The Fish Market situated along the beachfront is one of the busiest wining and dining attractions for tourists and local elite and is flanked on the other side by the sandy townships of Polana Caniço and Costa do Sol where most of the artists reside.

The fish market is just about fifteen minutes walk from the room I rented in Polana Caniço for two years in a lane adjacent to Rua Carlos Cardoso, named after the slain investigative journalist and editor of the Metical in 2000.

During the early months when things where hard I shared a room with one of the artists’. He in turn introduced me to his network of friends. I ended up visiting them, forming an attachment that remains to this day, as they sold black and white oil canvas paintings of elephants, calabashes, Che Guevara, glass and wood wall hangings.

Most of them are young men with young families. Most of them left Zimbabwe for the same reasons as me. Most of them are veterans of the arts markets in Harare ’s

First Street, leafy Newlands and Chitungwiza. Most of them are fluent in either Shangaani and Portuguese.

The Mozambican artists are also master craftsmen of beautiful wood miniatures, colourful paintings, traditional objects, fabrics and batiks.

During those early days I mingled among them as they initiated me into the intricacies of their trade; the buying of raw materials, the tiresome production process in their homes, the marketing stage on the beachfront, until the product was sold and the cycle started again.

Sometimes I accompanied them on their selling rounds on the beachfront. Ignoring my hot shame as a struggling journalist and banishing my personal pride, I pleaded with them to give me their canvas paintings and on several occasions I was just like them.

I was never as successful as them, but what I did get was useful in closing the gaps and keeping the grim reaper away from the door.

Both the artworks at the fish market and the Saturday market at ‘baixa’ are patronised by tourists and art dealers from all across the world, especially those from South Africa , Portugal and other parts of Europe .

For me the experience demonstrates a number of unique things. First the impact of the collapse of Zimbabwe ’s economy, specifically the withdrawal of tourists, on Mozambique and by extension, on southern Africa . The period was also characterized by an escalation in political violence, human rights abuses and the death of democracy. Second it demonstrates the mutual diffusion of artistic values between Zimbabwean and Mozambican artists in the competition for business. And thirdly it exhibits the integrative and economic contributions of art across the region.

Most of the sculpture, wire, wood, painting artists that thrived in Zimbabwe a decade ago selling their works at places such as Newlands in Harare and Chitungwiza suffered heavy losses when President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF snubbed the international community.

But instead of giving up, artists looked beyond their borders and over the years have steadily clawed back their livelihoods.

Out of chaos comes order. Necessity is the mother of invention.

When one artist left Chitungwiza – a teeming dormitory town about 25 kilometres from Harare – to start selling art in a new environment this had a multiplier effect on the old community by association; on relatives, wives, children, neighbours. So once where there was only one artist ten years ago, there are now ten or more. This is true not only for Mozambique , but also true for South Africa and the entire region.

This effect is like the parable of the mustard seed, or the grain of wheat.

This multiplier effect is not only true for artists alone, but it has been the same for any other trade you can think of, teaching, engineering, cross border trade, the list is endless.

In South Africa , the arts and crafts industry displays an organizational efficiency that is missing in Zimbabwe and Mozambique .

In Zimbabwe the organizational efficiency suffered from the prolonged economic and democratic meltdown, while in Mozambique there appears to be a parochial approach to the industry from the top while the main drivers remain enterprising individuals with limited institutional practice at the bottom.

Organisational efficiency in South Africa is evident in the growing body of research and archives run by institutions such as not-for-profit organization the African Art Centre in Durban KwaZulu Natal (KZN), one of the oldest arts and crafts institution of its kind in the country..

The centre was formed by the South African Institute of Race Relations in 1959. More than 3000 artists have passed through its hands and their experiences documented and archived.

Last month the organization facilitated five artists and two interpreters to attend the Santa Fe Folk Art Market in USA .

Sharon Crampton, the director said the 3000 artists that have acquired skills training and business facilitation since they started 50 years ago, where identified on the basis they were key actors in their communities and cooperatives so they would scatter their knowledge – another demonstration of the multiplier effect.

So in fact the impact of the centre’s work extends to immeasurable thousands.

But Sharon said their biggest problem remained with the artists and local communities tthemselves.

“The biggest problem is that people don’t know about the work we do, even the artists still don’t know how our services can transform their livelihoods,” she said.

The huge educational resource of 50 years worth of archived arts and crafts data in the hands of the centre remains largely untapped.

The growing exploits of Inina Crafts Agency, made up of about 50 women based some 150 kilometres north of Durban demonstrates the merits of organizational efficiency.

