediate crisis subsides and the work of picking up the pieces begins.

Keep us in the loop about these efforts. We can’t necessarily catalog them all, but we’ll do our best to let people know what your firm is doing and help other firms looking for something to do by providing a model to follow.

As the questioner from last week suggested, we should have a little good news these days.

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

He died yesterday morning at a private hospital in Harare after being unwell for a long time. He was 44 year old.

During his time at The Zimbabwean Gift was kidnapped by armed men and was only produced when the high court in Harare granted a writ of habeas corpus. When the authorities brought him to court, he could hardly walk as he had been tortured during his four-day ordeal.

Soon after leaving the Zimbabwean Phiri joined the Daily News as news editor.  At the time of his death he had been promoted to the position of assistant editor.

Editor and publisher of The Zimbabwean, Wilf Mbanga paid tribute to “a true professional who loved his job.”

“ As his editor, I could rely on him to produce an exclusive story that was well-researched and balanced. He perfected the art of asking the right questions when interviewing his subjects,” said Mbanga.
Gift will be sorely missed and our condolences go to his wife, family and friends.

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Argentina has a new plan for paying off its $70 billion in foreign debt, and that plan is to not pay it.

[Argentine Economy Minister Martin] Guzmán said the government’s offer to creditors calls for suspending interest payments from 2020 to 2022. Once debt payments resume in 2023, the government would pay an interest rate of 0.55%, which would gradually increase as the economy recovers, Mr. Guzmán said.

The minister said the plan would entail a 62% reduction on Argentina’s interest payments, saving the nation some $37.9 billion. The proposal also involves a 5.4% haircut on the capital of the foreign debt, or about $3.6 billion.

* Bill Cosby is the latest high-profile figure asking for early release from prison because of COVID-19. [Newser]

* A Louisiana attorney, who represented a pastor that defiantly held church services recently, has tested positive for COVID-19. [New York Post]

* A law firm is suing the Small Business Administration for allegedly discriminatory practices in how Payroll Protection Program funds were disbursed. [Capital Gazette]

* A woman is accused of using an ax to break into a Brooklyn courthouse over the weekend. Sounds pretty medieval. [New York Post]

* The New York Attorney General is taking steps to ensure that stimulus checks cannot be seized by debt collectors. [CBS News]

* A Brazilian appellate judge appeared shirtless last week during court proceedings held via Zoom. You see? Judges are just like everyone else. [Daily Mail]

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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.

As Zimbabwe turned 40 this weekend, I harked back to his soulful, disappointed, eyes on independence day, April 18,back in 1994, a few weeks after I had landed in Africa as a television journalist.

I will never forget Israel Mandere, who must be in his sixties now, yet clearly the internet – if ever it knew his name – has. I can still see him sweating in that field under the bright autumn sunshine as part of a struggling cooperative of war veterans scratching a living in the dust.

“No money, little food, tattered clothes,” says Mandere shaking his head in anger and stuttering with emotion.

“Ï am very embarrassed about that one.”

Two decades earlier, Mandere strapped an AK47 on his back to fight operations in eastern Zimbabwe from guerrilla camps, in the bush, across on the other side of the border in Mozambique as part of the ZANLA guerrilla forces that helped put President Mugabe in power. He joined, as a teenager and trained with thousands of comrades in Ethiopia to fight a small, yet tough, Rhodesian army bristling with modern weapons and vast firepower. The promise from his leaders – many of whom ended up in the cabinet – was a brighter tomorrow for the black majority.

In the early, euphoric, days this seemed so for many black Zimbabweans who found rights in a country where they had grown up feeling like foreigners. Black Zimbabweans took up top jobs in the land the commanding heights of the economy on a  secure bedrock of robust infrastructure. Investment and flowed in the wake of the first elections in and land with universal suffrage.. Politically Zimbabwe campaigned for change in Africa as part of the Non Aligned Movement in the former frontline states.

Yet the economy was mismanaged and struggled to increase the standard of living for the growing population. In the early 80s the government turned on its own people in Matabeleland and more than 20,000 people died – as a journalist, I saw some of the shallow graves with my own eyes. More than a decade on, it choked me that relatives knew where their loved ones were buried but were merely too afraid of authority to go and visit them.

