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DAM-L Zim: Gwayi-Shangani Dam/LS (fwd)
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Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 10:26:26 -0700
To: irn-safrica@netvista.net
From: Lori Pottinger <lori@irn.org>
Subject: Zim: Gwayi-Shangani Dam/LS
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Mugabe Bids to Woo Mat Vote
Financial Gazette (Harare)
October 12, 2001
Posted to the web October 12, 2001
Sydney Masamvu Political Editor
Harare
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has launched a last-ditch bid to try to sway
Matabelelend's vote in his favour in the upcoming presidential
election by directly intervening in the implementation of the
Matabeleland-Zambezi water pipeline.
Government officials say Mugabe this week ordered that the
construction of the long-delayed pipeline must begin in January after
he hurriedly sealed a deal on the building of the pipeline during a
visit to Malaysia, which ended this week.
Mugabe returned home yesterday.
"President Mugabe wants the project to take off immediately and he
has actually intervened and taken a direct involvement in how the
project is being implemented," a Cabinet minister told the Financial
Gazette.
"He wants the construction to take off by January at the latest," the
minister said.
The pipeline, planned a century ago as the only viable solution of
delivering water to parched Matabeleland, has repeatedly failed to be
implemented because of its huge cost, according to the government.
Officials this week said the security services, which are working
with the ruling ZANU PF in formulating and implementing strategies on
the presidential ballot, had told Mugabe to move quickly on the water
pipeline to try to shore up his declining support in the restive
province.
Dumiso Dabengwa, the chairman of the Matabeleland-Zambezi Water
Trust, joined Mugabe in Malaysia last week to meet a team of
financiers headed by Hassan Ali, who agreed to fund the entire
project on a Build-Operate-Transfer basis.
The project, estimated to cost $33 billion, will be handed over to
the government after 30 years.
The officials said Mugabe had openly stated that he wanted the
project implemented starting in January, at the very latest, and a
team of surveyors to assess the project's implementation is expected
to be in Zimbabwe next week.
The first phase of the pipeline's construction is the building of the
Gwayi-Shangani Dam, to hold 691 million cubic metres of water, is the
one expected to commence shortly. The pipeline linking Matabeleland
to the Zambezi through the dam is due to be completed in 2005.
Impeccable sources in ZANU PF and government said the efforts to
launch the pipeline had been accelerated because the ruling party now
saw the project as a high priority ahead of the presidential
election, which must be held by the end of March.
They said ZANU PF's leadership in Matabeleland had cited
underdevelopment in the region as one of the main reasons why the
ruling party's support there had collapsed and that of the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) surged.
According to the sources, the concerns about lack of development in
the region had been raised after the June parliamentary poll in which
ZANU PF won only two of the contested 23 seats in Matabeleland. The
rest were won by the MDC.
As well as underdevelopment, ZANU PF politicians had blamed the
party's defeat on Matabeleland's bitterness about the army's 1980s
atrocities against civilians there and the fact that no compensation
had been paid.
These calls intensified after a post-mortem was carried out on the
outcome of the Bulawayo mayoral election last month in which ZANU PF
suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the MDC.
ZANU PF's strategy team has now concluded in its analysis that the
party enjoys little support in the entire Matabeleland region and
that projects with an immediate turn-around must be implemented
before the presidential ballot.
The sources say the ZANU PF presidential poll campaign team, with the
help of the spy Central Intelligence Organisation, had of late been
brainstorming on what strategies to implement to sway the
Matabeleland vote.
Other developments being considered include the revamping of old
townships in the city, the launch of a university in Lupane in
Matabeleland North and that the region is given a large slice of
public funds for so-called self-help projects, most of them to fund
ZANU PF activities and sympathisers.
ZANU PF's acting national political commissar Sikhanyiso Ndlovu this
week insisted that the accelerated implementation of the water
pipeline had nothing to do with the timing of the presidential poll,
saying it was merely a move by the government to implement
development projects in Matabeleland.
"This project is not an election gimmick; it is one of many
developmental projects which need to be implemented," he said.
Ryan Hoover
Africa Campaigns
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94703
USA
Phone: (510) 848-1155 Fax: (510) 848-1008
www.irn.org
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