The ruling party in Zimbabwe expelled one of its co-founders, veteran politician Edgar Tekere, for insulting President Robert Mugabe in a recently published autobiography. A meeting of party leaders in Tekere’s home district of Manicaland, eastern Zimbabwe, ”unreservedly condemned” Tekere’s book, A Lifetime of Struggle.
Zimbabwe cranked up the face value of its highest banknote fivefold on Thursday as black-market trading in scarce gasoline and hard currency spiralled. On the illegal market, a single United States dollar bought up to Z 000, up from Z 000 last month.
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/ 28 February 2007
Dozens of people were arrested on Wednesday as pro-democracy activists defied a police ban on demonstrations and took to the streets to protest growing economic hardship and repression in Zimbabwe. The National Constitutional Assembly said many of those arrested were assaulted. The demonstration coincided with a bleak new warning by the head of the Zimbabwe central bank.
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/ 22 January 2007
Zimbabwe’s respected Roman Catholic Justice and Peace Commission on Sunday decried deepening hardships in the country, including hunger, deaths caused by a doctors’ strike and a record dropout rate in state schools over spiralling education fees. The commission called for political reforms by President Robert Mugabe’s authoritarian government.
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/ 25 December 2006
A street entertainer put the shell of a broken television over his head, mimicked a TV performer and invited passers-by to do the same to make their children laugh — for a small donation. ”Hey, and you don’t need electricity for this television,” he quipped. His performance gave some Christmas cheer in an otherwise gloomy Harare shopping mall.
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/ 17 November 2006
New data shows a child is abused every hour in Zimbabwe and more than half the reported cases involve sexual abuse, a coalition of child protection groups said on Friday. ”Are Zimbabweans really horrified by these statistics?” said Childline director Audrey Gumbo.
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/ 17 November 2006
The Zimbabwean government on Thursday asked more than 800 white farmers to claim compensation for properties seized under the state’s land redistribution programme, but the main farmers’ support group described the proposed compensation as ”daylight robbery” in the country’s hyperinflationary economy.
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/ 23 October 2006
Zimbabwe’s money losing state airline hiked its fares by up to fivefold in record increases that put air travel out of the reach of all but the wealthiest Zimbabweans. New fares for local, regional and long-haul flights became effective on Friday after the airline again failed to meet costs for fuel, spare parts and foreign handling charges, Air Zimbabwe said in a statement on Monday.
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/ 30 September 2006
Zambia’s main opposition leader, Michael Sata, had an early lead in national elections, according to preliminary results mostly from his party’s urban strongholds, but the race could narrow as the counting continues. Veteran politician Sata and President Levy Mwanawasa were both expected to do well in their traditional areas of support.
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/ 24 September 2006
Drastic coal shortages have had a ripple effect throughout Zimbabwe’s economy and ruined a deal to renovate the country’s biggest steelworks, the government has acknowledged. The energy crisis adds to the economic woes of Zimbabwe, which is already suffering from acute shortages of fuel and many basic commodities.