I was so angry that the crew and I went to a church in Bulawayo to question one of the politicians who oversaw the killings, the late Enos Nkala, who has become a pastor.  Seriously, his people said the man himself was praying and couldn’t talk to us right now. We waited and Nkala slipped from the building and his accountability.  One of many examples I saw of how the people of  power in  Zimbabwe often had that air of impunity.

Then there was the ham fisted way productive farm land was taken over and often left in ruins. It is a shame that Mandere’s grandchildren can only hear stories about Zimbabwe being the bread basket of southern Africa. It is a bitter irony also that many children  and grandchildren of those who risked their lives fighting to free Zimbabwe were on the streets to howl President Mugabe out of power in November 2017.

I called one of my old friends and colleagues in Harare on independence day to see how it went. He admitted it hadn’t been a very celebratory 40^th birthday party with the economy down after 20 days of COVID-19 lockdown.

“Zimbabwe at 40?” says he,” It is like you have gone to school, grown up, got married, had children and then you wake up at 40 to find you are undernourished.”

Now, I worked in Zimbabwe, as a journalist, and for years I travelled to almost every corner, small town  and village to report stories and talk to people. I drank masese, danced in shebeens and met tens of thousands of Zimbabweans of all creeds and colours – good and bad,  For every bad person there were a hundred good.

“This one is free,” people used to say in the dance halls late at night when they were asked why I was there.

All I want is the best for Zimbabwe, but I fear how the country will be when it turns 50.

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The debt suspension package is understood to include all 77 countries that are either in the World Bank International Development Association (IDA) programme, or defined as low-income countries – and Zimbabwe is defined as a ‘partially eligible’ IDA country. However, due to technical conditions, Zimbabwe has been excluded from the agreement.

Christian Aid believes that Zimbabwe’s exclusion from an emergency package for the poorest countries is unjust, given the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic and its economic impact to the poorest and most vulnerable people.

In terms of workable solutions, there is in place an ongoing Staff Monitored Programme between Zimbabwe and IMF which is considered currently to be inactive. If the IMF programme can be established again with support of wider stakeholders, then Zimbabwe could also access debt payment cancellation for the World Bank, African Development Bank and European Investment Bank among other multilateral creditors as mentioned in the G20 statement.

The G20 statement makes clear the agreement remains open to changes social and economic conditions. So long as Zimbabwe commits to using the freed budget to increase social, health or economic spending in response to the international crisis, it must be included in the scheme. Zimbabwe as well as its creditors should also commit also to disclose all public sector debt to improve debt transparency.

Nicholas Shamano, Christian Aid’s Zimbabwe country manager, said:

“The lack of an IMF programme with Zimbabwe must not leave ordinary people exposed to further suffering because of the pandemic. There is a humanitarian imperative to ensure that the international community helps Zimbabweans to withstand the worst effects of coronavirus, and the global economic crisis.

Zimbabwe does not have debt with the IMF as it paid off its debt in 2019. However, the country still has debts with the World Bank (US$1.4billion), African Development Bank (US$687Million) and the European Investment Bank (US$322Milion) as well as other bilateral creditors.

“Settling the IMF debts by the Zimbabwe government in the past two years has come at a huge cost to the population through policies such as interfering with exchanges rates, introduction of additional taxes – such as 2% tax on mobile money transactions – along with price distortions, local currency depreciation and an inflationary environment which has eroded basic income and savings for the majority.

“We ask that the UK and other governments now help to fund civil society in partnerships with the private sector, assisting poor people directly when it comes to health infrastructure and services, including – crucially at this time – capacitating health workers, more decentralised and mobile testing and isolation facilities, and protective equipment, alongside social protection for the vulnerable. Some resources can be channelled towards businesses for recovery, but also to directly or indirectly support the Covid-19 response, such as more manufacturing of PPE and ventilators.

“Zimbabwe is still reeling from the effects of Cyclone Idai and a severe drought which will extend into the next year given the erratic rains this season.