Over the last five years the women’s agency transformed from less than 10 artists to clinch a lucrative export market for beaded pens earning close to a million rand annually, thanks to organizational and institutional support from government and experts.

In the last two years the agency has been exporting about 1000 beaded pens monthly to the French-speaking island of Reunion with a population of nearly one million and already gearing for the larger market of France with a population of more than 60 million.

South African artists are also doing roaring business locally as suppliers of prized corporate gifts for local and international events, if the recent World Cup is anything to go by.

I have only looked at just three countries in Southern Africa where I have intimate experience. All three are part of the SADC trade bloc. SADC is made up of 15 countries. The three are just an indication of the rich cultural diversity in the region and the richer impacts they are having on economies and communities due to a wireless society.

For a long time diversity in this region has been a source of conflict. We are heading to a stage where this same diversity is going to be a cause of harmony, unity, integration and development. This year is the 50th anniversary since the first spark of African independence. For most, Africa’s 53 countries and roughly 850 million inhabitants has moved backwards, not forward because of dictatorships, wars, coups, corruption, famines and the list goes on. What is happening in the arts and crafts of this region shows how cultural diversity has already started on a march towards some kind of regional integration. Transferring the organizational efficiency in SA across the region is one way of achieving this. Exploring the mutually beneficial diffusion of values between countries like Zimbabwe and Mozambique is another way. Documenting how the multiplier effect is manifesting itself in various ways is another way. Promoting the growing trend of corporate gifts in SA to other parts in the region is another way. These crying possibilities are some indications that governments and institutional actors like embassies in the region are not flowing with the tide. SADC meetings have fallen victim to monotonous summits and its formative momentum has slowed down. The old has to give way to the new. The majority of civil society and non-governmental organizations are being blinded more by politicians and taking less note of what fires up and sustains communities around them. The arts and crafts of this region are already breaking the physical borders that trap cultural diversity and pushing new psychological boundaries. For the 270 million or so people of SADC and the rest of the continent the next 50 years provide the timeframe to create a better future. Part of that better future lies in mastering this emerging art and craft of Southern Africa . Knowledge liberates, but ignorance enslaves.

I know this because I hear them talking every day. Almost everyday I hear the chatter of young Zimbabwean housewives doing their house work, sweeping, washing and caring for their young families while their husbands are out at work.

Their husbands work as drivers for freight and transport companies that get most of their business around the port city of Durban.

It is the biggest port in sub-Saharan Africa, and most of the SADC countries including Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and DRC import some of their products through this port.

Due to the nature of business that occurs at Durban as the gateway of finished products from developed countries such as cars, machinery and manufactured products and also its other role as an exit point for huge raw material exports such as coal and agriculture products, it is a thriving transport hub.

It is this nature of it being the biggest transport hub of the region that continues to lure workers in the transport sector, especially Zimbabwean drivers, to come in their numbers and with their young families to look for work.

A good number of the workers that drive the transport trucks offloading from the port, and those that transport the goods internally to other parts of the country such as Cape Town and Johannesburg ,and externally to other countries such as Zambia, are drivers with Zimbabwean licences.

One driver who stays with me at the same flat, who grew up in Sunningdale and has been living in South Africa for more than three years explained that the arrival of Zimbabwean drivers has had a number of effects on South Africa’s business and social relations.

He says Zimbabwean drivers bring a strong work ethic to the transport sector that has resulted in faster turnovers in terms of time and profits for the transport companies.

“Before we had Zimbabwean drivers here international shipments were known to dock here for months as local drivers here were known not to turn up during pay days and other lame reasons such as high pay demands. This was causing the transport companies delays in deliveries and business losses. Since the arrival of Zimbabwean drivers this has changed so much that shipments are now being handled swiftly and delivery targets are being met. This has reduced the long queues that used to charaterise Durban for a long time,” my friend who grew up from Sunningdale said.

He says they work twelve hour punishing shifts everyday, get enough pay to pay rent and buy groceries and send the remainder home, and only gets an unpaid holiday only on his birthday!

But while Zimbabwean drivers have eased business for commerce and industry in Durban, they have also worsened labour relations with local workers, who sneer that they are cutting down wages with their lower demands to ‘work for anything’ and thus putting South African workers out of work.

These are the same sentiments that different other Zimbabwean workers come across everyday in their lives, be they teachers, accountants, football players, domestic players, security guards, farmer workers or whatever field you can think of.

Eventually this friction begins to spark tensions, and it is these tensions that culminate in the xenophobia that increasingly characterizes South Africa right now.

