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The Mozambiquan government has appealed for international assistance following new attacks by militants who have pledged allegiance to the extremist Islamic State group (see: https://www.herald.co.zw/zim-ready-to-assist-in-stamping-out-mozambique-insurgency/).

Armed militants chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is greatest) are reported to have set homes alight in a village, where a football pitch was turned into an execution ground and people beheaded. More than 50 people are said to have been killed in the area.

Several thousand people have been killed since the insurgency in the Cabo Delgado province began in 2017 with hundreds of thousands fleeing the area, where there has been discontent over government neglect.

Cabo Delgado, bordering Tanzania, has Africa’s largest energy project with a US$58 billion liquified natural gas programme. But even with the support of Russian and South African mercenaries, the government has not been able to halt Islamist attacks. In September they burnt down a holiday lodge frequented by international celebrities (see: https://www.arise.tv/mozambique-government-calls-for-help-as-more-than-50-beheaded-by-jihadists/).

The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition has called for leadership by the African Union and SADC in the fight against the extremists. The AU, however, has been unable to do much to stem the spread of Islamic State jihadists down from the Sahel region through Mali to other West African countries, becoming a major scourge in northern Nigeria.

The Vigil doubts that SADC has the will to stem the IS advance down from Somalia through Kenya and Tanzania to Mozambique. The regional organisation is a hollow shell and the South African leadership is preoccupied with domestic issues.

Butt the Islamist threat is at Zimbabwe’s borders and Mnangagwa has no option but to help our close ally Mozambique. The question is can he avoid repeating Mugabe’s self-interested DRC disaster?

Many would agree that, instead of reinforcing our police state, Zimbabwe’s soldiers could be better employed contributing to a regional military force. But who would lead it while South Africa is otherwise engaged?

This leaves only the United Nations. It would certainly expect French support, given that the French Total company is investing heavily in the Mozambiquan gas project. The UK could also help as it has given a billion pound loan to the project. The United States has already indicated willingness to help.

Now how about Zimbabwe’s all-weather friend China? It has shown a readiness to deal with Muslim dissidents without much criticism from the Islamic world. It sees itself as a global leader and could show this by joining a UN force to stem this threat to Africa.

Other Points:

• About the time three years ago when Islamic terrorist violence became serious in Mozambique, the Zimbabwe Education Minister Lazarus Dokora made the surprising assertion that Islam was the biggest religion in Zimbabwe when it became independent, followed by Judaism and Hinduism with Christianity in fourth place! He said he had obtained a loan of $20 million from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries to build the first 17 of 2,000 Muslim schools. We don’t know what happened about the schools but we have a good idea of what happened to the money . . . (see Vigil diary of 08/04/2017).
• Because of the coronavirus we can no longer physically meet outside the Zimbabwe Embassy in London, so we have a virtual Vigil while the restrictions continue. We ask our activists to put on Vigil / ROHR / Zimbabwe regalia and take a photo of themselves holding an appropriate poster reflecting our protest against human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. The photos are uploaded on our Flickr site: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zimbabwevigil/albums/72157716896362632. Our virtual Vigil activists today were Esther Munyira, Rosemary Maponga, Patience Bakasa and Rudo Takiya who all kindly contributed to Vigil funds.
• For Vigil pictures check: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zimbabwevigil/. Please note: Vigil photos can only be downloaded from our Flickr website.

 

Notices:

• The Restoration of Human Rights in Zimbabwe (ROHR) is the Vigil’s partner organization based in Zimbabwe. ROHR grew out of the need for the Vigil to have an organization on the ground in Zimbabwe which reflected the Vigil’s mission statement in a practical way. ROHR in the UK actively fundraises through membership subscriptions, events, sales etc to support the activities of ROHR in Zimbabwe. Please note that the official website of ROHR Zimbabwe is http://www.rohrzimbabwe.org/. Any other website claiming to be the official website of ROHR in no way represents us.
• The Vigil’s book ‘Zimbabwe Emergency’ is based on our weekly diaries. It records how events in Zimbabwe have unfolded as seen by the diaspora in the UK. It chronicles the economic disintegration, violence, growing oppression and political manoeuvring – and the tragic human cost involved. It is available at the Vigil. All proceeds go to the Vigil and our sister organisation the Restoration of Human Rights in Zimbabwe’s work in Zimbabwe. The book is also available from Amazon.
• Facebook pages:

Vigil: https://www.facebook.com/zimbabwevigil

ROHR: https://www.facebook.com/Restoration-of-Human-Rights-ROHR-Zimbabwe-International-370825706588551/

ZAF: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zimbabwe-Action-Forum-ZAF/490257051027515

Post published in: Featured

Harare, Zimbabwe – Having lost his job as a sales assistant in an electrical consumables shop, Amos Chivedede at first believed Emmerson Mnangagwa, the man who succeeded Zimbabwe’s longtime President Robert Mugabe in a military coup three years ago, was a godsend.

The reason? Mnangagwa’s promises of jobs and democracy.

“Today, we are witnessing the beginning of a new and unfolding democracy,” Mnangagwa told local and foreign journalists after his return from brief exile on November 22, 2017, a day after Mugabe resigned under duress.

“The voice of the people is the voice of God,” he said at the Harare headquarters of ZANU-PF, the party that has governed Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980. “No one is more important than the other. We are all Zimbabweans. We want to grow our economy. We want jobs.”

Weary of Mugabe and his ruinous economic policies, Zimbabweans were optimistic.

An infectious euphoria premised on the pledge of change and a prosperous Zimbabwe was palpable at the time, with thousands of jubilant Zimbabweans taking to the streets to celebrate what they hoped would be the dawning of a new chapter in the country’s history.

“I honestly thought the jobs he promised us would come,” Chivedede recalled.

But for the 38-year old father of three, reality quickly set in.

With no source of income and no job prospects on the horizon, Chivedede took his two-wheeled steel pushcart and offered to ferry heavy goods for an agreed fee around Kuwadzana, a high-density suburb west of Harare.

It is the only job he has known since then.

“I have not seen any change since Mnangagwa took over. In fact, things have gotten worse,” Chivedede said. “The economy is in trouble; there has been no job creation; industry is still grounded.”

Three years after the military coup that led to Mugabe’s departure, observers say Mnangagwa is still struggling to deliver on his promises.

Zimbabwe is in the throes of a deepening economic crisis characterised by high inflation of close to 700 percent, foreign currency shortages and a devastating mix of a rapidly weakening currency and stagnant salaries.

In December last year, the World Food Programme warned that Zimbabwe was facing its worst hunger crisis in 10 years, with half of the population – 7.7 million people – food insecure.

Meanwhile, more than an estimated 90 percent of Zimbabweans are either unemployed or earn a living from some sort of informal work.

“On employment, the economy has been declining so no doubt the performance [of the government] is not so good,” Harare-based economist Victor Bhoroma said.

“The employment council points that over 1.2 million formal jobs have been lost in the last 18 months due to economic decline, COVID-19 and other economic ills.”

Rampant hyperinflation
Zimbabwe adopted the use of US currency in 2009 after hyperinflation decimated the value of the local currency. Following the disputed 2013 elections and the end of a unity government between Mugabe and the late opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, the economy started to suffer from lack of confidence.

By early 2016, a shortage of US dollars prompted authorities to introduce bond notes, a surrogate currency, which largely traded on a par with the dollar.

At the time, the country’s economy was relatively stable, but Zimbabweans felt Mugabe – in power since 1980 – had overstayed and demanded change.

In November 2017, annualised inflation stood at 2.97 percent, up from 2.24 percent the previous month. But just a year after Mnangagwa took over, inflation had hit double-digit territory at 31.01 percent, according to Zimbabwe’s statistical agency – and seven months later, the wheels had basically fallen off.

Annualised inflation was last measured at 175.66 percent in June last year, up from 97.85 percent in May. Inflation for September was measured at 659.4 percent after peaking at 837 percent in July.

Hyperinflation has seen the value of earnings for Zimbabweans decimated.

The country’s currency, the Zimbabwe dollar, a combination of bond notes and the Real Time Gross Settlement Dollar, has lost value against major currencies under Mnangagwa and is now trading at $1:105 on the black market and $1:83 at the official market.

Economists blame the creation of electronic money by the central bank – a move taken after speculation saw the bond note trade at a discount to the dollar – for the Zimbabwean currency’s rapid depreciation.

