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Mugabe to tighten security screws
Harare Correspondent, Business Day (SA)
July 21, 2004

http://www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1663509-6078-0,00.html

Crackdown threatened on NGOs, internet and phones

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe warned his country yesterday to expect expanded state security powers affecting the internet, telephones and nongovernmental organisations .

Mugabe said in his opening of parliament address that his government would introduce a Security of Communications Bill to control the internet and telephones. This law would "bolster the security of our nation".

He also said that NGOs needed to be controlled because they interfered in politics, and a new law would be introduced to regulate them.

"We cannot allow them to be conduits or instruments of foreign interference in our national affairs," Mugabe said. "My government will, during this session, introduce a bill repealing the Private Voluntary Organisations Act and replacing it with a new law."

The NGO law would give government powers to refuse to register organisations or to ban those deemed undesirable.

He said his regime remained "patently opposed to the current mutant strain of imperialists who have arrogated to themselves the role of patrons of democracy and human rights, which they shamelessly trampled in pursuit of bloated self-interest".

NGO leaders said the proposed legislation was part of Mugabe's broad campaign of repression. Prof Brian Raftopoulos of the Crisis in Zimbabwe NGO coalition said that the proposed law was calculated to consolidate repression.

"It's just an attempt to extend the already existing controlling legislation that has an effect of further narrowing the democratic space, while strengthening political repression," he said. "The new law will definitely be used in the same manner as the laws on the media, security issues, and trade unions. It's all about controlling the democratic forces which government is dead scared of," said Raftopoulos.

National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) chairman Lovemore Madhuku said the new NGO law was aimed at containing democratic forces threatening Mugabe's grip on power.

"The idea is simply to undermine the development of civic society and democratic activism which government fears so much. It's part of the current process of tightening the already strict laws and consolidating the pervasive repression."

Turning to the country's battling economy, Mugabe said Zimbabwe was experiencing an economic revival of sorts.

Against clear evidence of a continued stagnation or decline, Mugabe declared that there was an "ongoing socioeconomic turnaround" and an "evident revival of the economy".

He said the central plank of this recovery was his land-reform programme, which he admitted was riddled with "irregularities".

Mugabe insisted the country had enough food, even though independent estimates have said otherwise.

Mugabe has predicted a "bumper harvest", while other forecasts point to a food deficit.

Mugabe urged local companies to stop a "neocolonial dependence syndrome" by cutting ties with businesses from SA, Britain and the US.

Local businesses should forge links with " third-world" companies "to break the spell cast on them by colonial history".

Zimbabwe's sinking economy was dominated by SA and western companies, businesses Mugabe said were "caught in a time warp and hopelessly hidebound".

"I have consistently exhorted the business sector to break the spell cast on them by colonial history, a spell that irrationally attaches them to the west for investments, imports, exports, loans and even for best practices'," he said.

"This neocolonial dependance syndrome has been our repeated ruin. Traditional business enterprises that have shaped and defined our thrust are, in the majority of cases, unambitious subsidiaries of major companies in South Africa, Britain, and America, caught in a time warp and hopelessly hidebound," he said.

Mugabe said there were better business opportunities in the "burgeoning third-world regions doing much better than the much-vaunted, yet risky and even declining west".

Since he came to power in 1980 Mugabe has attempted to refashion Zimbabwe's economic order in line with his political "look east" policy.

He has recently advocated closer economic ties with China.

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