This week screaming headlines of the lootings of shops owned by foreigners in the Western Cape province are everywhere in the bustling streets of Durban.

The Western Cape is predominantly a grape-farming and wine-making region and in the past decade the number of Zimbabweans working as farm labourers has turned into a flood.

This has created palpable tensions in Western Cape province’s poor black townships such as Zweletemba, because more Zimbabweans are increasingly competing for less farm jobs with locals, thereby impacting negatively on wages and raising tensions.

In addition commercial farmers better prefer the foreign workers because of their work ethic compared to local labour.

Into this explosive rural scenario in the Western Cape throw in the deep dislike other enterprising foreigners such as Somalis and Ethiopians fuel by opening up successful grocery shops and kiosks in these townships.

The seasonal nature of the farm work on the Western Cape farms – where grape picking starts in the summer months from November until April – means that at the moment there are already less farm jobs than in the summer season.

This makes tensions sour.

In a province like Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN), the tensions are not visible but that does not necessarily mean that they are not there.

The Zimbabwe drivers, security guards and waiters that predominantly characterize the Durban developed business environment also bring a strong work ethic and lower labour costs, and this breeds the same tensions in an economy already under stress from the global recession, high unemployment and general disenchantment with the status quo.

I believe that is one of the reasons why xenophobic tensions and attacks are taking place on a parochial level and don’t share a national character across the breath and width of South Africa. The triggers are the same but the situations differ from place and time.

Like the housewives at my flat talking on the washing line, they are untouched by the xenophobic events already flaring up across some parts of the Western Cape townships like Mbekweni, Makhaza and Klapmuts where Somali-owned shops were looted this week on Monday because the problem itself is not homogenous.

The South African society is not homogenous, but stratified into different classes and levels riddled with wide inequalities and racial imbalances that find their roots way back to the corrosive effects of the separatist doctrine of apartheid that tampered with the collective memory of the country. It will take a long time to understand this amd find solutions.
*Beyond Borders is the name of a new column covering migrants in South Africa, especially migrants from Zimbabwe and Mozambique. the author has lived in all three countries.

“ Home Affairs and immigration officials have taken more than 10 000 identity documents that show that they were falsely acquired since the beginning of this year and there are some new measures being introduced to monitor this problem,” the official said.

The official was addressing more than 200 Zimbabweans at the Durban Refugee Reception Office applying for temporary asylum documents.

In the past few weeks hundreds of Zimbabweans have been thronging the Durban Refugee office every Friday from as early as 5:30, since the last day of the week has been set aside to deal especially with the unusually big number of Zimbabweans.

For a long time Zimbabweans have enjoyed political asylum in South Africa if they show proof they are fleeing from political related reasons such as violence and intimidation.

But since a government of national unity in Zimbabwe was achieved last year between the two main warring parties of President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the plea of political instability to be eligible for asylum has declined.

But in spite of the unity government the tide of Zimbabweans crossing into South Africa has not stopped.

Zimbabweans who have stayed here for years and observers point out the number of asylum seekers has increased noticeably this year, resulting in the current high number of applicants at the refugee office in Durban every Friday.

After the industrial and financial capital of Johannesburg, Durban in KwaZulu Natal province is the country’s second biggest economic hub and thousands of Zimbabweans are working there as drivers, security guards and waiters.

Home Affairs officials at the refugee office said some Zimbabwean asylum seekers were taking advantage of the South African government by making multiple applications in different provinces using different names in order to get identification documents.

“But we have now introduced a finger-printing system that makes it impossible for someone to apply in Pretoria or Cape Town under one name and then months later come to Durban and apply again for the first time. This time we will catch you and that application will be rejected,” the official said.

It is estimated that more than three million Zimbabweans are found in South Africa after fleeing political instability and economic mismanagement that has characterized Zimbabwe for the past ten years.

South African President Jacob Zuma, the official mediator of Zimbabwe’s government of national unity who visited the troubled neighbouring country for two days last week on an official visit, said a new package of progressive measures would be implemented by March 31 next week.

The journey costs an average of about R500.00 over  a distance of over one thousand kilometers, but more than a year after a historic settlement reached in Harare to form an inclusive government of national unity (GNU), the tide of north south migration has not ebbed.

Without digging deeper into details, the GNU was born on February 13 2009 as the first step to bring an end to the endless litany of economic, political and social problems that have characterized Zimbabwe over the past decade.

For South Africa, the GNU in Zimbabwe promised a number of positive spinoffs, such as a halt or decline in the number of Zimbabwean asylum seekers, less pressure on the local taxpayers in terms of service delivery in areas such as health, education and housing, less pressure on unemployment which already hovers at around 40 percent and a reduction in migrant labour.