“The Zimbabwean economy performed very well from 2010 to 2014 with record investment, free movement of capital, improvements in standards of living and reduction in poverty, price stability, record corporate profits and investment and other social indicators,” Bhoroma said.

Lack of human rights reforms
After years of diplomatic ostracisation under Mugabe, Mnangagwa early on committed to political reforms as part of a process of re-engagement with the international community.

But three years later, critics say his administration has not steadfastly implemented these pledges. They point out to the government’s record that has seen the repealing of just one law, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), a piece of legislation seen as hindering freedom of expression and press freedom.

At the same time, the Public Order and Security Act, another piece of legislation human rights activists say is an assault on fundamental freedoms such as assembly and association, is still in force.

Mnangagwa, a ZANU-PF stalwart, has also faced allegations of employing the heavy-handed tactics of his predecessor’s government, which harassed, threatened and arbitrarily arrested critics and activists.

Six people were killed in August 2018 when security forces opened fire on opposition supporters protesting against what they said was an attempt by the ZANU-PF party to steal tightly contested elections. Seventeen others were killed in January last year when soldiers fired at demonstrators protesting against a 150 percent fuel price hike.

“In terms of human rights, we are worse off [under Mnangagwa],” said Rejoice Ngwenya, a Harare-based political analyst. “Economically, we are also worse off.”

Others said Mnangagwa missed an opportunity to steer the country forward.

“The 2017 coup was meant to be a watershed moment for the history of our country,” said political analyst Rashwheat Mukundu.

“Regardless of the fact that it was not a democratic process, there was hope that Mnangagwa would understand the history of the challenges that our society was facing. The history of human rights abuses, the history of economic collapse and suffering of the majority of the people of this country,” Mukundu added.

“The expectation was that he would implement major turnaround in terms of policy responses to these challenges.”

But government officials painted a different picture, saying Mnangagwa had managed to stabilise the local currency and that his administration remains committed to rebuilding the country and engaging the broader family of nations.

“On the economic front, businesses are bullish about foreign currency stabilisation and ongoing price discovery since July 2020 when the president intervened through statutory instruments on finance and banking,” said Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa, adding that a weekly foreign currency sale using the Dutch auction system, in which prices start high and then decline, is “doing well to the delight of the public and investors”.

Authorities blame sanctions imposed by the US and the EU against top ZANU-PF and government officials following the 2002 elections that were marred by widespread electoral violence for the country’s economic woes.

In October, member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) marked what is now known as the SADC Anti-Sanctions Day, with the African Union also calling for the unconditional removal of sanctions against Zimbabwe.

“Our regional and continental diplomacy is very alive as demonstrated by the recent resounding solidarity in calling for the removal of sanctions,” said Mutsvangwa.

Mutsvangwa said the Zimbabwean government is pinning its hopes for food security on its “Pfumvudza”, a climate change resilient program, and argued reforms on the renewable energy market, among others, have begun to show positive results.

“Now there are no more fuel queues and power cuts are rapidly disappearing.”

Still, three years on, many ordinary Zimbabweans say their dreams of a better life have been crushed.

“I was hoping for more jobs and a better country,” said Beulah Muchaya, a 31-year old mother of two who hawks fruits and flavoured corn snacks in Harare.

“But things have gotten worse under Mnangagwa,” she added.

“Life is hard now. These days the number of people who have turned to vending has increased. As a result, it’s difficult to make a decent living from it.”

Post published in: Featured

Several cities across the world have deployed eRCVs. These cities include Auckland in New Zealand, Sacramento in the USA, Kawasaki in Japan, and Bilbao in Spain.

Zimbabwe’s fuel imports account for a massive 30% of Zimbabwe’s total import bill! Zimbabwe imports fuel worth about $1.2 billion annually. That is excluding the millions spent on importing internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle spare parts and engine oils, etc. Zimbabwe’s current account deficit has resulted in a huge shortage of foreign currency. So, Zimbabwe is literally burning a huge chunk of its hard-earned foreign currency in internal combustion engines.

The shortage of petrol and diesel has been making life very hard for fleet operators. Municipalities have been some of the hardest hit, resulting in a serious decline in service delivery in critical areas such as refuse collection. Garbage can go uncollected for weeks. The City of Harare regularly cites fuel shortages as the main reason for disruptions in service delivery. This got me thinking that, when the time comes to replace part of their refuse collection fleet, the City of Harare and other cities around Zimbabwe should seriously consider eRCVs.