“Unless Zimbabwe is also included in the current global UN appeal for Covid-19, once the cases reach a certain threshold, our weak health system will not cope.”

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A comment on the Zimbabwe Situation website made a similar point: ‘The Zanuvirus will continue to cause havoc just as it has done for 40 years since the infection took hold.’

Chamisa called for concerted efforts to remove Zanu PF from power, saying ‘let’s get the job done. Zimbabwe is too richly resourced to be this underdeveloped’. He urged Zimbabweans – wherever they are – to clap 40 times for change at 6 pm (see: https://bulawayo24.com/news/national/183384).

In the UK Zimbabweans have become accustomed to clapping at 8 pm on Thursdays to show their support for the National Health Service staff dealing with the coronavirus and some themselves dying from it. Among the victims this week was Rutendo Mukotsanjera, a single mother aged 45 who leaves a daughter Chichi, 12, orphaned with no family in the UK. Ms Mukotsanjera worshipped at the Renew Church in Utoxeter whose members are caring for Chichi and have raised more than £30,000 for her future.

Zimbabwe appears so far to have escaped lightly from the pandemic, although the future looks bleak despite President Mnangagwa repeating in his Independence Day message that Zimbabwe would be ‘an upper second’ economy’ by the end of the decade – laying himself open to a 20 year prison sentence he has threatened against anyone responsible for fake news!

What makes this aspiration even more unreal is a statement by the National Chamber of Commerce that a quarter of Zimbabwe’s formal jobs and three-quarters of informal ones would be wiped out by the impact of the infection. It predicted that the economy would contract by 9% this year (see: https://bulawayo24.com/news/national/183589).

The economy has not been helped by the government’s inept handling of bankrupt Air Zimbabwe which last week sent its employees on unpaid leave. Not surprising as a Boeing 777 acquired in January has only now taken its first flight for the airline – not a scheduled one but to Addis Ababa for maintenance . . . (See: https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/news/air-zimbabwe-flies-boeing-777-to-maintenance-after-3-months-on-the-ground/).

While the Boeing sat on the ground in Harare. The government spent hundreds of millions of dollars over budget on foreign travel expenses. They included hiring a private jet from Dubai to fly to Zimbabwe to take Mnangagwa on a 40 minute local trip (see: https://www.newsday.co.zw/2020/04/ed-foreign-trips-bleed-treasury/).

Other points

• A former judge, now in exile in New Zealand, paints a bleak picture of dashed hopes for Zimbabwe (see: https://bulawayo24.com/opinion/columnist/183647).
• Because of the coronavirus we can no longer physically meet outside the Zimbabwe Embassy in London, so we have started a virtual Vigil. We asked 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 (see: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zimbabwevigil/albums/72157713953468088). Our virtual Vigil activist today was Jacob Mandipira who kindly contributed to Vigil funds. Jacob’s message on Independence Day was: ‘Zimbabwe independence what a shame! 40 years of hell under the Zanu PF rule. The mass is suffering big time’.
• 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

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Just before midnight 40 years ago on April 18 at the Rufaro Stadium in Harare (then called Salisbury), Robert Nesta Marley stepped on to the stage with his band The Wailers as culmination of the official Independence Day ceremonies for the new nation-state of Zimbabwe.

Tens of thousands of people paid to join dignitaries from Africa and around the world to watch the performance of this revolutionary pan-Africanist, then at the height of his status as a global music superstar and cultural ambassador. Many more thronged the streets around the stadium, heady in their jubilation and desperate to be a witness to this incredible moment.

That Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, was free was remarkable—that Bob Marley was there to mark the occasion made it all the more special. After decades of warfare, the revolutionary forces of the Zimbabwean people had prevailed over brutal white colonial rule and their supporters in the international community.

Led by prime minister Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe was one of the last African countries to shake off the yoke of colonialism and gain independence. In so doing, the country had become a potent symbolism for the greater African continent, a rallying point for pan-Africanism as well as a source of hope and renewal for the continent who were battling the insidiousness of neo-colonialism in its various guises.