With South Africa also suffering the effects of the recent global economic recession and the new ANC government of President Jacob Zuma seeking to create more jobs for South Africans, the GNU held many political benefits.

Taking the position of South African business and investors, the GNU promised the start of new investment opportunities in Zimbabwe’s moribund retail, mining, manufacturing, tourism and agriculture sectors in a country with known competitive advantages in the two areas of human resources and sound infrastructure.

It is no secret that major South African mines and retail outlets continue to wait in the wings for a new political dispensation that protects property rights and foreign investments, and the fact that they have not yet moved into Zimbabwe is testimony to the fact that the GNU has failed to live up to desired expectations.

Ultimately all these considerations were expected to result in the bulk of Zimbabwean immigrants trekking back home and creating new economic space for business and entrepreneurship to thrive.

But more than a year after the historic signing of the GNU in Zimbabwe the tide of immigrants seeking jobs and escaping political instability has not ebbed, and South African investors continue to wait.

The crisis in Zimbabwe has gone on for more than a decade and during that period it is estimated that up to four million Zimbabweans or a quarter of the country’s entire population lives abroad.

It is also public knowledge that of the estimated four million Zimbabweans outside its borders, the biggest majority of more than three million is found nowhere else but in South Africa.

Currently thousands of Zimbabweans are working as teachers, security guards, waiters, farm labours and mine workers.

In the streets of Durban the greater part of them are found as security and as waiters while in other parts of South Africa such as Worcester thousands other eke out a living as farm workers picking grapes for weekly pay.

Most of these farmers are recent arrivals as I discovered a month ago on a trip to the Western Cape and they live in squatter houses made up of a variety of aluminium  metals sheets, wood, card boxes, plastics with rubbers for floors that cover the ground in a township location  like Zwelethemba in the grape farming and wine making town of Worcester.

The majority of them are unskilled labourers and earn as much as R300.00 on a good week picking grapes rather than face the nightmare of exorbitant food charged in US dollars and the music of Zanu PF supporters that continue to roam  the roads back home.

In Durban, Africa’s biggest tourist destination and the country’s second biggest capital, the first jobs that Zimbabweans get are as R50 a day street salesrepresentatives on the crowded city pavements.

When the GNU came into effect a year ago more than seven  million Zimbabweans were in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and where just recovering from the effects of a long cholera outbreak that claimed  more than four thousand lives.

A year later many Zimbabweans feel very liitle has changed.

Most believe the GNU has brought about just cosmetic changes and has not resulted in the much hoped for fundamental paradigm shift that would restore economic viability, kick start production, trigger job creation, assure international investors and bring back political peace and stability.

Instead  the latest news coming from Zimbabwe last week is alarming stating that the three main political parties within the GNU were caught up in another logjam and nothing was happening.

Last week President Jacob Zuma, who inherited the chair of mediator from predecessor Thabo Mbeki who brokered  the GNU, had three of his special advisors in Harare but they returned back empty-handed  last Wednesday after more than three days of talks to make the GNU work.

Now the latest reports coming from the GNU is that President Zuma this week is going to apply his pressure for new, fresh and fair elections to be held by April next year.

The announcement is expected this week

In addition reports indicate that President Zuma is also going to apply pressure on the GNU to wrap up a  national constitution  re-writing consultation process by October this year.

So far the constitution making process, widely anticipated  to cut back sweeping executive powers and clip intransigent President Mugabe’s wings in power for 30 years, has been embroiled in inter-party violence and claims of arrests by opposition parties.

For many Zimbabweans found all across the land of South Africa, the one year old GNU has failed to create the conditions that  made them  leave in the first place and its current state is no good reason for them to think of going home.

For many Zimbabweans braving a four-day journey travelled over a thousand  kilometers into a country already under enormous socio-economic pressures that can explode anytime like xenophobia is still worth a try than staying under a GNU that has not brought back political and economic trust since it was born a year ago.

That is what Zimbabwe’s limping GNU portends for South Africa and why it remains imperative for President Zuma and the government to apply all the pressure and diplomacy they can.

At the height of his reign in the early 19th century Shaka united more than nine different Nguni tribes into one big Kingdom. But by the time of his death in 1828 more than half these tribes and their chiefs were scattered far apart across the face of Southern Africa to form their own independent kingdoms.

There is no doubt that Shaka is one of the champions of our African history, but there is also no doubt that his tyrannical leadership methods became so unbearably harsh for his subjects that they fled the kingdom.