Brand new eRCV have higher sticker prices compared to their diesel equivalents, but as the Ditching Diesel: A Cost-benefit Analysis of Electric Refuse Collection Vehicles report shows, there are clear benefits on the total cost of ownership (TCO) front. CleanTechnica regularly looks at TCO of EVs. The sticker prices of EVs will fall in the near future as the prices of battery packs improve, making the TCO even better as newer models come onto the market.

Refuse collection vehicles are perfect for electrification. Their predetermined routes make it easier to assign trucks with a particular route based on their range. The start–stop nature of their routes, which is made much more efficient by regenerative braking, is also major plus. The nature of their operations also means the operators would not need to wait for third party charging infrastructure around the city, but can just charge their fleets at their depots after their rounds are done and overnight. Another option would be to convert part of the existing diesel fleet to electric. There are already several firms on the continent converting old diesel vehicles to electric, and fleet operators should seriously consider this option.

Although the main drivers for fleet operators in Zimbabwe would be mostly economic, such as reducing the fuel shortage–induced downtime and cutting their operating costs, the benefits for the community will be a whole lot more. These include cleaner air due to lower local emissions, less noise when the trucks go on their rounds, and of course regular garbage pickups as compared to the current situation, where garbage can go uncollected for weeks.

Post published in: Business

* A Florida lawyer has been charged with extortion against two NFL players for allegedly asking for cash in exchange for clients recanting robbery and assault allegations. Guess the attorney might be liable for “unnecessary roughness”… [New York Times]

* An Iowa lawyer, who allegedly forged his client’s name on court documents, has been suspended from practice. [Bloomberg Law]

* The Supreme Court may soon determine whether governments can restrict church functions to curb the spread of COVID-19. [New York Times]

* A Colorado lawyer, who was purportedly arrested four times in 2019, has been suspended from practice for over a year. [Denver Post]

* A federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit filed by former New York Knick’s player Charles Oakley over a televised scuffle at a game. Guess Oakley is flexing his muscle in another “court”… [New York Post]

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

According to a survey by staples.com of 1,549 Americans, what did respondents describe as the most popular must-have perk?

Hint: And they’re pretty important, 62.3 percent of respondence said they’d accept a lower salary in exchange for better workplace perks. 

See the answer on the next page.

Come January 20, Donald Trump will step out of office.
And he better watch his step.
He could end up in jail.
No president has ever gone to jail. But Trump is pushing his luck.

— Juan Williams, author and Fox News commentator, writing about the legal consequences that could befall Donald Trump after he’s no longer president. Williams says, “His biggest risk is a guilty verdict if a case comes out of the criminal probe being led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. Vance is looking at ‘extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization,’ according to court documents.”

Attorney General Bill Barr can look past a lot of things: senatorial insider trading, lying to the FBI, a pandemic that’s killed a quarter-million Americans and is on track to kill as many still. But the absolute incompetence of his former Cabinet colleague vis-à-vis the whole Jeff Epstein thing is too obvious and egregious for even as committed a partisan as Barr to overlook.

A Justice Department report has found that former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta exercised “poor judgment” in handling an investigation into wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein when he was a top federal prosecutor in Florida.

On Saturday, the bill for Donald Trump’s habit of skirting Senate approval by appointing his flavor of the week as Acting Undersecretary For Vague MAGA Priorities finally came due. U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled that Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf was unlawfully appointed. And because Wolf was never legitimately in charge of DHS, his attempts to curtail the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals program are a legal nullity.

Sad vuvuzela womp womp.

Presumably, the incoming Biden administration will make every effort to restore the program which allows undocumented persons brought here as children to work and travel without risk of deportation. But since this is a legal blog, it’s worth going into exactly how this decision came about.

Spoiler Alert: It wasn’t because of excellent lawyering by DHS.

As Judge Garaufis noted, Trump has admitted using his ability to nominate officials temporarily to skirt the legal requirement for Senate confirmation of executive branch appointees, saying he was “in no hurry” to name permanent replacements for departed cabinet officials because “I have ‘acting.’ And my actings are doing really great. I sort of like ‘acting.’ It gives me more flexibility.”

