Pro-government statements are the norm in Chinhoyi, the hometown of former president Robert Mugabe. But that was not the case at a public meeting Saturday, as Zimbabweans grappling with poverty amid the flailing economy are using every chance they can to voice to their anger.

Doug Taylor Freeme, a former leader of the predominantly white Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union, was among those who spoke. 

“When the president came into power, he made an appeal: ‘Please, can all those financial institutions come into Zimbabwe and bring investment here.’ … Our president has no need for him to be traveling all over the world looking for the money. It’s here. We just need the right documentation so that we can put the right security in place and I can promise, overnight, there will be a huge change,” Freeme said.

When he speaks of documentation, Freeme is talking about giving farmers the legal right to their land. Most white commercial farmers were pushed off their land in the early 2000s by the government and replaced by black peasant farmers. 

 

Those new farmers have no guarantee they will be allowed to stay, and no collateral to use to borrow money from banks. Without those, Freeme argues, the farms cannot be productive.

Even blacks who benefited from the land reforms, like tobacco farmer Ronnie Masango, say unless the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe addresses chronic shortages of cash and finds a way to preserve the value of the local currency, the bondnote, the southern African country’s economy will not recover.

“I hear people keep on saying parallel market, parallel market” he said, referring to a black market. “Where is that money coming from? At the banks, I cannot access my money. But in the streets I see people using cash. … We want cash in the banks. Not in the streets. So you will soon see commotion in the streets since the traders show off. Parallel market is the source of our economic problems. That is where corruption starts.”

Ziyambi Ziyambi, Zimbabwe’s justice minister, says only patience will help as the country goes through what President Emmerson Mnangagwa calls “austerity for prosperity” measures to reverse years of recession under former president Mugabe.

“To be fair to the reserve bank, the reserve bank does not create a parallel market. A parallel market, or black market, is caused by shortages,” Ziyambi said. “So what we are coming up is austerity measures. The moment we have a scenario where our production increases, we kill the parallel market. We have to acknowledge [that] we had 20 years or so where there was no development.”

It remains to be seen if the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe can assure citizens that the economy will stabilize, but the opposition has indicated more protests will materialize unless the situation improves.
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The U.N. warned Monday that Cameroon has become one of the fastest-growing displacement crises in Africa, and that the security and humanitarian situations are deteriorating and risk spiraling out of control.

 

“Last year, 160,000 people were estimated to need humanitarian assistance in the Northwest and Southwest regions,” U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told an informal meeting of the Security Council. “Today, there are not 160,000, but more than 1.3 million people – at least eight times as many in need.”

 

The county’s English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions have been wracked with instability since fighting broke out in 2017. More than 1,500 people have been killed and a half-million internally displaced.

 

The violence has impacted livelihoods, but also left more than 600,000 children out of school and disrupted the health sector, rendering 40% of health facilities not operational in some areas.

The U.N. and nongovernmental groups have scaled up humanitarian assistance, but Lowcock said more funding is urgently needed.

“This year, the U.N. and NGOs are looking for $300 million to reach 2.3 million people, including one-third of them in the Northwest and Southwest regions,” Lowcock said. Only $38 million has been received so far.

Cameroon also faces humanitarian situations in two other parts of the country – in the far north, it hosts Nigerian refugees fleeing Boko Haram militants from the Lake Chad region, and in the east, it has hosted refugees from the neighboring Central African Republic since 2013.

Unrest in the Northwest and Southwest was sparked in 2017 by English-speaking teachers and lawyers protesting Francophone dominance. Armed rebels took over the movement, demanding independence for an English-speaking state they call “Ambazonia.” Their demands were met with a government crackdown.

Cameroon’s U.N. ambassador objected to Monday’s informal council session, which was held in a conference room and included two speakers from Cameroon civil society. Organizers intended it to raise awareness of the worsening situation.

“The very subject under consideration – namely the humanitarian situation in Cameroon – in no way constitutes a threat to international peace and security,” Ambassador Michel Tommo Monthé said. He warned that some wanted to use the session to tarnish Cameroon “as hellish country of unspeakable ills.”
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The United Nations Security Council this Monday is set to informally discuss the separatist crisis in Cameroon for the first time. The discussion comes at a time when the conflict is escalating with many internally displaced persons from the English speaking regions escaping to the French speaking zones where some live in desperate conditions.

This is Cameroon’s Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute, visiting the English-speaking town of Bamenda on Saturday, begging people to ask their relatives who have joined separatist fighters to come back home.

Dion Ngute says President Paul Biya has sent him to say he is ready for an all-inclusive dialogue but will not discuss separating Cameroon.

As the prime minister went begging for peace, the military announced that the war against the separatists had intensified with many of their camps destroyed and at least two dozen fighters killed.