That period in our history is known as Mfecane/Lifaqane: the purge, a time of untold tribulation, a time of weeping, a time of tears.

The Mfecane was characterized by a significant population displacement that transformed Southern Africa’s demographics still evident to this day.

During the Mfecane the heart of what is present day KwaZulu Natal Durban became the epi-centre of a huge tribal displacement that saw a dozen chiefs flee with their subjects to various new lands.

Mzilikazi took his people across the plains, hills and rivers on a northerly route to form the Ndebele kingdom in present day Zimbabwe. Zwangendaba, another chief moved further north and ended up in present day Zambia, while Soshanganne first crossed into Zimbabwe before moving east to settle in southern Mozambique where the Shangani people resides to this day. Thus Mfecane is Shaka’s undeniable legacy to this region.

Now what does all this migratory history have to do with Mugabe?

The answer is simple. Over the past ten years President Robert Mugabe has orchestrated a Mfecane of his own that has followed similar patterns and effects as Shaka did nearly 200 years ago.

In the past few years it has been estimated that more than three million Zimbabweans have migrated out of the country fleeing Mugabe’s dictatorship. Everyone knows that. That figure of about three million reflects about a quarter of Zimbabwe’s estimated population of about 13 million. The figure of three million is an estimate that has been used consistently for the past five years or so and I would like to believe that by now it is far outdated. As we speak it is my humble guess that to date close to five million Zimbabweans have been externally displaced primarily due to Mugabe’s autocratic rule.

What does all this have to do with Shaka, with Mfecane and the people of South Africa and the entire Southern African region today?

Everything, because Mugabe is an African leader who triggered the biggest cross-border population displacement in living memory since the days of Shaka. The majority of the displaced are found nowhere else but here in South Africa, Msanzi. Like Shaka, the unbearably harsh tyranny of Mugabe’s rule has overflowed into the borders of other neighbouring countries.

Because of the Mfecane, Zwangendaba, Mzilikazi and Soshangane and their subjects gradually integrated with the natives of present day Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Now that history has repeated itself again. We have white farmers that were forced to revive their operations in Zambia and as we speak right now they are contributing significantly to that country’s improving agricultural production. We have thousands of Zimbabwean refugees living in the Mozambican border provinces of Manica and Tete after running away from political and economic instability back in their home country. Today the greatest majority of the externally displaced Zimbabweans are found nowhere else but in South Africa, working in mines and on farms.

History is repeating itself again. It is my belief that many years from now, this region will bear the indelible print of Mugabe’s Mfecane as irrefutably as Shaka did nearly 200 years ago.

In battle Shaka remains a hero who united different tribes under one banner, while in governing – with all due respect – he was an iron-fisted dictator responsible for one of the bloodiest purges in African history. That is his legacy.

We all know Mugabe has been in power for the past 30 year, the second longest serving ruler in Southern Africa after his buddy Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola. In the past ten years Mugabe has overseen the destruction of what was once the second biggest economy in the region after South Africa and brought it down on its knees. Unemployment hovers at over 90 percent, agriculture, mining, manufacturing and tourism are paralysed. The local currency is dead. Everyday busloads of young productive people leave Zimbabwe for South Africa and fewer of them return back. That is why I say the estimates of over three million Zimbabweans that have fled Mugabe’s purge is now closer to five million. Mugabe has presided over one of the darkest periods in African history. That is Mugabe’s legacy.

We believe the 30-day altimatum that SADC has given for the crisis in Zimbabwe to be resolved is a stringent condition that will force Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF to comply,” Rev. Useni Sibanda, national coordinator of the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance said in Maputo on Friday.

The decision for 30 days cleary shows that SADC, especially South Africa is not happy with what is happening in Zimbabwe.

“South Africa is holding the World Cup in 2010 next year and no one is willing to loose money because of Mugabe and the situation in Zimbabwe,” Sibanda said in Maputo.

President Jacob Zuma also attended last week’s emergency meeting called by the SADC organ on Politics, Defence and Security after Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and the opposition MDC stopped attending cabinet meetings claiming unwillingness to implement the terms of a unity agreement by President Robert Mugabe.

President Armando Guebuza of Mozambique is the current chair of the SADC organ made up of President Rupiah Banda of Zambia and King Mswati III of Swaziland.

Macdonald Lewanika, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition national director said the 30 days’ deadline showed that SADC was indeed prepared to take strong action against President Robert Mugabe.

“The legitimacy of President Mugabe and Zanu PF in the unity government comes from SADC leaders and not the people of Zimbabwe. Now SADC is saying we are ready to take back that legitimacy if you don’t go ahead and implement sections of the unity agreement,” Lewanika said.