As part of this “flexibility,” the administration relied on agency heads to modify the order of succession in their departments to suit the president’s whims. And so it was on April 7, 2019, when DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned her office at the president’s request. Trump immediately tweeted that Kevin McAleenan, then Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, would take over as acting secretary.

Except — plot twist! — there was an order of succession at DHS, and McAleenan wasn’t next in line. So Neilsen quickly un-resigned, signed a memo purporting to change the delegation rankings, and then quit again on April 10.

It’s a pattern familiar to anyone watching the Trump administration for the past four years. Step 1: You’re fired. Step 2: Sign a document so whichever odious cretin has captured the president’s wandering eye can replace you. Step 3: Mean tweets.

The problem was that there were two parallel orders of succession at DHS: one that governed in case of the Secretary’s death, resignation, or inability to perform the functions of office, and one that would become operative in the event of a disaster or catastrophic emergency. And Nielsen signed a document modifying the second one. Whoopsie!

On November 8, 2019, McAleenan signed another order purporting to modify the DHS’s order of succession making Chad Wolf the second-in-line. Then on November 13, McAleenan got the boot after taking heavy fire from Trump’s anti-immigrant allies for his failure to support ICE raids on families who had no previous involvement with law enforcement.

Multiple plaintiffs sued on the grounds that McAleenan never had legal authority and thus had no ability to delegate it to Wolf. The parties in the instant case challenged Wolf’s authority to cut off new DACA applications, bar foreign travel by participants, and require annual renewal of permits, which he did in a July 28, 2020 memo after the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration’s effort to cancel the program in its entirety for violating the Administrative Procedures Act.

The Government Accountability Office issued a report on August 14, 2020 validating the plaintiffs’ position that McAleenan and Wolf had been unlawfully appointed, to which DHS responded in a bonkers letter accusing the GAO of partisanship in the lead up to the election.

But Judge Garaufis agreed entirely with the GAO’s analysis, and was unpersuaded by testimony from DHS counsel that what Neilsen meant to say was that she modified all the agency’s succession orders.

“Based on the plain text of the operative order of succession, neither Mr. McAleenan nor, in turn, Mr. Wolf, possessed statutory authority to serve as acting secretary,” the court held. “Therefore, the Wolf Memorandum was not an exercise of legal authority.”

Although DHS heaped scorn on the GAO and insisted that the delegation was totally kosher because Nielsen had sworn in McAleenan herself, the agency did take some steps to repair the damage back in the fall. On September 10, 2020, FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor purported to exercise “any authority vested in me as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security” to create a new order of succession retroactively elevating Wolf, and Wolf himself issued a “Ratification of Actions Taken” on September 18 to bless all his prior orders.

But Judge Garaufis was unimpressed. “[A]lthough Litigants can make arguments in the alternative, the court is not aware of any authority that would allow a government official to take administrative action in the alternative,” he observed dryly, noting later that, “Even if Administrator Gaynor should be Acting Secretary, DHS cannot recognize his authority only for the sham purpose of abdicating his authority to DHS’s preferred choice, and only in the alternative.”

There’s also some choice throat clearing in a footnote about the reliability of the representations the government made to the court about Gaynor’s attempted delegation:

Because the court finds that the Gaynor Order had no legal effect, it does not find it significant that Government is now confused as to whether the order was issued after Mr. Wolf was nominated to be Secretary on September 10, 2020 — as it originally claimed that — or before. (See Defs.’ Letter of November 13, 2020 (Dkt. 341).) The court wishes the Government well in trying to find its way out of this self-made thicket.

Woof.

The practical effect of this decision is probably minimal. The plaintiffs won class certification, but the incoming Biden administration will likely resume taking applications for DACA and allowing recipients to travel without losing eligibility, mooting the case. But it is a fitting coda to four years of deliberate flouting of the Senate confirmation process that the Trump administration’s attempt to gut protections for immigrant kids died because these people couldn’t get it together to revoke the law properly, and then their efforts to kneecap it failed because there was no one in charge at DHS.

Saved by lousy drafting!

Memorandum & Order [Batalla v. Wolf, No. 1:16-cv-04756-NGG-VMS (E.D.N.Y. Nov. 14, 2020)]

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.