Monday, 12 May 2008
UAE to strengthen cooperation with Malawi
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs HE Dr. Anwar Mohammed Gargash discussed with Malawian Foreign Minister Joyce Hilda Banda, the standing relations between UAE and Malawi and ways for enhancing them. At a meeting held at the Presidential Palace, the two ministers also discussed preparations for the visit of Malawian President Bingu Wa Mutharika to UAE. UAE is exploring ways to bolster collaborative partnership with the south-eastern African country in the fields of economy, investment and tourism.
Xenophobic violence rocks Alex
One person has been shot and killed and about 60 others injured when xenophobic violence flared in Alexandra on Sunday night.
The attacks on residents, most from Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique, started on Sunday night when a mob started breaking into their shacks demanding that they move out of the area.
The violence happened between 1st and 8th avenues, along London Road, which is an area occupied by the foreigners.
Although calm had returned this morning, most of the victims were still taking refuge at the local clinic, where they had been treated for their injuries. Others were transported to Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital.
Among the victims was 44-year-old Willex Katundu from Malawi.
Still in bandages on his head, Katundu said he had been asleep at around 8.30pm last night with his wife and three children when he heard gun shots and a noise in the street.
"When I went outside to check what was happening, I saw a lot of people carrying iron bars, stones, sticks and even guns.
One guy said he was looking for foreigners who are taking their jobs and misbehaving in the community," he said.
Terrified, Katundu said he dashed back to his shack where he told his wife to run away from the mob. The couple promptly locked the doors, dressed up their children and later fled their home. They left behind all their belongings.
Katundu said he then took his wife to a house of a South African friend in the neighbourhood. On his return to salvage what he could from his shack, he was attacked by a mob armed with an assortment of weapons.
"Who are you? Where do you come from? The mob asked before they started assaulting me. I could not hide the truth because of my accent. I just told them where I come from," he recalled.
Katundu added that the crowd took his keys and opened his shack. As they helped themselves to his belongings he got a chance to escape to the Alexandra clinic, where he was treated.
Police spokesperson Inspector Simon Maphakela confirmed that the incident was xenophobic.
"All the victims were either from Malawi, Mozambique or Zimbabwe. We have arrested 12 people and will be charged with murder, attempted murder, theft, malicious damage to property and public violence."
Manager of the Alexandra clinic Dr Muvili Simba said 58 patients were treated for injuries last night. Some of them received stitches. Simba said two people were transferred to Johannesburg Hospital for gunshot and stab wounds in a serious condition.
He said two women claimed to have been beaten up and raped during the attack.
The attacks on residents, most from Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique, started on Sunday night when a mob started breaking into their shacks demanding that they move out of the area.
The violence happened between 1st and 8th avenues, along London Road, which is an area occupied by the foreigners.
Although calm had returned this morning, most of the victims were still taking refuge at the local clinic, where they had been treated for their injuries. Others were transported to Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital.
Among the victims was 44-year-old Willex Katundu from Malawi.
Still in bandages on his head, Katundu said he had been asleep at around 8.30pm last night with his wife and three children when he heard gun shots and a noise in the street.
"When I went outside to check what was happening, I saw a lot of people carrying iron bars, stones, sticks and even guns.
One guy said he was looking for foreigners who are taking their jobs and misbehaving in the community," he said.
Terrified, Katundu said he dashed back to his shack where he told his wife to run away from the mob. The couple promptly locked the doors, dressed up their children and later fled their home. They left behind all their belongings.
Katundu said he then took his wife to a house of a South African friend in the neighbourhood. On his return to salvage what he could from his shack, he was attacked by a mob armed with an assortment of weapons.
"Who are you? Where do you come from? The mob asked before they started assaulting me. I could not hide the truth because of my accent. I just told them where I come from," he recalled.
Katundu added that the crowd took his keys and opened his shack. As they helped themselves to his belongings he got a chance to escape to the Alexandra clinic, where he was treated.
Police spokesperson Inspector Simon Maphakela confirmed that the incident was xenophobic.
"All the victims were either from Malawi, Mozambique or Zimbabwe. We have arrested 12 people and will be charged with murder, attempted murder, theft, malicious damage to property and public violence."
Manager of the Alexandra clinic Dr Muvili Simba said 58 patients were treated for injuries last night. Some of them received stitches. Simba said two people were transferred to Johannesburg Hospital for gunshot and stab wounds in a serious condition.
He said two women claimed to have been beaten up and raped during the attack.
From the man who promised Malawi free shoes
IN HIS first campaign to become president in the early 1990s, Malawi’s Bakili Muluzi offered his countrymen free shoes in return for votes.