Zimbabwe resorted to using the American dollar and the South African rand at the beginning of this year albeit without the permission of those two governments after hyperinflation bloated the local currency beyond use.

South Africa is Zimbabwe’s largest trading partner, though the former has been accussed of exercising ‘quiet diplomacy’ in favour of the latter that has proved detrimental to the region..

Student, Christian, womens and childrens rights groups from Zimbabwe were part of the civil rights lobby that turned up in Maputo last week appealling for a chance to present their reports to the SADC leaders, but they were not allowed entry.

The civil society organisations did however give a press conference on the sidelines of the SADC meeting, where they claimed that President Mugabe was not implementing his side of the agreement such as making key appointments of the army, central bank and attorney general among others.

The civil society movements in Zimbabwe claimed a rising tide of political violence, abductions, militarisation in rural areas and human rights abuses in the period between 16 October when the disagreements began until this week when the Prime minister and his oppossition party started attending cabinet.

“We are in Maputo to make known to the SADC leaders about the rising waves of violence and abductions in Zimbabwe over the last two weeks and the failure of Zanu PF to go ahead with changes in areas such as security, specifically the army and the police,” Okay Machisa, ZimRights national director said.

“We want to make sure that everywhere where these SADC meetings are going to take place, our civil society will also be there on te ground to present the true facts about the Zimbabwe crisis,” Machisa said.

Zimbabwe’s government of national unity was formed in February this year when Morgan Tsvangirai of MDC, Arthur Mutambara of the MDC faction agreed to join with Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF in February this year.

He came here the very first time in April last year, a month after Zimbabwe’s 2008 presidential elections standoff, and he made appeals to Guebuza, former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano and Renamo oppossition leader Alfonso Dhlakama.

That first time he made a very memorable arrival into the country, waking up the former Portuguesse colony’s journalists before daylight when his plane landed at the Maputo International Airport at dawn.

By the end of that day journalists, hotel workers and ordinary citizens who saw his entourage here were abuzz with the story of Roy Bennet, Tsvangirai’s right hand man on that visit, who was heard speaking his usual heavily accented Manyika, but still smooth, Shona.

For many people here, it was one of the first times in their lives they met a white man who could speak a local African language fluently, a language that is also widely spoken in the central Mozambican provinces of Manica and Beira.

During that first visit, Guebuza never made a press statement, but Chissano did tell reporters that Tsvangirai had asked him in his capacity as chaiperson of the African Forum of Former African Heads of State and Government, for his help in ending the deadlock back in Zimbabwe.

During that first visit Chissano did not give Tsvangirai an encouraging response, refering him back to the SADC leadership but saying that there was nothing that could be done to help the situation.

This time in his second visit two weeks ago Tsvangirai made his appeal directly to Guebuza in Chimoio when the Mozambican leader was driving his presidential campaign for the country’s fourth multi-party elections since civil war ended in 1990.

So far elction results still pouring in from last week Thursday’s presidential, parliamentary and council elections show Guebuza and Frelimo romping to a landslide victory in what was a foregone conclusion for most analysts familiar with this territory.

This time the Zimbabwean Prime Minister was not in the company of the unforgettable Roy Bennet, the Movement for Democratic Change’s (MDC) proposed deputy minister of agriculture, who president Mugabe has refused to recognise by officially appointing him like he did with the rest of the ministerial appointees.

Instead the case of the absent Roy Bennet was one of the issues that Tsvangirai took to Guebuza, who a month earlier had taken over the chairman-ship of the SADC troika or organ on peace, security and defence from King Mswati of Swaziland.

Days before flying to meet Guebuza in Chimoio, the MDC party led by Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of the February unity government with president Mugabe’s Zanu Pf and Aurther Mutambara’s splinter MDC faction that SADC and the AU guaranteed to monitor when it was signed on September 11 last year.

One of the main reasons behind the pullout was to register protest at the treatment of Roy Bennet, who continues to be incacerated in cells facing endless charges that have been following him ever since he was unfairly booted out of a parliament where he was elected by a popular vote for protesting the takeover of his commercial farm in Manica province, Zimbabwe.

So far Mugabe and Zanu PF have hardly showed dedicated commitment and respect for the unity agreement, instead choosing to weaken the oppossition MDC through politics of atrition by arresting at least five of its parliamentarians for flimsy reasons and refusing to go ahead with major changes to end a decade long economic and political crisis.

Now this Wednesday Tsvangirai makes a third appearance in Mozambique to meet Guebuza the following day on Thursday during the SADC summit, appealing to him in his capacity as the chairman of the SADC troika to intervene.