The baby of 38-year-old Flora Yenos cries at the Obili Catholic church in the French speaking capital Yaounde. She says she escaped fighting last week from her village Bafanji in the English speaking North West region. She says lost her husband in a battle with the military.

She says when she arrived in Yaounde, she and her four kids did not have anything to eat and drink and lacked a place to sleep. She says the Catholic church allowed her to lodge in a classroom and asked Christians to contribute for their upkeep after all of her relatives had told her they could not assist because they were already hosting many IDPs. She says her children are very sick and lack food.

Cameroon’s unrest began in 2016 when English-speaking teachers and lawyers demonstrated against the growing dominance of French in the officially bilingual country. The government responded with a crackdown and separatists launched an independence movement, saying they were defending their people.

The United Nations says at least 500,000 people have been displaced by the fighting.

Allegra Baiocchi, coordinator of the U.N. system in Cameroon, says their humanitarian needs are increasing by the day.

“We are fully aware of how many people are suffering on so many different needs where there is health, education, protection, violence and I think the commitment is there to try and reach as many people as possible,” she said. “We have often said the primary responsibility for the protection of the people is with the government so our action has to come in complementarity.”

Last week, Human Rights Watch said 1,800 people have been killed in the war and said it had documented cases of the government detaining and torturing alleged separatists and holding some incommunicado detention.

Iliaria Allegrozzi, senior reseach for Human Rights Watch in Central Africa, said, “We have compounded accounts from former detainees with information provided by former detainees families and lawyers as well as forensic experts who have reviewed and analyzed a number of photos and videos following torture or signs of torture on the bodies of the detainees.”

Human Rights Watch says it is calling on the U.N. Security Council to condemn torture and incommunicado detention, and call for the government to end these practices that have persisted since the crisis began.

Cameroon territorial administration minister Paul Atanga Nji says separatists are responsible for the wave of abductions, killing and torching of public buildings including schools and hospitals. He says the government in its effort to bring peace will forgive fighters who lay down their weapons.

“We want to make it very clear. Those who voluntarily lay down their weapons will not go to jail. Those are instructions from the president of the Republic. They will be Cameroonians, I can call them born again,” he said.

Analysts say since discussions at the U.N. Security Council will be informal, they just expect Cameroon to be condemned for its poor handling of the crisis and asked to organize an all-inclusive dialogue.

 
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Sudan’s army rulers and protesters are to hold fresh talks over handing power to a civilian administration on Monday, spokesmen for the generals and the protest movement said.

 

On Saturday, the Alliance for Freedom and Change – an umbrella for the protest movement – said the generals had invited it for a new round of talks after several days of deadlock.

 

“The meeting was planned for today but it has now been postponed to Monday,” alliance spokesman Rashid al-Sayed said.

 

Sayed did not explain why the talks were postponed, but sources in the alliance said that more time was needed for consultations within the leadership.

 

Late on Sunday the spokesman for the ruling military council, Lieutenant General Shamseddine Kabbashi, confirmed the new round of talks will be held on Monday.

 

The talks are being held in an “optimistic atmosphere,” Kabbashi said in a statement, adding that the negotiations aimed “to reach an agreement over the arrangements of the transitional period”.

 

The latest planned round of talks come as thousands of protesters remain camped outside army headquarters in central Khartoum.

 

They say they are determined to force the ruling military council to cede power — just as they pushed the military into deposing veteran president Omar al-Bashir on April 11.

 

The army generals and protesters are at loggerheads over who will sit on a new ruling body that would replace the existing military council

 

‘Totally unacceptable’

 

The generals have proposed that the new council be military led, while the protest leaders want a majority civilian body.

 

Late last month, the alliance — which brings together protest organizers, opposition parties and rebel groups — handed the generals its proposals for a civilian-led transitional government.

 

But the generals have pointed to what they call “many reservations” over the alliance’s roadmap.

 

They have singled out its silence on the constitutional position of Islamic sharia law, which was the guiding principle of all legislation under Bashir’s rule but is anathema to secular groups like the Sudanese Communist Party and some rebel factions in the alliance.

 

“We want to hold the talks quickly and sort out all these points in 72 hours,” the alliance said on Saturday.

 

Protesters meanwhile blocked the Nile street, a major avenue that runs along the river Nile in the capital, witnesses and the military council said.

 

Witnesses said angry protesters blocked the avenue after police initially stopped them from going to the sit-in outside the army complex from that road.

 

Groups of men and women then blocked the avenue using rocks, tree trunks and branches, witnesses said.

 

The military council slammed the blocking of the avenue.

 

“It is totally unacceptable what is happening on the Nile street as it creates chaos and makes life difficult for citizens,” the council said in a statement.

 

It also dismissed unconfirmed reports that security forces were trying to disperse the sit-in outside the army complex.

 

“There are reports circulating on social media about the military council’s intention to disperse the sit-in by force,” it said.

 

“We assure that this is totally false.”

 
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