A few weeks ago, Muluzi, with 10 years as president of the country behind him, made another flamboyant gesture in a bid to be re-elected next year, after an absence of one term. At the congress of his United Democratic Front (UDF) party, held three weeks ago to choose a presidential candidate, he promised free fertiliser to all Malawians.
Now that might not sound outrageous at first glance. But the politics of fertiliser is no small matter in Malawi.
The government, headed by Bingu wa Mutharika, has already dug deep to provide heavily subsidised fertiliser to about a million small farmers over the past two years. The programme cost about $51m last year and another $78m is budgeted for this year, which the government needs to fund out of its own revenues due to donor disapproval of the scheme.
Since the government put the subsidy in place, world fertiliser prices have risen sharply, increasing by a huge 200% last year. So the fertiliser subsidy is quickly becoming a prohibitive undertaking for a poor country such as Malawi.
Muluzi won his party’s presidential nomination and savvy Malawians are hoping that in the unlikely event that he wins the election, Muluzi will forget he ever made that promise.
A local businessman who attended the UDF congress told me that he was unimpressed with the offer. “In simple terms, Muluzi has promised us the collapse of the economy,” he said.
Of course this negative view of his “generous” offer is unlikely to deter Muluzi, who, in his two terms as president between 1994 and 2004, managed to wreck the country’s economy.
What is surprising is that Muluzi still commands political support, given the mess he left Malawi in.
But there is a chance he may be prevented from standing.
First, he is under investigation by the Anticorruption Bureau for allegedly diverting $11m of donor money into personal accounts while he was president.
Second, the constitution, which only allows the same person to run for two consecutive terms, could be altered to remove the word “consecutive”, an issue being bandied about in the local newspapers.
No one I spoke to during a week in the country believed Muluzi would win. But stranger things have happened in African elections.
Mutharika, who won the presidency with just 36% of the votes in 2004, has increased his popularity in urban areas through successful economic reforms over the past few years, and in the rural areas through the agricultural subsidies.
He is expected to win a second term based on the economy, but his popularity may be tempered by the problematic political situation he ushered in by leaving the UDF, on whose ticket he won the presidency, less than a year into his first term and forming his own new party.
For the three years since then, the country’s legislative process has been held hostage to floor-crossing shenanigans.
The president suspended parliamentary proceedings in September last year as a result of the floor-crossing frenzy. It was reconvened seven months later, and immediately boycotted by the two main opposition parties. This political paralysis does not bode well for Mutharika’s second-term aspirations.
My taxi driver in Blantyre was sanguine about Malawi’s politics. “This is Africa”, he sighed by way of a reply to my barrage of questions about the free shoes, the free fertiliser, Muluzi’s support from the very people he had robbed and impoverished, and so on.
And the shoes? His party supporters had not forgotten his rash — and empty — promise of a decade ago. They checked back with him at the April congress. He is reported to have replied, “I didn’t know your sizes.”
A few weeks ago, Muluzi, with 10 years as president of the country behind him, made another flamboyant gesture in a bid to be re-elected next year, after an absence of one term. At the congress of his United Democratic Front (UDF) party, held three weeks ago to choose a presidential candidate, he promised free fertiliser to all Malawians.
Now that might not sound outrageous at first glance. But the politics of fertiliser is no small matter in Malawi.
The government, headed by Bingu wa Mutharika, has already dug deep to provide heavily subsidised fertiliser to about a million small farmers over the past two years. The programme cost about $51m last year and another $78m is budgeted for this year, which the government needs to fund out of its own revenues due to donor disapproval of the scheme.
Since the government put the subsidy in place, world fertiliser prices have risen sharply, increasing by a huge 200% last year. So the fertiliser subsidy is quickly becoming a prohibitive undertaking for a poor country such as Malawi.
Muluzi won his party’s presidential nomination and savvy Malawians are hoping that in the unlikely event that he wins the election, Muluzi will forget he ever made that promise.
A local businessman who attended the UDF congress told me that he was unimpressed with the offer. “In simple terms, Muluzi has promised us the collapse of the economy,” he said.
Of course this negative view of his “generous” offer is unlikely to deter Muluzi, who, in his two terms as president between 1994 and 2004, managed to wreck the country’s economy.
What is surprising is that Muluzi still commands political support, given the mess he left Malawi in.
But there is a chance he may be prevented from standing.
First, he is under investigation by the Anticorruption Bureau for allegedly diverting $11m of donor money into personal accounts while he was president.
Second, the constitution, which only allows the same person to run for two consecutive terms, could be altered to remove the word “consecutive”, an issue being bandied about in the local newspapers.
No one I spoke to during a week in the country believed Muluzi would win. But stranger things have happened in African elections.
Mutharika, who won the presidency with just 36% of the votes in 2004, has increased his popularity in urban areas through successful economic reforms over the past few years, and in the rural areas through the agricultural subsidies.