President Rupiah Banda and King Mswati III of Swaziland complete the SADC troika that will be present.

President Mugabe has also promised to attend that meeting on Thursday.

In what will be Tsvangirai’s third appearance in Mozambique in the last two years of shuttle diplomacy appealing to SADC leaders, hopes for a serious resolution for the Zimbabwe crisis at this forum appear dim and almost zero judging just from past events.

Like Chissano told Tsvangirai a year ago, there is nothing that the leaders can do individually and collectively.

Nothing has changed so much now that can bring a speedy resolution to the problems in Zimbabwe that shuttle diplomacy has not tried before.

All SADC leaders in their individual positions stand in awe of Mugabe and in their collective capacity as a bloc remain powerless to make any strong action to stop the crisis in Zimbabwe.

I see this crisis of unity governance spinning out of the control of SADC and being taken back to the AU, another amorphous organisation that barks but does not bite.

After all the usual photo shots of African leaders arriving at the Maputo airpot in their blue/black colour power suits have been taken, and endless discussions carried on behind closed doors, and hurried press briefings issued at the end of the summit, for the people of Zimbabwe who really crave peace and the rights to economically and politically determine their future, this is another hopeless appeal to a SADC that badly needs to be re-invented or the rest of the world will begin to see it for the powerless club that it really is.

Like the MPLA in Angola, Zanu PF in Zimbabwe and the ANC in South Africa, Frelimo is a political party formed during the colonial era that fought to overthrow the old masters and brought liberation and democracy.

What this means in simple terms is that because these founding parties like Frelimo lay claim to liberating the masses from colonialism and bringing independence, by extension they also have a claim on how democracy should be defined and applied.

Kamuzu Banda’s Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and Zambia’s United National Independence Party (UNIP) are some of the founding liberation movements that defined and applied democracy in the same fashion before disappearing thanks to a more democratic multi-party system.

These founding liberation movements cum parties become the self-appointed guardians of democracy.

This is what is exactly happening in Mozambique today and why the ruling party will romp to victory next week.

Since the election campaign started in earnest some weeks ago, Frelimo has been in the driving seat in the media, in the streets, on billboards and in all public spaces and areas.

Oppossition parties Renamo and MDM, also in the running for the presidential elections, have not been able to get the same political space because they are not in power, because they are not liberation parties, because they do not have the state machinery at their command.

Since 1992, following the end of a corrossive 16-year civil war, Mozambique has been described as a multi-party democracy with an open market economy.

In ordinary terms this means that the southern African country is a society where individuals, businesses and political parties have equal freedom of access, association and space alike.

If this was happening then we would have Frelimo and the other two oppossition parties competing on an equal footing, on a ‘free and fair’ platform during the election campaign period but that is apparently not the case.

Next week’s elections show that democracy in Mozambique has become institutionalised in the ruling party, Frelimo, the one that brought about independence.

Though the elections campaign so far is being described as ‘free and fair’ almost all commercial advertising space in the form of billboards in the major cities has been taken over by the ruling party.

The posters of competing opposition parties are nowhere to be found for two main reasons.

First because they do not have the funds and benefits of institutionalised state machinery to drive their campaign.

Secondly because supporters can remove or tear the posters of opposition candidates with impunity.

Next week’s election in Mozambique shows the rest of the world that democracy is defined and applied by the liberation party in power and does not necessarily refer to multi-party democracy as applied in first world countries.

Liberation movements like Frelimo, MPLA, Zanu PF and ANC have their own defination and application of democracy which does not necessarily agree with first world countries.

First world countries that provide financial and donor support to countries such as Mozambique are very much aware of this disparity, that multi-party democracy as practiced in developed countries is not the same here, rather favouring a climate of peace and stability under one major monopoly party than the chaos and disorder that can arise out of untested multi-partism.

People across the world ask and wonder how opposition parties like Renamo continue to play second fiddle to Frelimo since the first ‘free and fair’ multi-party elections in 1994.

When next week’s elections are over, people will again ask incredulously and wonder how a party like MDM led by a charismatic young civil engineer and sole independent mayor of the country’s second-biggest city could be defeated in these democratic elections.

When democracy becomes institutionalised in a party and not in the people, the masses, or the majority its effectiveness becomes blunted as it begins to represent the interests of just a few in power.

That is the tragedy of liberation politics when it comes to democracy in Africa.

That is one of the main reasons why more than nine million Mozambicans are going to make an emphatic vote for Armando Guebuza and Frelimo next week.

That is the democracy of our liberation movements.