April 18, 1980, prime minister Robert Mugabe takes the oath of allegiance to Zimbabwe. R-L: British governor Lord Christopher Soames; Zimbabwe president Canaan Banana, Prince Charles; British foreign secretary Lord Carrington.

Bob Marley had become the most powerful cultural representative of pan-Africanism through the uncompromising messages in his music that particularly in the previous 5 years had permeated popular culture to a point of ubiquity. Since the release of his first international album Catch A Fire in 1973, Bob Marley had penned songs such as War, One Love, Positive Vibrations from iconic albums Rastaman Vibration, Exodus and Kaya, which had burnished his credentials as a deeply committed revolutionary pan-Africanist who directly identified within the Black African struggle.

His music had become part of the soundtrack for Africans on the continent, from university campuses to street corners from Cape Town to Cairo, and all over the African diaspora. Indeed, it is reported that during the years of the Chimurenga (Shona for “uprising”), Marley’s music had been widely played by the revolutionary forces as motivating anthems alongside that of other local artists.

After the flag-raising, the first official words of the new nation of Zimbabwe were, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Bob Marley and The Wailers!”

That an international superstar such as Marley identified with their struggle was validating of the power of their struggle and served to galvanize the masses. This became especially so with the release of the 1979 album Survival, probably the most defiant and politically charged in Marley’s catalog, which included the songs Africa Unite and Zimbabwe. Marley had specifically written Zimbabwe in support of the independence fighting rebels, which he debuted at the Amandla concert held in Boston, USA, to support the South African anti-apartheid struggle.

It was therefore no surprise that he was the only artist from outside Zimbabwe invited to perform. What many did not know was that Marley was so honored by the invitation and so committed was he to the cause, that despite the opposition of his management, Marley had paid his own way to Zimbabwe, including hiring a PA system in London, and staying in a small local hotel.

UK-based Musician Pax Nindi, then a journalist with Zimbabwe’s national newspaper The Herald, met Marley on the day before the concert, and described him as “a very humble man, simple in demeanor”. When the band was rehearsing in the stadium earlier in the day, Nindi recalls the noise of the PA system being unlike anything they had ever heard in the ghetto of Mbare, which neighbored the stadium, and this was the first inkling many had that Marley was in town. It was indeed ironic that Marley had been invited, as there had been a lot of contempt of Rastas by the local politicians at the time.

On the night, his performance slot was immediately after the official flag-raising—indeed, some of the first official words of the new nation of Zimbabwe were “Ladies and Gentlemen, Bob Marley and The Wailers!”

There was a temporary break in the performance when security forces over-zealously quelled throngs of fans who were trying to force their way into the stadium with tear gas and batons. It was an incident Marley reportedly described as “Madness” in the acclaimed biography Catch A Fire, though subsequent interviews after his death with Rita Marley downplayed the level of disillusionment he apparently experienced as a result of this.

Marley recognized the Independence Day concert had not been accessible to the masses and typically, he therefore played a subsequent show the next day to an audience of over 100,000 almost exclusively black people.

Bob Marley

Bob Marley died of skin cancer just 13 months later on May 11, 1981. Forty years on from that iconic concert, it is difficult to know what he would have made of the show in the light of Zimbabwe’s later struggles. Subsequent events have demonstrated the older generation of Zimbabweans have auto-mythologized the event.  The internationally acclaimed Zimbabwean actor Lucian Msamati described this as a “misdirected nostalgia at odds with the current reality that somehow still has a grip on core policy and culture and is choking and stunting it”.

High quality footage of this remarkable musical apotheosis of pan-Africanism isn’t widely available though there are grainy videos with weak audio on YouTube. But even Zimbabweans born long afterwards have seen clips on national television.

It is evident that the fervor that was generated by Marley as part of the independence celebration propelled the revolutionary zeal of many Pan-Africanists at the time and since. Bob Marley’s performance in Harare 40 years ago is indicative of the hope of an Africa that was promised, and is hopefully, becoming.

As he hoped in the song, Zimbabwe.

No more internal power struggle
We come together to overcome the little trouble
Soon we’ll find out who is the real revolutionary
‘Cause I don’t want my people to be contrary

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