He is expected to win a second term based on the economy, but his popularity may be tempered by the problematic political situation he ushered in by leaving the UDF, on whose ticket he won the presidency, less than a year into his first term and forming his own new party.
For the three years since then, the country’s legislative process has been held hostage to floor-crossing shenanigans.
The president suspended parliamentary proceedings in September last year as a result of the floor-crossing frenzy. It was reconvened seven months later, and immediately boycotted by the two main opposition parties. This political paralysis does not bode well for Mutharika’s second-term aspirations.
My taxi driver in Blantyre was sanguine about Malawi’s politics. “This is Africa”, he sighed by way of a reply to my barrage of questions about the free shoes, the free fertiliser, Muluzi’s support from the very people he had robbed and impoverished, and so on.
And the shoes? His party supporters had not forgotten his rash — and empty — promise of a decade ago. They checked back with him at the April congress. He is reported to have replied, “I didn’t know your sizes.”
Oropa receives positive results from Malawi surveys
Oropa Ltd (ASX:ORP) has obtained positive results from geochemical exploraion surveys conducted towards the end of 2007 at the Mzimba Northwest and Chitunde Project areas in Malawi.
At Mzimba Northwest, results from a pilot stream sediment geochemical survey covering the Emononi Target Area have outlined an area measuring some 18km long by up to 6km wide for future intensive investigation based upon uranium results above 100 ppm U308 up to a maximum of 634 ppm U308.
The Emononi Target Area was chosen to test the utility of stream sediment geochemistry in the preliminary assessment of 18 uranium exploration targets selected from an earlier remote sensing study.
Following the initial positive results obtained from the Emononi area, the geochemical survey program will be extended to assess the remaining 16 untested target areas.
Over the Chitunde Hill syenite complex, reconnaissance rock chip sampling returned U308 values up to 107 ppm associated with anomalous niobium values up to 332 ppm and tantalum values up to 15 ppm associated with biotite quartz syenite and quartz pegmatite phases within the intrusive complex.
Stream sediment geochemistry over northern portions of Chitunde Hill gave anomalous results in uranium up to 160 ppm U308, niobium to 745 ppm, zirconium to 0.8pc and tantalum to 38 ppm.
Oropa says these results highlight the need to extend and intensify future exploration coverage of the Chitunde intrusive complex.
The Chizani Project area is being assessed as part of a remote sensing study designed to provide for the selection and ranking of target areas for future ground exploration for uranium and other minerals.
The proximity of the project area to the nearby Kanyika Project owned by Globe Uranium Ltd (ASX:GBE) provides Oropa with a niobium-uranium-tantalum and zircon deposit model to apply to search parameters within the Chizani area.
Stream sediment geochemistry over northern portions of Chitunde Hill gave anomalous results in uranium up to 160 ppm U308, niobium to 745 ppm, zirconium to 0.8pc and tantalum to 38 ppm.
Oropa says these results highlight the need to extend and intensify future exploration coverage of the Chitunde intrusive complex.
At Mzimba Northwest, results from a pilot stream sediment geochemical survey covering the Emononi Target Area have outlined an area measuring some 18km long by up to 6km wide for future intensive investigation based upon uranium results above 100 ppm U308 up to a maximum of 634 ppm U308.
The Emononi Target Area was chosen to test the utility of stream sediment geochemistry in the preliminary assessment of 18 uranium exploration targets selected from an earlier remote sensing study.
Following the initial positive results obtained from the Emononi area, the geochemical survey program will be extended to assess the remaining 16 untested target areas.
Over the Chitunde Hill syenite complex, reconnaissance rock chip sampling returned U308 values up to 107 ppm associated with anomalous niobium values up to 332 ppm and tantalum values up to 15 ppm associated with biotite quartz syenite and quartz pegmatite phases within the intrusive complex.
Stream sediment geochemistry over northern portions of Chitunde Hill gave anomalous results in uranium up to 160 ppm U308, niobium to 745 ppm, zirconium to 0.8pc and tantalum to 38 ppm.
Oropa says these results highlight the need to extend and intensify future exploration coverage of the Chitunde intrusive complex.
The Chizani Project area is being assessed as part of a remote sensing study designed to provide for the selection and ranking of target areas for future ground exploration for uranium and other minerals.
The proximity of the project area to the nearby Kanyika Project owned by Globe Uranium Ltd (ASX:GBE) provides Oropa with a niobium-uranium-tantalum and zircon deposit model to apply to search parameters within the Chizani area.
Stream sediment geochemistry over northern portions of Chitunde Hill gave anomalous results in uranium up to 160 ppm U308, niobium to 745 ppm, zirconium to 0.8pc and tantalum to 38 ppm.
Oropa says these results highlight the need to extend and intensify future exploration coverage of the Chitunde intrusive complex.
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