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Not so Bright Matonga

"Our policy was not to drive out white commercial farmers. Its never been our policy..."

(Talking on BBC World News - 24 April 2005)

Bright is your average Mr. Nice Felon. Here are a few fantastic articles on the great buffoon:

White woman joins eviction mob

Focus on Zimbabwe Crisis

PETA THORNYCROFT

In a bizarre twist to the forced removals of Zimbabwe's farmers, a white woman, believed to be British, took part in the eviction of a farm couple this week.

The woman, Anne Matonga, in her early 30s, screamed at Monica Schultz: "We are taking back the land you stole from us!"

Matonga is married to Bright Matonga, 35, a Zimbabwean propagandist. He worked as a sports reporter in London for the BBC but was recently recalled to Zimbabwe at the behest of Information Minister Jonathan Moyo to work for the state-controlled Herald newspaper, then the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation before being put in charge of the national bus company.

Vincent Schultz had been wrongfully arrested as the seizure of his farm had been ruled invalid on a legal technicality. Nevertheless, he was still in prison, pending a bail application, and his wife was alone on the farm on Sunday when the Matongas arrived and began hurling abuse at her.

"She [Anne Matonga] was rude, saying we had stolen her land. I thought it strange as she was white, and looked and sounded British," Monica Schultz said on Thursday.

Schultz was released without charges being laid on Monday when a magistrate ruled that he had not defied an eviction order to leave his farm by August 8, as decreed by President Robert Mugabe's government.

Then on Tuesday, Bright Matonga returned to the farm - this time with members of Mugabe's militia. "He told us he was pissed-off, very pissed-off, to find us still at home," Schultz said. "He threatened to return with a battalion. The police advised us to leave."

Police had a list of wanted farmers at a roadblock on Thursday, and Schultz feared, after his eviction in the morning, that he would be picked up again. The final straw for the distraught couple came when notorious militant, Joseph Chinotimba, who together with "war veterans" invaded foreign companies in Harare last year, arrived on the farm with Matonga and told workers they no longer worked for Schultz.

Schultz, 57, and his wife fled the farm in terror and are sheltering at neighbours. They both wept as they wondered what the future held for them.

Schultz said: "We will have to leave. I want peace. Out of Africa. Somewhere where Monica and I can relax and lead a family life, without our ears being tuned for vehicles, for shouting. It's madness, it's a nightmare.

"Living on a farm today is stressful . . . You are the head of the family, the head of the farm, you have to show your face, but when there are 300 people at your gate . . . Do you know how terrifying it is to walk down to your gate?

"I want somewhere I can go with my family, and have law and order."

Monica Schultz, who was born on the farm she has been forced to leave, said: "If peace prevailed we would love to stay on the farm, to grow old and die there. And we have a lot of workers there, some lovely people who worked for my mother, have been there for 50 odd years. Now they have literally nothing."

Forced to stop growing crops nearly two years ago by Mugabe's supporters, the farming couple were restricted to growing roses in greenhouses.

The 11 million roses annually exported to Amsterdam won't be picked again.

Some of the 135 permanent workers have fled the farm.

Matonga, who has a BSc (Hons) in Media Production and Technology from London's Greenwich University, has left militia to guard his new farm.

The Matongas were not available for comment.

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Bureaucratic heart of darkness

By Marian L. Tupy
April 16, 2006

Sometimes even the most pessimistic observer of African affairs is forced to admit to being surprised just how low a particular African regime has sunk in its treatment of its own people. The latest chapter in the tragic story that is Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe has all the usual ingredients: incompetence, callousness, greed and barefaced lies.
Zimbabwe's economic meltdown has been so impoverishing that the women of Zimbabwe can no longer afford to buy even the most basic hygienic products. Poor substitutes lead to infections that can be fatal in a country where health care has collapsed. International donors have tried to provide relief, but they have encountered a major obstacle: Zimbabwe's officialdom.
In 2000, Robert Mugabe embarked on a course that led his country to economic ruin. By expropriating Zimbabwe's farmers, he destroyed his country's ability to feed itself. Famine rages in the countryside, despite efforts of international aid agencies. Mr. Mugabe's evisceration of private property rights in agriculture fatally undermined other sectors of the economy, such as manufacture and financial services.
With private sector production rapidly declining, Zimbabwe can no longer sell enough goods overseas and earn the foreign currency it needs. Most imported items, including gas, have become nearly impossible to obtain. The government has also lost most of the revenue it needs to pay the wages in the public sector. It therefore resorted to printing money. Inflation runs at 600 percent, and doctors, nurses, lawyers and businessmen are fleeing in droves. More than 2 million Zimbabweans found a new home in South Africa alone.
One of the more mundane, but telling examples of skyrocketing poverty in the country is the fact even the most basic everyday necessities, such as feminine hygienic pads, have become a luxury most Zimbabwean women can no longer afford. The country has 80 percent unemployment. People who are lucky enough to work earn a meager salary that averages $21 per month. A month's supply of pads, unfortunately, costs $5.
Use of unsanitary substitutes has spread disease. The Zimbabwean Congress of Trades Unions has requested, and secured, donations of free hygiene pads from donors in South Africa and Great Britain.
In a farcical twist, the Zimbabwean authorities refused to award the shipments duty-free treatment, demanding the cargo first be quality-tested. It may seem astonishing that government officials in a country undergoing social and economic implosion should think twice before exempting the much-needed products from an import tariff or that they should have the nerve to demand quality-testing for imports from a comparatively affluent and well-run country like South Africa. But bureaucrats have no shame and in Africa doubly so.
After all, Zimbabwe is a country where life expectancy fell from 56 years in 1993 to 30 years in 2005, yet where the government taxes foreign medicines at an average rate of 22? percent.
No doubt, greed also plays a role. Africa has an army of customs officials, whose job it is to collect import duties. With wages low and deteriorating rapidly in real value due to inflation, customs officials rely on bribes to speed shipments through or look the other way altogether.
Thus, when a group of South African churches and nongovernmental organizations raised money to purchase emergency aid for the people of Zimbabwe in the winter months of 2005, the Zimbabwean customs officials demanded that import tariffs be paid. South African blankets and food languished at the Johannesburg airport for weeks.
Worse, the government's Propaganda Ministry is in full swing denying that anything out of the ordinary is happening in Zimbabwe. The deputy minister of information, Bright Matonga, told the BBC's "Focus on Africa" that people were "creating a crisis that does not exit."
"The Zimbabwe government won't sit back and let women suffer. We care about our women," Mr. Matonga said. Perish the thought. In fact, Zimbabwe's government must hold a record for barefaced lying.

What's the misunderstanding on Iran?