Mozambique President Armando Guebuza, the current Southern African Development Community (SADC) chairman of the rotating organ on Security and Defence yesterday assurred Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in Chimoio, in the central province of Manica that an emergency taskforce would be sent to investigate the political situation in Zimbabwe.

The SADC organ on Peace, Security and Defence is the highest decision making body in the 15-member regional economic grouping SADC, including the suspended member state of Madagascar.

Tsvangirai travelled to neighbouring Mozambique on Monday, on his first stop in a wide tour across the SADC region as he seeks the support of neighbouring governments to put weight on President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF to start implementing the global political agreement that gave way to the unity government in February this year.

Tsvangirai said he received assurances from Guebuza that talks with President Robert Mugabe will continue in order to achieve a negotiated solution to overcome the crisis facing the Government of National Unity (GNU).

“I will also hold talks with other regional leaders who will also provide the information so that they be familiar with the issue of integrity and credibility of the inclusive government in Zimbabwe,” said Tsvangirai.

Tomaz Salomao, SADC executive secretary said the ‘troika’ mission will be preceded by a meeting to be held next Friday in Harare between President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, as well as Arthur Mutambara of the splinter MDC to discuss the outstanding issues in the pact on power-sharing

Salomao said Tsvangirai is aware that the solution to overcoming the problems was for Zimbabweans themselves not to create a perception of a country in permanent crisis whose solution depends on others.

“It is up to Zimbabweans overcome this crisis and the prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai is also clear. Better than anyone, they all three (Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara) know what is good for Zimbabwe and what is not, “Salomao was quoted saying.

Salomao said Tsvangirai has given assurances that the MDC-T remained committed to the inclusive government, but that the outstanding issues, in particular appointment of the Governor of the Bank of Zimbabwe, as well as the Attorney General’s Office, be addressed through the power-sharing agreement.

Salomao said the Tsvangirai had not withdrawn from the GNU, but the party had disengaged to protest the arrest of one of its leaders.

Along with the Prime Minister Morgaan Tsvangirai, ministers of Finance, Tendai Biti, the Public Services, Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, and deputy Information minister, James Timba attended the meeting with Guebuza.

Guebuza took over the chair of the organ on Politics, Security and Defence last month and will be at the helms of SADC’s most powerful decision making body for the next 12 months.

The landmines are a heritage of a nine year war of liberation that ended in 1975 followed by sixteen years of civil strife that was resolved with the signing of the Rome peace accord in 1992.

” The MN69 landmine is the most common type that we have uncovered in Mozambique since we started here, this type was designed by the Belgians but we are also getting other types such as the Russian PMN and POMZ landmines,” Helen Gray, Halo Trust, said.

Gray, a deminer for six years who has also demined in oil-rich Angola, was speaking in Gare where the UK-based demining company has started a landmine clearing operation that is expected to end by 2010.

“In northern Mozambique we have demined 100 843 mines and opened up land for 525 farms in the last 14 years. Research work shows that in the southern and central provinces of the country landmines that need to be removed can open up farm space that can cover more than 541 farms,” Gray said.

It is estimated the country has about 200 000 landmines planted during the two armed conflicts.

More than 80 percent of the country’s population ekes a living out of agriculture and subsistence farming plays a key role in the lives of millions.

With a population of more than 21 million, the 2oo7/2008 Human Development Index ranks the Portguese-speaking country 172 out of 177 of the world’s poorest countries.

“The US$2 million donation is part of our programme supporting the removal of landmines due to many years of conflict in Mozambique,” Todd Chapman, Head of Affairs at the American Embassy in Maputo, said during a ceremony donating US$2 million to Halo Trust.

“Due to financial support land has opened up and the local people can live and plant freely without fear.” Chapman said.

In sub-Saharan Africa, Mozambique stands as the second most landmined country in Africa, following after Angola.

Demining in Mozambique has opened up land previously closed off to farming to generate income for families and has also provided employment for 270 workers, the majority of them coming from surrounding communities.

Suraya Henriques Cossa, a young woman working at a kiosk in Gare said there were some areas in the district that still had landmines.

“There are some parts of Gare that we know have landmines so people do not farm there. This year no one sufferred from a landmine explosion but last year we had some people that were affected,” Suraya said.

“The US$2 million we have received will go towards accelarating demining in the country in line with government’s plan to clear all landmines by 2014,” Gray said.

The Belgian and Russian-made landmines were used to defend cities, key military installations, major roads and strategic areas in Mozambique during the armed conflcts, but their removal today is aiming to empower local communities and open closed space to economic development.